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• 1 2025-01-21T00:50:33-08:00 Quaker City Excursion 7 plain 2025-01-28T01:52:39-08:00 -annotation -main The Quaker City Excursion was an American pleasure cruise and educational excursion to the Mediterranean and back that took place in 1867. "Quaker City" was the name of the steamship used for the cruise.
  Clemens participated in the excursion as a newspaper correspondent for the San Francisco Alta California and therefore did not have to pay the $1,250 per-person fare (see Rasmussen et al. 2:845). Initially, the planned participation of notable personalities, like General William Sherman and Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, was advertised to attract more passengers, but the scheme back-fired when both Sherman and Beecher, as well as a number of passengers from Beecher's congregation and other minor celebrities, announced they would not be joining the excursion after all (see Ganzel 13-15). Clemens remained as the only person of at least some public interest and, according to Ganzel, enjoyed his status as a "celebrity" (16) among the travelling party, which was - with the exception of Clemens himself - mostly wealthy and from the East Coast (see Ganzel 16).
  The ship left New York on 8 June 1867 and "[the] voyage lasted 164 days, of which 46 were spent on the Atlantic and 118 on the Mediterranean and Black seas. While the ship was in the Mediterranean, Clemens spent roughly 66 days ashore" (Rasmussen et al. 2:847-848). The date of return was on 19 November 1867. The cities visited included Paris, Genoa, Naples,Constantinople, Jerusalem, Alexandria, and many others - some of which could be skipped or added by individual participants as desired. During the excursion, Clemens spent considerable time writing the required travel letters for the San Francisco Alta California and he would later draw on these letters to write his book The Innocents Abroad.