David Robinson had discovered the potential of the massive murre bird colonies on the Farralon Islands, twenty miles out from San Francisco Harbor, as a food supply for the California Gold Rush and his Pacific Egg Company claimed control of the stocks.  A group of rival egg gatherers, led by a man named David Batchelder, attempted to encroach and shots were exchanged with Robinson's workers and a man on each side were killed. For his part in the "Egg War," Batchelder was later tried but acquited.  (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Steve Nicholls, Paradise Found: Nature in America at the Time of Discovery (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 381-382. 
    Date Certainty
    Exact
    Type
    Crime/Disasters

    How to Cite This Page: "On the Farralon Islands, the deadly twenty-minute exchange of shots of the "Egg War" kills two ," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hddev.housedivided.dickinson.edu/index.php/node/41465.