Western Engineer

Long, the commander of the scientific component, was allowed to pick the members of the scientific party. Dr. William Baldwin was surgeon and botanist, Augustus E. Jessup was geologist, Thomas Say was zoologist, Titian Peale was assistant naturalist, and Samuel Seymour was illustrator. Of the military men in the scientific component, Major Thomas Biddle was official diarist while Lieutenant James Duncan Graham and Cadet William Swift were assistant topographers. The Indian Agent Major Benjamin O'Fallon accompanied the expedition.^[8][9] There were also a sergeant and eight privates for manual labor and close protection. The actual crew of the Western Engineer was a pilot, a clerk, a carpenter, a steam engineer and two boys. The steam engineer was actually a mechanic, as the Army could not afford to pay for an experienced engineer. Long commanded the boat aided by Graham, who took command and remained aboard when the party traveled overland in the summer of 1820.^[4]

The first voyage of the Western Engineer began on May 5, 1819 under Long's command. With scholars, officers and artillerists aboard and followed by keelboats with troops from the 6th U.S. Infantry, it took her 36 days down the Ohio and up the Mississippi. At Maysville, Kentucky strong winds pushed her into the riverside, but she passed the Falls of the Ohio (at present-day Louisville, Kentucky) without difficulties and reached Saint Louis on June 9, 1819.^[10][11]

The second voyage began on June 21, 1819 as part of the Yellowstone expedition. Going upriver on the Missouri the small Western Engineer was slowed by strong counter-currents and hindered by sandbars and log jams of driftwood. The valves of her engine became fatigued by the alluvial sand in the river water used in her boilers. She reached Fort Lisa close to present day Omaha Nebraska on September 9, 1819. The scientific party of the expedition then went into winter quarters at a point Long called Engineer Cantonment.^[12]

The failure of the steamboats of the military party to follow Western Engineer led to a change of plans for the scientific party. It would leave the Western Engineer and proceed on foot along the Platte River towards the Rocky Mountains on what would become Long's Expedition of 1820. In the spring of 1820, Long therefore handed over the command of the Western Engineer to Graham and ordered him to proceed to Saint Louis.^[13]

After arriving at Saint Louis, Graham followed orders and took the Western Engineer on her fourth voyage; up the Mississippi to the Des Moines Rapids and then down to Cape Girardeau, while charting the course of the river.^[13] At the end of this voyage, Long wanted her to return to Pittsburgh, but the water stage on the Ohio was too low even for the Western Engineer, and she was left at Smithland, Kentucky.^[11][14]

• Conniff, Richard (2011), The Species Seekers, W.W. Norton & Co.
• Genoways Hugh H. & Ratcliffe, Brett C. (2008), "Engineer Cantonment, Missouri Territory, 1819-1820: America's First Biodiversity Inventory," Great Plains Research 18:3-31.
• James, Edwin (1823). Account of an Expedition to the Rocky Mountains. Philadelphia.
• Johnson, Leland R. (1977). Men, Mountains and Rivers. An Illustrated History of the Huntington District, U.S. Corps of Engineers, 1754-1974. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
• Kotar, S.L. & Gessler, J.E. (2009), The Steamboat Era, McFarland & Co.
• Nichols, Roger L. (1971). "Stephen Long and Scientific Exploration on the Plains." Nebraska History 52:50-64.
• Nichols, Roger L. & Halley, Patrick L. (1995). Stephen Long and American Frontier Exploration. University of Oklahoma Press.
• Petersen, William J. (1968), Steamboating on the Upper Mississippi, Dover Publications.
• Prucha, Francis P. (1964), Guide to the Military Posts of the United States, State Historical Society of Wisconsin.
• Shallat, Todd (1994), Structures in the Stream, University of Texas Press.
• Thwaites, Reuben Gold (1905). "Preface to Volume XIV-XVII." Early Western Travels 1748-1846: Volume XIV. Cleveland, Ohio: The Arthur H. Clark Co.