Columbia could run on wind or steam power, holding one mast both fore and aft of its side paddlewheels and its single smoke stack.

[2] Columbia first ran as a coastal steam packet, with service terminating at New York City and Charleston, South Carolina.

Its owner, New York and Charleston Steam Packet Company, was a partnership established in June 1834 between James P. Allaire, John Haggerty, and Charles Morgan.

[3] In October 1837, New York and Charleston Steam Packet Company suffered a great loss with the deadly and financially costly sinking of its newest steamship, the Home.

James Reed & Company, Columbia's agent in New Orleans, purchased shares in the steamer, even briefly owning a majority interest before liquidating on 31 October 1838.

In early 1838, Columbia made a dozen runs between Galveston and Velasco, Texas, a town at the mouth of the Brazos River.

However, a rival dispatched its own steamer Neptune to run this route, breaking Morgan's exclusive service on the Texas Gulf Coast on 7 November 1839.