9 minute read
Dispatches from the Discovery Trail ~ Episode 14
EPISODE 14 After Great Falls, the Fourth of July and a Failed Experiment
By Michael O. Perry
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After a grueling eleven days portaging around the Great Falls, finishing on July 2, 1805, the men were exhausted and needed a rest. Thus, the Corps began celebrating Independence Day a little early. Pierre Cruzatte played his fiddle, and the men danced as they drank the last of the whiskey. While the men probably fired their guns, Mother Nature also made a little noise that day. Since their arrival at the falls, the men had repeatedly heard a noise resembling the discharge of a six-pound cannon at a distance of three miles. Initially, it was thought to be thunder. But, Lewis himself “heard this noise very distinctly, it was perfectly calm, clear and not a cloud to be seen.” He heard three such discharges in an hour. The men had reported hearing up to seven discharges in quick succession. Interestingly, while these noises are still heard to this day, nobody has yet come up with a verifiable explanation.
A grand experiment
One of the more memorable lines in the 1975 movie “Jaws” was Police Chief Martin Brody telling Quint, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” Lewis and Clark had the opposite problem. As the Corps of Discovery traveled up the Missouri River, they would have to abandon their large boats as the river grew shallower. Dugout canoes replaced the larger boats, but they were unstable and would not carry much of a load. Captain Lewis had foreseen this problem in 1803 while making plans for the expedition and designed what came to be called “The Experiment.” The federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, constructed a portable iron boat frame that Lewis believed could be covered with buffalo hides and used to carry provisions when the water became too shallow for the heavy wooden boats.
While no drawings exist, records indicate the assembled boat was 36 feet long and 4-1/2 feet wide. The frame was made of wrought iron ribs that could be assembled with screws. According to Lewis’ description, there were two designs used for the individual sections: one curved, or in the shape necessary for the stem and stern, the other semi-cylindrical, or in the form of those sections which constitute the body of the canoe. There were a total of eight sections, each about 4-1/2 feet long, that could be fastened together to make the boat frame. Each
Armory Superintendent Joseph Perkins (left) and Captain Meriwether Lewis inspecting the collapsible iron boat frame built at Harpers Ferry in 1803.
Joseph Fields, Capt. Lewis, Patrick Gass and John Shields stretching leather skins over the iron boat frame.
Both illustrations By Keith rocco for harpers ferry national historic parK. national parK service.
... underestimated the time ...
All they needed was pitch to seal it up. It would’ve been the cat’s meow because when “ they loaded that thing up, when they first put it in the water when it didn’t leak, it carried some 8,000 pounds of goods. But an hour later it was sinking.”
Michael Perry enjoys local history and travel. His popular 33-installment Lewis & Clark series appeared in Columbia River Reader’s early years and helped shape its identity and zeitgeist. After two encores, the series has been expanded and published in a book. Details, pages 2, 39.
M I C H A E L O. P E R R Y from the Discovery trail dispatches
with HAL CALBOM woodcut art by dEbby NEELy
A LAYMAN’S LEWIS & CLARK
section weighed 22 pounds, for a total of 176 pounds of iron. The total weight of the iron, hides, wood, and bark needed for the entire boat would be 500 pounds. In an 1805 letter to President Jefferson from Fort Mandan, Lewis wrote, “Our baggage is all embarked on board six small canoes and two pirogues: we shall set out at the same moment that we dispatch the” keelboat back to St. Louis. “One or perhaps, both of these pirogues we shall leave at the falls of the Missouri, from whence we intend continuing our voyage in the canoes and a perogue of skins, the frame of which was prepared at Harper’s Ferry. This perogue is now in a situation which will enable us to prepare it in the course of a few hours.”
The best-laid plans
As Lewis predicted, the red pirogue was buried in a cache near the mouth of Maria’s river on June 9th, and the white pirogue placed in a cache at the base of the Great Falls two weeks later. However, Lewis drastically underestimated the amount of time required to assemble the portable boat. The first of the four portages made around the Great Falls began on June 21 and contained the materials to assemble the iron boat. Lewis already saw a problem: “I readily perceive difficulties in preparing the leather boat which are the want of convenient and proper timber; bark, skins, and above all that of pitch to pay” [seal] “her seams, a deficiency that I really know not how to surmount…” The frame was quickly assembled while the skins from 28 elk and four buffalo were prepared to cover it. The final portage around the Great Falls was completed on July 2nd.
cont page 7
in april 2021 we introDuceD a reviseD anD expanDeD version of
Michael Perry’s popular series which was expanded In the new book, Dispatches from the Discovery Trail, edited by Hal Calbom and published by CRRPress. It includes an in-depth author interview and new illustrations and commentary.
from page 5 Rather than resuming their journey up the Missouri River, construction of the iron boat was still not complete and would delay the expedition. While Lewis tried to find a source of pitch, the men shaved the hair off the elk skins. Attempts to extract pitch from pine logs that had floated down from the mountains were unsuccessful. Without pitch or tar, Lewis wrote, “I fear the whole operation of my boat will be useless.” The hides were sewn together and then attached to the iron framework. On July 3rd, Lewis wrote, “I fear I have committed another blunder also in sewing the skins with a nedle which has sharp edges, these have cut the skin and as it drys I discover that the throng dose not fill the holes as I expected.” Using a round needle might have prevented the gaping holes. Two days later, Lewis wrote, “This morning I had the boat removed to an open situation, scaffold her off the ground, turned her keel to the sun and kindled fires under her to dry her more expediciously. I set a couple of men to pounding of charcoal to form a composition with some beeswax which we have and buffaloe tallow now my
... cost the Expedition 12 days ...
If they hadn’t spent all the time on the portage and 12 days building the iron boat and getting over to get the horses and then “ getting back to the Lo Lo Pass, they would’ve made it over to the ocean that first year without any trouble at all. As it was, they were lucky just to get through the Rockies — it was snowing on them up there when they went across the Pass.”
only hope and resource for paying my boat; I sincerely hope it may answer yet I feel it will not. The boat in every other rispect completely answers my most sanguine expectation; she is not yet dry and eight men carry her with the greatest ease; she is strong and will carry at least 8,000 lbs.” By July 8th, “The boat was sufficiently dry to receive a coat of the composition which I accordingly applied. This adds very much to her appearance whether it will be effectual or not.” When they “launched the boat, she lay like a perfect cork on the water.” By evening they “discovered that a greater part of the composition had separated from the skins and left the seams of the boat exposed to the water and she leaked in such a manner that she would not answer.” Lewis wrote that the failure of the Experiment “mortified me not a little.” Lewis “found that the section formed of the buffaloe hides on which some hair had been left, answered much the best purpose; this leaked but little and the parts which were well covered with hair about 1/8th of an inch in length retained the composition perfectly and remained sound and dry.” He now realized that shaving all the hair off the elk hides resulted in nothing for the beeswax and tallow concoction to bond with, but it was too late to start over. It took five more days to carve two additional dugout canoes from cottonwood trees growing about 16 miles upstream. The “Experiment” had cost the expedition 12 days that would have been better spent traveling. The hides were removed and the iron frame put in a cache above Great Falls. When the journey resumed on July 14th, they were far behind schedule and had given up all hope of making it to the Pacific Ocean and back to Fort Mandan by that winter. When the Corps returned a year later, Lewis found “the iron frame of the boat had not suffered materially.” There is no mention of what they did with the iron frame, but it is possible they didn’t leave it there since the metal would have been valuable to the expedition for trading with Indians. No trace of the iron boat has ever been found.
Next episode, we will arrive at the Shoshone village where Sacajawea had been kidnapped in 1800.
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