Page:California Historical Society Quarterly vol 22.djvu/13



Yuma and $50 a ton for all that might be needed for the remainder of the year.

Captain Turnbull decided to meet the problem of supplying Fort Yuma by steam navigation. In an effort to carry out the terms of his contract with dispatch, he had parts for a river steamer shipped to the mouth of the river on the U. S. transport Capacity, which the Alt a California lists as sailing from San Francisco on August 2, under command of Captain Driscoll. She probably arrived at the mouth of the river near the end of that month, for on October 18, 1852, Sweeny writes: "The supply steamer has been two months on the river without sending us anything. I expect that they found more difficulty than they anticipated with the steam tug ... I think they'll be lucky if they ever get up here." By November the first steamer to operate on the Colorado was completed and honored with the name Uncle Sam. She was not an imposing craft, even when judged by the standards of her day, and was more correctly called a steam tug than a river steamer. She is described as having no deck and measuring 6^ feet in length, 12 to 15 feet in width of beam, and 3 feet in depth. She was a "side-wheeler," equipped with a twenty to twenty-five horsepower steam locomotive type engine, and had a capacity of forty tons.

December 3, 1 852, was a momentous day at Fort Yuma, occasioned by the arrival of the Uncle Sam. Sweeny, an eyewitness to the event, wrote: "The steamer Uncle Sam, so long expected from below, arrived at the post on the 3rd with about twenty tons of commissary stores etc. She was fifteen days coming up the river from where the schooner Capacity is lying, 1 20 miles from the post." To celebrate the occasion Captain Turnbull invited the officers from the fort and several others to join him in a short excursion up the Gila and Colorado rivers on the eighth. Sweeny, a member of the party, reports: "The trip was rather pleasant than otherwise, more on account of its novelty than anything else, . . . for we got pretty well sprinkled [from the two side paddle-wheels] during the voyage."

The immediate problem, however, was to discharge the Capacity and transport the supplies to Fort Yuma. A second trip to the post was completed on the twenty-fifth, twelve days having been consumed in the ascent, and a third one on January 20, 1853, with about forty tons of commissary stores. In March it was reported that she was making faster trips, only twelve days being consumed in the round trip to the mouth of the river and back. However, there still remained three loads aboard the Capacity to be delivered, and that boat already had been at anchor on the river for some seven months. The Uncle Sam, it seems, never had been able to supply the entire needs of the post, for wagon trains were constantly engaged in freighting goods overland from San Diego. There can be little doubt that she was deficient in power and her success became more and more a matter of question.