Delta Queen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Delta Queen is an American sternwheel steamboat.
The Queen is 285 feet long (86.9 meters), 58 feet (17.7m) wide, and draws 11.5 feet (3.5m). The boat weighs 1,650 tons (1,676 metric tons), with a capacity of 200 passengers. Its compound steam engine generates 2,000 ihp, powering a stern-mounted paddlewheel.
[edit] History
Prefabricated at the Isherwood Yard on the River Clyde in metropolitan Glasgow, Scotland, the Queen and her sister boat Delta King were shipped in pieces to Stockton, California in 1926. There the California Transportation Company assembled the two vessels for their regular Sacramento River service between San Francisco and Sacramento, and excursions to Stockton, on the San Joaquin River. At the time, they were the most lavishly appointed and expensive sternwheel passenger boats ever commissioned. Driven out of service by a new highway linking Sacramento with San Francisco in 1940, the two vessels were laid up and then purchased by Isbrandtsen Steamship Lines for service out of New Orleans. During World War II, they were requisitioned by the U.S. Navy for duty in San Francisco Bay.
In 1946, Delta Queen was purchased by Greene Line Steamers of Cincinnati, Ohio and towed via the Panama Canal and the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers to be refurbished in Pittsburgh. In 1948 she entered regular passenger service, plying the waters of the Ohio, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Cumberland Rivers between Cincinnati, New Orleans, St.Paul, Chattanooga, Nashville, and ports in between. Ownership of the vessel has changed a number of times over the last fifty years, and since 1971, Delta Queen has operated with a presidential exemption to the law prohibiting the operation of overnight passenger vessels with wooden superstructures. The Delta Queen is listed as a National Historic Landmark.
[edit] Current duty
The ship is now operated by the Delaware North Companies, who purchased the assets of the bankrupt Delta Queen Steamboat Company at auction in 2002, making that company a Delaware North subsidiary. Besides the Delta Queen, the company also operates the American Queen and Mississippi Queen, modern steamboats designed along the lines of the Delta Queen, but much larger.
On April 10, 2006, Delaware North announced that the steamboat company assets to Ambassadors International, based in Newport Beach, California. Ambassadors International, through its American West Steamboat Company, offers riverboat cruises on rivers in Alaska and on the Columbia River in Washington, on riverboats much like the Delta Queen Steamboat Company line.
The Delta Queen cruises the Mississippi River and its tributaries on a regular schedule, with the port of New Orleans as its home base. Because of Hurricane Katrina damage to its home port, the Delta Queen and its sisters have been forced to move their home base to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and offer cruises to ports of call that aren't on the normal itenararies of the Queens. Indeed, the company web site lists 2006 Delta Queen cruises calling on out-of-the-way ports such as Little Rock, Arkansas; Tuscaloosa, Alabama and Birmingham, Alabama.
The Queen recreates historic steamboat races each year during the Kentucky Derby Festival, when it races with the Belle of Louisville on the Ohio at Louisville. (The Queen has occasionally missed the race for various reasons, and on other occasions a third boat has also competed.) The winner of the annual race receives a trophy of golden antlers, which is mounted on the pilot house until the next race. They have also raced during the Tall Stacks festivals celebrating steamboats, held every three or four years in Cincinnati (the Delta Queen's former home port); the Delta Queen and Mississippi Queen are scheduled to take part in the 2006 renewal.
