Joshua Norton on the Sacramento River
Among the buildings destroyed in the San Francisco fire of May 1851 was James Lick's adobe at 242 Montgomery Street, where Joshua Norton's office had been located since May 1850.
In the wake of the fire, Joshua made at least two trips up the Sacramento River and met with prominent Sacramento auctioneer and commission merchant James Blackwell "J.B." Starr (1810–1862). In June 1851, Starr and Norton started offering a packet service between Sacramento and San Francisco using a schooner apparently brought to the table by Starr.
It was a very brief arrangement, lasting about long enough for Joshua to regroup and find new office space in San Francisco.
Four years later, in early May 1855, the Fourth District Court of California set the financial terms of Joshua's California Supreme Court loss in his rice contract dispute with the consignment firm of Ruiz Hermanos: $20,000.
Two weeks after this, J.B. Starr joined a wool-buying promotion that included Joshua Norton — and that appears to have been designed by former business associates of Joshua to help him through a difficult time and to show that he was not friendless.
It was the second time that Starr had thrown Joshua a lifeline.