''Uncle Sam'', was a side-wheel

paddle steamer A paddle steamer is a steamship or steamboat powered by a steam engine that drives paddle wheels to propel the craft through the water. In antiquity, paddle wheelers followed the development of poles, oars and sails, where the first uses wer ...

and the first steamboat on the

Colorado River The Colorado River ( es, Río Colorado) is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico. The river drains an expansive, arid watershed that encompasses parts of seven U.S. s ...

in 1852. In November 1852, ''Uncle Sam'', a long side-wheel paddle steamer was brought by the

schooner A schooner () is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: fore-and-aft rigged on all of two or more masts and, in the case of a two-masted schooner, the foremast generally being shorter than the mainmast. A common variant, the topsail schoo ...

from

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

to the

Colorado River Delta The Colorado River Delta is the region where the Colorado River flows into the Gulf of California (also known as the Sea of Cortez) in eastern Mexicali Municipality in the north of the state of Baja California in northwesternmost Mexico. The ...

by the next contractor to supply

Fort Yuma Fort Yuma was a fort in California located in Imperial County, across the Colorado River from Yuma, Arizona. It was on the Butterfield Overland Mail route from 1858 until 1861 and was abandoned May 16, 1883, and transferred to the Department of ...

, Captain

James Turnbull James Turnbull is an Australians, Australian free software and Open-source model, open source author and software developer. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, Brooklyn, New York (state), New York, where he is VP of Product and Engineering at Sm ...

. It had been built in June 1852 in San Francisco by

Domingo Marcucci Domingo Marcucci Jugo (Maracaibo, 1827 - San Francisco, 1905), was a Venezuelan born 49er, shipbuilder and shipowner in San Francisco, California. He owned or captained some of the many steamships, steamboats, ferries, and sailing ships he built a ...

and disassembled for shipment. It was assembled and launched in the estuary, above the mouth of the Colorado River. Equipped with only a engine, ''Uncle Sam'' could only carry 35 tons of supplies, taking 15 days to make the first trip. ''Uncle Sam'' made many trips up and down the river for four months to finish carrying all the supplies for the fort, improving its time up river to 12 days. Negligence caused it to sink at its dock below Fort Yuma, and was then washed away and lost before it could be raised, in the spring flood of 1853. Turnbull who meanwhile had returned to the Delta from San Francisco with another cargo and a more powerful engine for the Uncle Sam. He returned to San Francisco, for a new hull, while the army sent wagons to recover the cargo from the delta again. However, Turnbull in financial difficulty, disappeared from the city leaving creditors unpaid. Nevertheless, Turnbull had shown the worth of steamboats to solve Fort Yuma's supply problem. Richard E. Lingenfelter, Steamboats on the Colorado River, 1852–1916, University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1978
pp. 10–11

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Uncle Sam (Sidewheeler 1852) Steamboats of the Colorado River Sidewheel steamboats of California Merchant ships of the United States Ships built in San Francisco 1852 ships