Sunday, October 17, 1999
Aboard the American Queen
Biggest sternwheeler awash in luxury
BY JANE PRENDERGAST
The Cincinnati Enquirer
American Queen.
(Yoni Pozner photo)
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This American Queen is one big riverboat.
At 418 feet long, she's the biggest girl out there in the Tall Stacks '99 port. She's the largest overnight passenger vessel built by a U.S. shipyard since the 1950s. Her stacks are the tallest ever built.
He remembers the very day the boat joined the Delta Queen Steamboat Co. fleet in New Orleans. It was May 4, 1995. She'd just been built.
The steamboat stern-wheeler can carry 477 passengers, has 222 cabins and needs a big crew — 170 people, from porters to dishwashers.
Her best feature, he says, is her dining room — all Victorian and stately with plush carpeting. It was designed to look like that of a famous riverboat that burned years ago.
“She's something, all right,” said Harold Thornton, her watchman.
Her size makes some unique technology necessary — her stacks have to fold down and her pilot house retracts down into a hole. If they didn't move, she wouldn't make it under most bridges, including the ones in Cincinnati.
Despite the boat's size, Mr. Thornton said, her two diesel and one steam engines make her cut a pretty good path through that river water.
“She can turn on a dime,” he said, “and give you nine cents change.”
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