My Favorite Boat

In 1803, Meriwether Lewis came to the Harpers Ferry armory to prepare for an epic cross-continent journey and oversaw the construction and testing of a collapsible boat he designed himself. During testing there, the metal frame was covered with animal hides and sealed with pine-pitch to make it water tight, and Lewis successfully tested it in the nearby Potomac River. In the wild, however, the boat failed; Lewis wrote that it leaked so badly that he relinquished all further hope of his favorite boat. He then ordered his men to dig a cache and bury the frame along a Missouri River bank, and the original boat frame has never been found.

Harpers Ferry, West Virginia · United States