Launched in 1850, Lot Whitcomb, later known as Annie Abernathy, was the first steam-powered craft built on the Willamette River in the U.S. state of Oregon.

Her initial owners were S.S. White, Berryman Jennings, and Lot Whitcomb, who conceived the steamer as a way to establish Milwaukie, then engaged in rivalry with Portland and other towns along the river, as the premier city in the region.

Unlike many of the Mississippi boats, Lot Whitcomb was plain without much ornament, and painted completely white, with her name in large letters on the paddlewheel housings.

When the equipment arrived in San Francisco, White and his associates bought (paying $15,000[1]) before it was unloaded and arranged to have it shipped to Oregon.

Lot Whitcomb met Ainsworth and persuaded him to come up to Oregon to take charge of the new steamboat he was planning to build.

The U.S. Army brass band from Fort Vancouver played patriotic tunes, and at 3:00 p.m. that day, the props were knocked out and she slid down the ways into the Willamette River.

Frederick Morse, captain of the schooner Merchantman, then loading lumber from Whitcomb's sawmill, had unloaded an old saluting cannon from his vessel, and was in the process of firing it when it burst.

Elizabeth Markham, mother of the poet Edwin Markham watched Lot Whitcomb ascending the Clackamas Rapids, then a significant obstacle on the route to Oregon City and wrote her own poem in the style of the times that was promptly published in the Oregon Spectator: Lot Whitcomb is coming!

[2] Columbia charged $25 fare for the run from Portland to Astoria, but under pressure from Lot Whitcomb was forced to drop this first to $15 per person, and later to $12.

Portland's city founders retaliated by raising $60,000 and then buying the Gold Hunter, an actual ocean-going vessel, to come north to the Columbia River, where she ran for about a year against the Whitcomb.

Shortly after launching, Lot Whitcomb struck a rock near Milwaukie, sustained damage to her paddle wheel and a hole in her hull.

Lot Whitcomb proved expensive to operate, so a decision was made to sell her to the California Steam Navigation Company.