Origin
In 1836, Major George H. Crosman encouraged the United States Department of War to use camels for transportation in campaigns against Native Americans in Florida during the Seminole Wars because of their ability to survive on little food and water. His arguments won the attention of Senator Jefferson Davis. It was not until after the U.S.-Mexican War (1846–1848), when the US forces were required to campaign in arid and desert regions, that officials began to take the idea seriously.
Newly appointed as Secretary of War by President Franklin Pierce, Jefferson Davis found the Army needed to improve transportation in the southwestern US, which he and most observers thought a great desert. (The adventurer Josiah Harlan was lobbying for the Army to use camels.) The rough terrain and dry climate were considered too harsh for the horses and mules regularly used by the Army. Among those supporting the alternative mounts was Lt. Edward Fitzgerald Beale. When his unit had taken the arid southern route, it ran out of water, endangering both men and beasts, and was attacked by Apaches. Beale thought camels superior for transport in such an inhospitable landscape. He was influenced by reading Évariste Régis Huc's Recollections of a Journey Through Tartary, Thibet, and China in 1852, which extolled the camel's virtues. Ironically, camels originated in North America but had died out in their home continent due to hunting and climate change; their descendants survived only in Asia, Africa and in South America as llamas.
On March 3, 1855, the US Congress appropriated $30,000 for the project. Major Henry C. Wayne was assigned to procure the camels. On June 4, 1855, Wayne departed New York City on board the USS Supply, under the command of then-Lieutenant David Dixon Porter, a cousin of Beale.
The ship crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and arrived in Smyrna on January 30, 1856, where it loaded 21 (some reports say 31) camels. Two weeks later it departed with the camels and five handlers for the Gulf of Mexico. On April 29, 1856, the Supply arrived at Indianola, Texas. Large swells made the transferring the camels to a shallower draft ship for landing impossible; both ships had to go to the mouth of the Mississippi River to find calmer waters for the transfer. The Fashion arrived at Indianola and unloaded the camels on May 14, 1856. A second shipment of forty-one camels arrived on February 10, 1857.
Read more about this topic: U.S. Camel Corps
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