California Navigation and and Improvement Company stock certificate circa 1902

Stunning cert with a huge vignette that spreads across the face showing river scene with steamboats everywhere.  Bottom vignette is a steam paddle wheeler that is perfect by itself.  Unissued but circa 1900-1902 from issued examples.

This company operated a local line on the lower Sacramento River between San Francisco and Stockton. This certificate shows four of the companies ships – the J. D. Peters, the Mary Garratt, the T. C. Walker and the J. P. McDonald.

Nov 28, 1898 New York Times:

SIX KILLED BY EXPLOSION; Disastrous Accident on a River Steamer Near Stockton, Cal. THIRTY PERSONS ARE INJURED Steam Drum on the Boiler Blows Out -- The Captain Among the Dead.

STOCKTON, Cal., Nov. 27. -- The most disastrous accident in the history of Stockton occurred to-day near Fourteen Mile Slough, when a part of one of the boilers of the river steamer T.C. Walker, which left San Francisco about 6 o'clock last night, was blown out, killing five and dangerously wounding eleven persons, while probably fifteen or twenty were more or less badly hurt.