lOOth Anniversary to Be Observed Aboard Delta Queen by Michael J. Netter
The owners of the famous sternwheel steamer Delta Queen celebrate 100 years of operation this year. Founded in 1890 by Gordon and Mary Greene, the Greene Line ran steamboats on the Mississippi and Ohio river systems until 1973, when Letha Greene, wife of Tom Greene, sold the line to the present operators, Delta Queen Steamboat Company. The 285-foot Delta Queen was built in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1926 and shipped in pieces to San Francisco, where she was reassembled and launched to work in the muddy shallows of the Sacramento River. Here her shoal draft and stem paddle wheel made it possible for her to go where deeper draft propellor vessels could not. Delta Queen was pressed into government service during World War II, ferrying military personnel and wounded between San Francisco and the inland rail lines. After the war, Tom Greene became aware of her existence. Deciding to reestablish paddlewheel travel on the Mississippi , he reached out to buy the big riverboat. Frederick Way, Jr. , the planned skipper for the passage from West to East, tells the story of how Delta Queen embarked into her new servicein which she has continued ever since. She has become famous in her new trade. President Jimmy Carter and other luminaries have travelled aboard her, and her popularity led the company to build a second , larger stem wheeler, the 382-foot Mississippi Queen, in 1976. The two boats hold a race down the Mississippi each summer, honoring the famous match of 1872 between the Natchez and the Robert E. Lee. NMHS Advisory Chairman Frank Braynard, a noted steamship hi storian , reported on the race of 1981 in Sea History 43 . Preservationists , led by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, have battled to keep Delta Queen steaming in the face of Coast Guard regulations that bar wooden construction and other. anachronistic features of the vessel. This year, over the 4th of July weekend (July 2-9), NMHS President Peter Stanford will lead a party of NMHS members on a trip from Cincinnati to St. Louis to honor the I OOth anniversary of the company. The trip will include laying a wreath on the grave of Mary Greene, who died aboard her in 1949. For details , write or call NMHS . 36
The Delta Queen adapted from The Saga of the The day the Delta Queen was sold, November 20, 1946, I was in Cincinnati for a meeting of the American Waterways Operators. Tom [Greene] attended the meeting too, and at the close of the sess ion we drifted down Main Street to theGreene Line wharfboat. Up in Tom 's private office there was a telegram waiting: " Your bid Delta Queen $46,250. Only bid received Maritime Commission today- Chester C. Thomson." Tom read it aloud and we sat there for a momenr or so. Then he said to me: " It isn't too late for you to back out of this." "Please enlarge," I answered with a funny noise in my tonsils . "If this bid is confirmed by the Maritime Commission, the Greene Line has a million dollar babe on a halter in California," said Tom , and then he added, "and I thought you might like to be the one to bring her home." There was on ly one word suitable to the occasion and I uttered it wi th all the conviction I cou ld muster, and said, "Tom, this is ridiculous." "You go exploring around these inland rivers in a skiff trying to drown yourself,"pursued Tom , "and now here's a chance for a real thrill. " " You are the one to do this job," I answered him . " You are the person who thought this up, and furthermore when I drown let it. be in river water without swordfish poking around." " I can't go," answered Tom, "I'll have to stay here and make the money you'll be spending." Tom reached for the telephone saying he'd better tell his wife Letha about this development. There were some lively chuckles back and forth. "Know what she said?" Tom smi led as he hung up. "Said I ought to wire the Maritime Commission and say 'Can't you take a joke? Send my money back.'"
* * * * * Sure enough, the Maritime Commission confirmed the sale on December 17. Greene Line Steamers Inc., of Cincinnati, Capt. Tom R. Greene, president, now owned the Delta Queen moored in Suisun Bay, California. Regulations required the boat be removed within a month, and non-compliance meant substantial demurrage troubles . Tom wired to San Francisco for reservations at the St. Francis for the two of us, and almost before you could say scat we had crossed the country by train and were standing, two innocents, on The
Embarcadero looking up Market Street trying to figure which loop-the-loop trolley would take us hotelward . Up until now I had not seen the Delta Queen, so next morning we took off for Suisun Bay, the repository for Maritime Commission vessels. Any laid-up steamer is a sorry spectacle at best, and the Delta Queen was one of the most woe-be-gone victims in my boating experience. The dark Navy gray did it in large measure. Railings once polished teak now were drab gray. Heavy brass fittings which once surely gleamed and required a " rise and shine" crew were likewise. The smokestack was gray-imagi ne a gray smokestack! The Navy had cared for their waif after Navy fashion . She was cluttered up inside with temporary bulkheads and partitions. A slew of staterooms had been taken out and in their places were bunkrooms, toilets and showers. E lectric conduit and cable led around the interior with a system which reminded me for all of the world of my good wife's li ving room circu its. But these were minor matters. The hardwood interior retained its patina. Kilroy had not carved his message in the teak rails. The boat was not defaced in any way. Tom showed me all the things from the hold to the pilothouse, and when we arrived at this latter vantage point we were both somewhat breathless. "Well, Fred," he said, "tell me what you really think." I looked out of the pilothouse windows toward the vast forest of ships ahead, then over toward the gray-green marshes to port and toward the wide bay to the outboard. The California sun dazzled, but the north-west trades of January whipped a cold chill. " She's goi ng to be some pumpkin in Cincinnati , Tom," I remarked. We just walked around and gloated for the next hour or two, and always ended up again in the pilothou se. I couldn ' t help gingerly laying a hand on those spokes of the pilotwheel (and it was a beauty) wondering how much rudder you'd have to give her coming around Sliding Hill Bend above Pomeroy, Ohio, or Grave Creek Bend below Moundsville, West Virginia . ...
* * * * * During the course of the shipyard work, done at Les Fulton 's yard in Antioch, Charlie (F. Dietz), Bill (H. Hom) and I somewhere acquired a collective resignation to shipwreck. I don't think we felt SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990