Canemah (sidewheeler)

Advertisement for steamer Canemah, placed May 5, 1854
History
Name:	Canemah
Owner:	Hedges, Bennett, and others
Route:	upper Willamette River
In service:	1851
Out of service:	1857
Fate:	Dismantled 1858, at Canemah or 1857
Notes:	Exploded 1853, one passenger killed, ship repaired
General characteristics
Type:	shallow draft inland passenger/freight, wooden construction
Tonnage:	88 gross
Length:	135 ft (41 m)
Beam:	19 ft (6 m)
Depth:	4.0 ft (1 m) depth of hold
Installed power:	steam engines, high pressure, horizontally mounted, 10" bore by 48" stroke, 6 horsepower nominal
Propulsion:	sidewheels

Canemah was one of the first steamboats to run on the Willamette River above Willamette Falls. Canemah was the first steamboat to load grain at Corvallis, the first to carry the mail on the Willamette River, and the first steamboat in Oregon to suffer a fatal boiler explosion.

Canemah was designed and built by Absalom F. Hedges (1817–1890), who settled at Canemah, Oregon, in 1844. Hedges saw that the volume of commerce passing down the Willamette was growing too great to be hauled by the canoes and flat boats that were being used in the late 1840s. Hedges and his partners had accumulated several thousand dollars and in late 1849 Hedges went east to arrange for the purchase of machinery for the steamboat he planned to build. In New Orleans Hedges bought two steam engines and arranged to have them shipped to Oregon around Cape Horn.

Hedges returned to Oregon in late 1850, and he and his partners began construction of Canemah. By the end of September 1851, Canemah was launched. The Willamette River had many shallow sections at that time, called "bars". Canemah was designed to pass over all but the shallowest of bars, drawing only 17 inches when fully loaded.

The upper Willamette River is much longer than the lower Willamette. The division between the two stretches of the river occurs at Willamette Falls, which was impassable to waterborne traffic. All cargoes bound further south than Oregon City had to be unloaded, portaged around the falls, and loaded again on vessels above the falls. For commercial purposes, the upper Willamette ran from above the falls to the head of navigation, and included important tributary rivers such as the Tualatin and the Yamhill. In the early 1850s the head of navigation was considered to be Corvallis, then known as Marysville.

Until 1851 no steam-powered vessel had ever run on the Upper Willamette. In 1851 several steamers arrived at just about the same time as Canemah. Most of early vessels were smaller and did not run on regular schedules. Canemah was large for the time, and was the first steamer to enter regularly scheduled service. Canemah's first commanders were captains Bennett and McClosky. Typical freight of freight rates for Canemah was the charge of 20 cents per bushel for wheat shipped to Canemah from the Avery Brothers warehouse at Corvallis, which handled most of the grain then produced in Benton County.