To Baltimore, more than to Pennsylvania, belongs the credit of an actual attempt to establish steamboat navigation.
In 1825 a small steamboat, named the Susquehanna, was built in Baltimore and, when launched, was towed up to Port Deposit.
The Harrisburg Chronicle said:
“The Susquehanna was expected at Columbia on Sunday night, Tuesday’s reports were, that she had not got to Columbia. Eye-witnesses to her progress put the matter to rest on Wednesday; they had seen her a short distance above the head of the Maryland Canal, with a posse of men tugging at the ropes, and when they had tugged nine miles gave up the job. So ended all the romance about the Susquehanna. She drew too much water (22 inches) for the purpose and started at the wrong point. Watermen say that the crookedness of the channel, with the rapidity of the current, makes it utterly impossible for a steamboat to ascend the falls between the head of the canal and Columbia.”
The Chronicle article says further: “We have a report that Mr. Winchester, of Baltimore, has contracted for the building of a steamboat at York Haven. We also learn that the York Company are making great progress with the sheet-iron steamboat, and that she will be launched about the 4th of July.”
This sheetiron boat was called the Codorus, and early in April of the next year ascended the river as far as Binghamton, after which she returned to York Haven. Her captain, a Mr. Elger, reported that navigation of the Susquehanna by steam was impracticable.
Either the original Susquehanna renamed or another steamboat built by the Baltimore[Baltimore] promoters, and named Susquehanna and Baltimore was put on the river and operation above Conewago Falls by Captain Cornwell, an experienced river pilot.
She was accompanied on her trial trip on this portion of the river by a board of Commissioners of the State of Maryland, Messrs. Patterson, Ellicott and Morris, three distinguished citizens of Baltimore. Capt. Cornwell had already in March made several successful trips as far up as Northumberland and Danville on the North Branch and to Milton on the West Branch, returning to York Haven without accident.
April 17, 1826, the boat started from York Haven, having in tow a large keel boat capable of carrying a thousand bushels of wheat, and proceeded on her fatal trip, arriving at the Nescopeck Falls at 4 o’clock on May 3. At these falls there was an outer and an artificial inner channel of shallow water for the accommodation of rafts and arks. Capt. Cornwell decided after consulting with other river men on board, to try first the main, or deep water channel, and the captain argued that if the boat would not stem it, that he could then drop back and try the other one. The boat made a halt in a small eddy below the falls on the east side of the river and some of the passengers went ashore; this was the case with the Maryland Commissioners.
The boat was directed into the main channel, and had proceeded perhaps two-thirds of the distance through the falls, when she ceased to make further progress, the engine was stopped and she was permitted to drift back to the foot of the rapid, where she struck upon a wall dividing the artificial from the main channel, and at that instant one of her boilers exploded.