Farewell to a Queen

Oct. 25, 2008 — -- On the river the calliope -- sounding as bright and bouncy as a circus parade -- heralds the arrival of royalty: The Delta Queen, graceful as ever, is gliding along the Ohio River just as steamboats have done since Mark Twain's earliest memories.

On this voyage, her majesty is tinged with melancholy. The last of the great stern-wheelers is steaming toward its final berth.

"It's a terrible heartbreak," says Bill Wiemuth, the ship historian who also fills in as a piano player and lecturer onboard the Delta Queen. But this year Congress refused to exempt the Delta Queen from a 1966 law that bans wooden boats from carrying more than 50 passengers on overnight trips. The Delta Queen can no longer carry passengers after Oct. 31.

Its giant red wheel has been turning for 82 years. Built at enormous expense -- nearly $1 million at the time -- to lure travelers from Pullman cars and early automobiles, the Delta Queen first steamed between San Francisco and Sacramento. During World War II, it was pressed into service as a troop transport and hospital ferry. Ever since, it has cruised Middle America along the Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee and Cumberland rivers.

It's still in fine form, fitted with crystal chandeliers, grand staircases of rich mahogany, Tiffany lamps and teak railings. Life onboard hasn't changed much, from the Southern hospitality to the staff's enthusiastic embrace of another era, including the nightly entertainment of banjo music and burlesque acts.

"We're not just employees," Wiemuth says of the Delta Queen crew. "We are helping to preserve an American treasure. We are curators of a museum."

Many of the passengers are repeat customers who revel in the rhythm of cruising at a measured pace of 8 to 10 miles an hour. In her comfortable quarters, they play cards or chess. On the decks, passengers relax in rocking chairs and just watch the river go by.

"It's like stepping back in time where the world slows down just a little," according to Kathleen Horgan. The St. Louis woman and her husband, Larry, are on their 22nd Delta Queen cruise. Says Larry,

"This is the stuff of Tom Sawyer that Mark Twain has written about," says Larry Horgan. "And here we are, in the 21st century, living that same life."

Of steamboat life, Twain wrote, "It is all as tranquil and reposeful as dreamland and has nothing this-worldly about it -- nothing to hang a fret or a worry upon."

But now, the Delta Queen's days are numbered. Its supporters suspect her demise has less to do with safety than union politics.

Capt. Paul Theoney, a 30-year riverboat veteran, says, "This boat's been out here for 80 years with basically a perfect record."

The Delta Queen is equipped with all the latest safety protection, including fire retardant paint, sprinklers, heat sensors and round-the-clock fire wardens. The boat is never more than a few hundred feet -- or a few minutes -- from the shoreline.

The problem, at least on the surface, is the wooden superstructure that rises like a wedding cake over the steel hull. Nine times before, Congress has voted to exempt the Delta Queen from the 1966 Safety at Sea Act, a federal law designed to prevent catastrophic fires aboard oceangoing vessels. This year, the proposed exemption died in a House rules committee.

So what's different this time around? The ship's owner, Majestic American Line, no longer hires union crews, and the Delta Queen's supporters believe it is the victim of a vendetta.

Wiemuth, the ship historian, shakes his head. "I think that would be tragic to take a national historic landmark and file it away in the pages of history over that kind of a dispute," he says.

Up in the wheel-house, veteran pilot Bob Flanagan signals to the engine room exactly the way that Mark Twain once did, with a simple system of bells. He also relies on all the modern navigation tools, from radar to a global positioning system. "It's almost unimaginable, he says," the idea that they would kill this boat."

The original steam boilers still power the pistons that turn the paddlewheel. That steam also supplies the whistle and gives the Delta Queen's calliope its full-throated character.

At the keyboard, Tony Schwartz belts out old riverboat favorites including, "Camptown Races" and "My Old Kentucky Home."

Such sounds, drifting for miles, are music to the ears of hundreds of river towns that count on the Delta Queen for tourism. In Madison, Ind., where the Delta Queen pulls in at least a dozen times a year, Linda Lytle, director of the Convention and Visitors Bureau, says, "We need the boat here. We need her to stop, and we need to see her sitting on our waterfront. It's beautiful."

But barring a reprieve from Congress, the last grand American steamboat is cruising into the sunset, leaving two-and-a-quarter million miles -- and untold history -- in her wake. Up and down the river, they are bidding sad farewell to a queen.