Missouri River Keelboat

Going up the Missouri River by Keelboat

Lewis and Clark, with their Corps of Discovery, began their journey in a keelboat. From St. Louis, the keelboat, crew, equipment, and supplies were moved a few miles upstream to the small village of St. Charles, Missouri, for final preparations.

On May 22, 1804, (at 6:00 in the morning, no less) the keelboat, fully loaded, dropped its moorings and pushed into the turbulent the Missouri River. This would not be an easy journey. The boat was mainly propelled by muscle power--long oars or poles to push against the bottom in shallow water. (There were no motors in those days.) Pushing and pulling against the powerful current, the men would have to fight the mighty Missouri River for 2,315 miles to the Rocky Mountains.

The boat was heavy, 55 feet long and 8 feet wide, and carried 45 men, food, medicines, scientific instruments, and lots of goods to be given to Indians as gifts--and yes, a few fiddles. That is a lot of weight for men to push upsteam with oars, and the journey was upsteam all the way to the Rocky Mountains! The boat was described as solid, well-built, flat bottomed, square at the rear, and sharply pointed in front.

Fighting the river was an everyday struggle. The river's current ran five miles an hour in quiet stretches, but much faster near bluffs, sandbars, islands, and narrow channels. Then there were the trees! Giant trees were swept down the river by the current, torn loose from the river banks by cave-ins. Entire trees---oaks, maples, cottonwoods---raced downriver, threatening to smash the keelboat. In places, there were swirls and whirlpools that threatened the boat.

If the water was too swift for rowing or pushing with poles, they would go ashore and pull the boat along with a cable. On the other hand, if the wind was right, they would put up a sail. In spite of all the difficulties, the boat made about 10 miles a day, and 20 miles with the sail and a good wind behind them. The men pushed and pulled up the stubborn Missouri for five months---from May 22 until October 24, 1804. Finally, arriving at the Mandan Indian villages, they decided to set up a winter camp. They built a wooden fort that they called Fort Mandan. Today this spot is near Bismark, North Dakota. When the party resumed their journey in April 1805, the keelboat was sent back to St. Louis, and the party continued upriver in canoes and pirogues. (A pirogue is a small flat-bottomed boat larger than a canoe.)

Fort Mandan was still a long way from the Pacific Ocean, and a long way from the high peaks of the Rocky Mountains, for that matter. Canoes on the raging Missouri were tricky and dangerous, and the party had many adventures and accidents before reaching the Rockies. Hundreds of miles later, high in the Rockies, the mighty Missouri had become a smaller river with many forks, and was finally too small for the canoes and pirogues. The boats had to be abandoned.

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