Today the San Francisco waterfront bears no resemblance to what was formerly the preeminent center of waterborne commerce on the West Coast. What was once a working waterfront is now a walking waterfront! Many of those long gone piers were the genesis for the shipping companies such as the Beadle Shipping Company in the 1860s. This book is a brief outline of the Beadle family and the more than half-century of their varied business interests.