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Frederick S. Dellenbaugh - The Romance of the Colorado River
Ives had entirely ignored Johnson, as well as Johnson's skill in navigating this river, and also his powerful
steamboats. The appropriation under which Ives was working was one which had originally been made
for Johnson, after a visit of his to Washington, but from several causes it had been switched over to the
War Department. Captain Johnson, therefore, was determined to rob Ives of the glory of being the first to
take a steamboat to the head of navigation, and he did it with a steamboat much larger than that of Ives
which failed to pass Black Canyon. The General Jesup, named after the quarter-master general of the
Army, was 108 feet long, 28 feet beam, and drew 2 feet, 6 inches of water. She had exploded in August,
1854, but had been thoroughly repaired. On this down trip from the head of steamboat navigation she met
with another accident, running on "a large rolling stone and sinking just above Chimney Peak" some
eighteen miles from Yuma. She was raised by the Colorado and towed down to the Fort.*
* See Wagon Road from Fort Defiance to the Colorado River - Edward F. Beale, 35th Congress, 2d
Session, House of Representatives, Document, 124, Washington, 1858. Also Handbook to Arizona, pp.
247-48, R. J. Hinton, 1878. The information as to Johnson's application for an appropriation to explore the
Colorado was given me by Mr. Robert Brewster Stanton. Johnson also related the story of his "getting
ahead" of Ives, to Mr. Stanton, who now has the written statement as well. I communicated with Johnson
in 1904, requesting some data, but he declined to give it on the ground that he intended himself to publish
the story of his exploits. Since then unfortunately he has died.
CHAPTER VII.
Lieutenant Ives Explores to Fortification Rock - By Trail to Diamond Creek, Havasupai Canyon, and the
Moki Towns - Macomb Fails in an Attempt to Reach the Mouth of Grand River - James White's
Masterful Fabrication.
Steam navigation on the Colorado was now successfully established, and when Lieutenant Ives was
planning the exploration of the river there were already upon it two powerful steamers exactly adapted,
through experience of previous disasters, to the peculiar dangers of these waters, while Johnson, the chief
owner and pilot, had become an expert in handling a steamboat amid the unusual conditions. He had
succeeded in making a truce with the dragon. And he had secured the friendship of the tribes of Amerinds
living along the banks; his men and his property were safe anywhere; his steamers often carried jolly
bands of Cocopas or of Yumas from place to place. In arranging a government expedition 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
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