A Lady's Captivity Among Chinese Pirates

Fanny Loviot, adventurer, writer and gold digger, emigrated to San Francisco in 1852. Along with 17 others, including a bankrupt bootmaker and a disgraced nobleman, she set sail from Le Havre on 30 May 1852 on the schooner Dunkirk Independence. The ship's passengers were all to join the Californian Gold Rush as part of a lottery scheme, created by Alexander Dumas, whose aim was to send 5000 unemployed workers to find their fortunes.

The journey was eventful, and the ship narrowly missed foundering on a reef, put into port in Rio, rounded Cape Horn in a storm, losing at least one sailor, and finally arrived in San Francisco, the passengers near starving, on 20 November, after an epic journey of five months.

Although registered on the passenger manifest as a linen maid, it seems highly likely that she fell into prostitution in San Francisco as did many unmarried women of her time. She invented a sister as her travelling companion in an attempt to cover up her connection to the Gold Rush. She traveled widely in California and beyond, and was taken hostage by Chinese pirates during a voyage to Hong Kong.

On her return to France, she published the story of her adventures, which was a huge success, largely because it gave what was at the time a rare account of European emigration to "Eldorado" , written, furthermore by a woman in what was exclusively a male preserve, and was translated into several languages.