Comes to the Mississippi Delta Queen by Frederick Way, Jr. this way at first, but the idea grew little by little and settled down on us with finality. We could mentally see the Delta Queen away out on the Pacific Ocean in the middle of a stormy night and then the fatal crash. Man the lifeboats! A small steamboat has one pat advantage at sea, for even though she may toss like a cork, she has water under her hull at all times. The Delta boats, although built of steel, introduced a new risk. Two waves might get under a hull 250 feet long, one wave holding up the bow and the other holding up the stem, thus removing all support from under the middle and presenting a situation the original builder gave no heed to . In these last moments of preparation the Delta Queen looked like a huge piano box , cased two decks high with unpainted lumber, some 50,000 board feet of it. Across the paddlebox, were huge white letters , DELTA QUEEN of CINCINNATI, OHIO. Les Fulton poked his head in my room one morning. "There's a couple of big packages for you from Cincinnatistand about six feet two," he smiled. I went out to see and found Bill Fenton and Charlie Brasher standing there with suitcases. Tom Greene had shipped them over and I was delighted. The Marine Inspection Service required our "sea going barge" have a crew of five men . All were now accounted for. A contract for tow age was made with the Portland (Oregon) Tug & Barge Co. to the tune of $33,000, for which sum a tug and crew was to be furnished to deliver the Delta Queen to New Orleans. There ensued many huddles and consultations as to the most practical scheme of towage. The final selection was a compromise. We secured two shots (30 fathoms) of 2-inch chain to a special yoke built on the Delta Queen' s stem, and the tug's wire towing cable would fasten to thi s. Tugboat skippers prefer to tow from a bridle, a towline connection prolonged into a Y and the prongs secured to either side of the tow, a plan which minimizes yawing. The tugboat skipper felt very sour about our compromise plan. April 17th was set for departure, but several days before thatdate I was caught up neatly . The tugboat we had engaged could not tow us away. She became " hot," a modern term for a labor dispute. The "heat" rapidly spread to include the Delta Queen and for a day or so prom(Continued next page) SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
At right, Mary Greene, born Mary Becker in Marietta , Ohio, passed the exam for her pilot's license in 1895 and soon after obtained her master's license, taking command of the company's second steamboat , the Argand. After the death of her husband Gordon in1927,sheandher sonsChrisandTomran the company . She died in 1949 aboard the Delta Queen after a half century of commanding riverboats.
Below, the Delta Queen was built in England to splash through the shallows. of faraway California's Sacramento River. Here, she makes her first trip up the Mississippi and Ohio to Cincinnati in the spring of1947. Her protective boarding, put on for the sea passage, was removed in New Orleans, but here she is still painted Navy gray. At bottom, a recent photo of the Delta Queen on the lower Mississippi.