In 1851, his father returned from the California Gold Rush after two years in order to reclaim his family and bring them west.

Officially, he was designated Commodore's Secretary,[8] but was considered "acting chaplain",[7] giving services on board and even conducting a shipboard wedding for a German American they encountered in Montevideo, an incident Bush recounted in dispatches he wrote for The Overland Monthly.

[9] Coincidentally, the fleet observed the punitive shelling of a defenseless Valparaíso, Chile by the Spanish Navy during the Chincha Islands War, after mediation efforts by Rodgers failed.

[7] In 1867–1872, Bush was called to Grace Church (later Cathedral) in San Francisco, but troubled by family obligations, only stayed five years.

His short stay along with that of photographic roll film inventor Hannibal Goodwin was to be satirized by Mark Twain in his weekly column in The Californian.

In 1885, his book Evidence of Faith was reviewed by The Literary World as "clear, simple, and unpretending", and summarized as an argument against supernatural explanations for God.