carry them to Malta. Supply then headed west and reached Malta on 11 September 1848. There, Lynch and the entire expedition party reembarked, and the ship returned to the United States. She reached Norfolk, Virginia, on 8 December 1848 and was decommissioned there on 17 December 1848. Tripoli mission Recommissioned on 17 February 1849, the stores ship sailed once more for the Mediterranean on 8 March 1849, carrying the United States consul to Tripoli. After disembarking her passenger and delivering stores to the ships of the Mediterranean Squadron, Supply returned home, via Brazil, arrived at Norfolk on 4 September 1849, and was laid up there on 11 September 1849. Commodore Perry's Japan expedition Reactivated on 22 November 1849, Supply sailed early in January 1850 and proceeded around Cape Horn to the California coast, which was overflowing with "49ers," participants in the California Gold Rush who had been drawn there by word of a gold strike at Sutter's Mill. Two years later, she returned to New York to prepare for service in the West Indies Squadron; however, she was assigned instead to the East India Squadron as stores ship in support of Commodore Matthew C. Perry's expedition to Japan. She entered Edo Bay on 19 March 1854 during his second visit to Japan. After serving on the China coast, she returned to New York in February 1855. Camel Corps mission Supplys next assignment was perhaps the most unusual duty of her career. United States Secretary of War Jefferson Davis was extremely interested in developing the territory recently acquired by the United States from Mexico as a result of its victory in the Mexican–American War and arranged for an expedition to obtain camels for experimental use in a United States Army Camel Corps in the desert west of the Rocky Mountains. Supply, commanded by Lieutenant David Dixon Porter – who later would win fame in the American Civil War – departed New York on 4 June 1855 and headed for the Mediterranean to obtain the camels. The ship reached Smyrna in the Ottoman Empire on 30 January 1856, loaded 21 (some reports say 31) camels, and sailed on 15 February 1856 for the Gulf of Mexico. Porter delivered the animals to Indianola, Texas, in May 1856. The ship had reached the halfway point on this curious mission for she was soon on her way back to the Levant for another load of