Simon Fraser Blunt (August 1, 1818 – April 27, 1854) was a member of the Wilkes Expedition, Cartographer of San Francisco Bay and was Captain of the SS Winfield Scott when it shipwrecked off Anacapa Island in 1853.
Blunt joined the U.S. Navy and in 1838, he was assigned to the USS Porpoise,[1] under the command of Captain C. Ringgold[2] and passed midshipman on June 23.
[11] Blunt, either on his own or with the rest of the members of the Joint Commission presumably joined his former Captain on the Porpoise, now "Commodore" C. Ringgold on the chartered brig Col. Fremont to chart the San Francisco Bay region, suddenly important because of the discovery of gold in the area.
[11][12] Afterwards, Blunt assisted Commodore Ringgold in the creation of two charts: Blunt also drew a lithograph, View of Benicia from the anchorage east of Seal Island for Ringgold's Chart of Suisun & Vallejo bays with the confluence of the rivers Sacramento and San Joaquin, California[15] A colored version of the lithograph was published in 1852.
The USS Massachusetts was transferred to the Navy in San Francisco on August 1, 1849, and detailed for the use of the Joint Commission to take up and down the coast, however they could not recruit a crew.
Upon its return, the Joint Commission made preliminary recommendations to President Fillmore to reserve various islands and coastal regions in and around San Francisco Bay.
In a letter of that date from William Pope McArthur (the first leader of the hydrographic branch of the Pacific Coast Survey) to his father-in-law Commander John J.
Young, McArthur wrote: "Lt. Blunt who is now with me has traveled considerably through the country (the Willamette Valley) and is so much pleased with it, that he has taken a section of land and made a regular claim to it, he has also taken one for myself and one for Lt. Bartlett, both adjoining his!"
At the end of December 1850, the Ewing was severely damaged in a storm while attempting to take the new land branch of the Pacific Coast Survey, George Davidson and James S. Lawson to Monterey Bay.
[24] If Blunt was with the Ewing he was back by early to mid summer, when he was a signer of the constitution of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance[25] In August, he may have visited John Charles and Jessie Benton Frémont at their home in the same city.
Blunt was hired as the Captain of the SS Winfield Scott, which carried passengers, mail and cargo between San Francisco and Panama.
[30] After seeing to the rescue of the passengers and salvage of the mail and cargo, he continued to "Atlantic States on a visit to his family and for the purpose of representing in person, the loss of the steamer of which he formerly had commanded."