Delta Queen Steamboat Company Inc.: the American spirit is back on all three sternwheelers - Company Profile

Cruise Travel, May-June, 2003 by Theodore W. Scull

The sternwheel steamboat Delta Queen is paddling slowly along the Tennessee River, the early morning sun burning off wispy fog rising from a placid surface. In the Orleans Room, several score of passengers are enjoying breakfast, the chef is preparing waffles to order, and the dining staff is circulating with coffee, tea, and good cheer.

Waiter Maurice from Memphis looks askance at my brother's grits piled high with nuts, raisins, and berries. "If the Grits Commission comes by and sees what you done to them fine grits, I don't know you." His theatrical baritone gets a big laugh from the adjacent tables as my brother's face turns sheepish with guilt.

Originally designed to carry passengers of all incomes over a scheduled route along California's Sacramento River, the 75-year-old Delta Queen represents a genuine link to America's riverboat past. For the last 54 years, she has taken mostly the well-heeled on cruises that truly celebrate this country's music (jazz, blues, big band, '50s, musicals, Hollywood), food (spareribs, seafood gumbo, stuffed catfish, chicken wings, Mississippi mud pies, biscuits & gravy and, yes, grits--best plain or maybe topped with a dab of butter), navigation (the Tennessee, Ohio, and Mississippi rivers plus at least a half-dozen tributaries), landings (sleepy towns in the Deep South, that produced Helen Keller, W. C. Handy, and Elvis Presley, plus peaceful fields where once thousands died during the bloody War Between The States).

The smell of fresh popcorn draws me to the Texas Lounge every morning at 10:30 a.m. to fill a bag before stepping outside to see the state of the river. One morning it might be slack water, held back by a dam; on another, a four-mile-an-hour current gives the boat a free ride. Inland waters use mph, not knots, and the 19th-century steamboat-era produced terms we use in everyday language--letting off steam, blowing your stack, hitting rock bottom, being a bit highfalutin (from the tall, fluted stacks) or out of wack (an unbalanced paddlewheel), and taking a cotton to someone (from all that cotton carried onboard that stuck to clothes).

The Delta Queen Steamboat Company traces its origins back to 1890, when it began under the name Greene Line of Steamers, and operated continuously until the sudden bankruptcy of its parent company, American Classic Voyages, in October 2001. The financial collapse originated with the unprofitable blue-water fleet, not on the rivers; and as proof, the three riverboats' cessation of service only lasted a few months--from January 2002, when the Delta Queen was withdrawn, to May 2002, when the Mississippi Queen got steam up. The Delta Queen was back in business by August, and the American Queen returned to service last January.

The savior was Delaware North Companies, a Buffalo-based firm with interests in food, hospitality, leisure, sports, and retail services in such places as Yosemite National Park, Niagara Falls, Kennedy Space Center, and the FleetCenter (sports complex) in Boston. Delaware North was interested in the profitable core of the old company, the three proud stemwheelers. The old crews returned too, in droves, and on my steamboat cruise, 90 percent of the Delta Queen staff came from before the shutdown. "It's my home-away-from-home family here on the river," said Ellie, a cabin steward. "I love working the boats--especially this one."

One first-time passenger remarked, "Everyone-passengers and crew--wants to be here on this boat; it's the real McCoy." The riverboat is cozy and comfortable--nothing too fancy, nothing at all phoney.

But the old, wooden Delta Queen is not for everybody who is thinking of cruising America's rivers. Some cabins are roomy and plush, while others are cramped and plain. And the dining room, carved out of the old freight deck, doubles as the show lounge--it's no small-town opera house as found on the much larger American Queen. Nor do any of the cabins have private balconies, like on the Mississippi Queen. But on the Delta Queen two decks of cabins open onto boat-length side decks shared by the neighbors, like the lanes of a small town.

The Delta Queen is small (174 passengers) and genuinely old-fashioned; the other two are larger (400-plus passengers) and elegantly ersatz. The DQ and MQ are totally steam-powered, while the AQ's paddlewheel gets a big assist from diesel "Z" drives or thrusters. On the DQ, you can walk right into the engine room and stand between the popping pistons and heaving Pitman arms that reach aft to drive the big red, wooden paddlewheel at an average of 15 revolutions per minute, while on the MQ you can look at the machinery through a glass window.

On my latest Delta Queen cruise, my sixth with the line, the riverlorian, Jerry Hay, demonstrated an unabashed passion for his subject that went well beyond any prepared script. When he is not living aboard the DQ, he is home on his own tiny sternwheeler plying the Wabash River. His best feathered friend is an adopted Canada goose named Gilligan that he saved from strangulating in a fishing net, an ongoing love affair that will soon become a children's book. (See "Riverlorian" story, page 27.)