pedition to
explore to the farthest point practicable for steamboats, the sensible
course would have been to advise with Johnson and to charter his staunch
steamer Colorado, together with himself, thus gaining at the very outset
an immense double advantage: a boat perfectly modelled for the demands
to be made upon it, and a guide entirely familiar with the tricks of
the perfidious waters. Especially important would this have been because
Lieutenant Ives, who was instructed to direct this work, was ordered to
accomplish it at the lowest and worst stage of the stream. Ives had been
Whipple's chief assistant in 1853-54, and therefore well understood the
situation. But he states that the company was "unable to spare a boat
except for a compensation beyond the limits of the appropriation." As a
boat was spared, however, for the less important matter of going far
up the river to ferry Beale across, it would appear that either the
negotiations were not conducted in a proper spirit, or that Ives rather
preferred a boat of his own. The cost of building in Philadelphia the
boat he used, and sending her in sections to San Francisco, and thence
to the Colorado, must have been very great. The steamer was ordered June
1, 1857, and had to be at the mouth of the Colorado by December 1st of
the same year. After a trial on the Delaware, a mill-pond compared with
the Colorado, she was hastily shipped, with all her defects, by way
of Panama, there being no time to make any changes. The chief trouble
discovered was radical, being a structural weakness of the hull. To,
in a measure, offset this, timbers and bolts were obtained in San
Francisco, the timbers to be attached to the OUTSIDE of the hull on
putting the sections together, there being no room within. It requires
little understanding of naval architecture to perceive that a great
handicap was thus imposed on the little vessel. Yet Lieutenant Ives
says, on the trial trip she was "found satisfactory"! By November 1st,
the party was on board the schooner Monterey, bound for the head of the
Gulf. Though the vessel was loaded down with supplies for Fort Yuma,
room was made for the Ives expedition and they arrived, passing through
a heavy gale in the gulf, at Robinson's Landing on November 30th. The
schooner was anchored over a shoal, and was soon aground, as the fierce
tide ran out, a circumstance that enabled her to stay there and stem the
torrent. A deep booming sound was presently heard,