The Delta Queen - The Ocean Journey of a River Steamboat

The Delta Queen is, of course, known for being the last fully operational overnight passenger steamboat in the United States, but her entire story is actually a very rich and interesting one.

For more than 80 years, the enormous steamboat provided passenger service to countless guests in California, as well as to passengers on four major inland waterways between New Orleans and Pittsburgh. She is also remembered for serving in the US Navy during World War II and for the fight that was waged to exempt her from the Safety of Life at Sea Act of 1966.

But without question, she is most remembered for her treacherous ocean voyage---a journey that took her across thousands of ocean miles from her birthplace in California to her new home in Cincinnati, Ohio.

The Delta Queen was assembled in 1926 by the California Transportation Company in Stockton, California to provide passenger service on the Sacramento River between Sacramento to San Francisco. The wheel shafts and cranks were sent from Germany, and the steel for her hull and lower decks were fashioned and shipped from the same shipyard in Scotland that fitted out the SS Queen Mary. Her upper decks were made from local wood, a detail that would actually become the source of a major conundrum for one future owner and a legal battle for another in her later years.

For more than a decade, the Delta Queen traveled up and down the Sacramento River, impressing onlookers on the banks of the river. Her guests, which included Herbert Hoover and Harry Truman, enjoyed the most lavish of appointments. There is no doubt that her original price tag of over one million dollars also made her one of the most opulent of the riverboats of her day. She was indeed beautiful, with hardwood paneling, Tiffany style stained glass windows, and a grand staircase that was showcased by an enormous crystal chandelier.

But by 1940, the Great Depression had devastated the economy, leaving many destroyed and suffering businesses in its wake. The Delta Queen's earnings were further compromised with the addition of a new highway which stretched between Sacramento and San Francisco, which essentially replaced river travel with that of the automobile and temporarily ended the Delta Queen's reign.

But not her usefulness. After Pearl Harbor, she was leased by the US Navy and placed into service as a transport vessel carrying troops out to the ships in the San Francisco Bay, and she served in that capacity until the war ended. In 1946, she was purchased at auction by Greene Line Steamers of Cincinnati, Ohio who intended to place her back into service as a passenger vessel.

After he purchased her, Captain Greene had the daunting task of figuring out how to get her from California to Pittsburgh. His challenge was that the design of a flat-bottomed riverboat was meant to accommodate the shallow draft waters of a river, and despite the fact that her hull was made of steel, the Delta Queen's wood frame superstructure was not reinforced to withstand the rough seas.

She weighed in a 1,650 tons, was 285 feet long and 58 feet wide, and she had been meticulously assembled at enormous expense by American shipbuilders---the true craftsmen of their day. She was too enormous to haul, and it was cost prohibitive to dismantle and reassemble her.

Captain Greene finally devised a way to board her up by using 50,000 board feet of lumber; a technique which was intended to keep her watertight against the rough seas. She looked, in the words of her Captain, "like a huge piano box." He hired an experienced river pilot by the name of Captain Frederick Way, Jr., to oversee the journey of the monster riverboat from California to Cincinnati, and they set out, under tow, for the Pacific Ocean---leaving the Sacramento River behind forever.

Her historic journey was more than 5,300 miles that took her past Mexico, Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, before finally reaching New Orleans on May 21, 1947.

In New Orleans, the beautiful riverboat was finally "un-crated". From there she completed her journey under the power of her own two steam engines, first chugging up the Mississippi River, then the Ohio.

This leg of her journey required that the monstrous steamboat be navigated through hundreds of miles of unfamiliar waterways, so Captain Way hired pilots who were familiar with different stretches of the rivers to ensure her safety.

I will insert here, with a huge degree of unabashed ancestral pride, that my great-grandfather was one of the river captains that Captain Way chose to assist him during the journey. Captain Way later acknowledged him in his book, The Saga of the Delta Queen, writing, "Other pilots helped us up the Ohio. Elmer Broadway from Paducah to Louisville, C.W. Stoll from Louisville to Cincinatti."

Finally, after traveling thousands of miles, she docked at Pittsburgh's Dravo Shipyard where she underwent a renovation costing in the neighborhood of $750,000. She was ready to hit the waterways again.

In 1948, The Delta Queen was, again, placed into service providing passenger transportation. For the next 18 years, she operated without incidence on four major inland waterways to ports between New Orleans and Pittsburgh. Then, in 1965, a horrific tragedy occurred hundreds of miles away on the Caribbean Sea.

On November 3, the Yarmouth Castle, another wood structure passenger ship, caught fire killing 90 people. After that devastating event, the US Congress passed the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) Law which, among other things, prohibited wooden boats from navigating in American Waters.

Were it not for the efforts of the Delta Queen's Management, and untold thousands of Americans, the Delta Queen's service as a passenger steamboat would have ended there.

Instead, they fought for, and received, a temporary exemption to the SOLAS law which was granted in 1970. She continued to operate under that exemption until it expired in 2007.

At the end of 2008, all passenger service on the Delta Queen ended. She was later moved to Chattanooga, TN, where she opened as an overnight hotel on June 5, 2009, and continues to operate as such today.

Works Cited

Way, Jr., Captain, Frederick. The Saga of the Delta Queen. Young and Klein, Inc., 1951.