“… Presently, a film of dark smoke appears above one of those remote points; instantly a negro drayman, famous for his quick eye and prodigious voice, lifts up the cry, ‘S-t-e-a-m-boat-acomin!’ and the scene changes! The town drunkard stirs, the clerks wake up … and all in a twinkling the dead town is alive and moving. Drays, carts, men, boys all go hurrying from many quarters to a common centre, the wharf. Assembled there, the people fasten their eyes upon the coming boat as upon a wonder they are seeing for the first time.”
– Mark Twain
Life on the Mississippi, 1883
ON THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI RIVER ABOARD THE AMERICAN QUEEN STEAMBOAT – Fast-forward 120 years. Who knows about the town drunk, but sleepy villages do come to when this grand, ornate, football-field-size paddlewheeler pulls into towns along the upper Mississippi River or ties up in one of the 26 navigational locks we traverse like a down elevator.
Moms, dads, kids and family dogs line the river banks to glimpse our 418-foot-long floating palace gilded with gingerbread, the biggest paddlewheel steamer built. Cars creep along roads with horns honking. Trains rumble past tooting their whistles. Speedboaters and Jet Skiers spurt by to get a better look.
People wave, and we wave back. In some locks, the onlookers are so close we can reach out and shake hands.
The first sight gawkers lay eyes upon when the American Queen rounds the bend is her two black fluted smokestacks towering 100 feet above the water (they are on hinges and can be lowered to clear bridges and low-hanging wires, as can the pilot house). The last wonder they behold is her churning, red, 45-ton, steam-driven paddlewheel. And the final thing they hear, like it or not, is the boat’s calliope, an annoyingly loud, steam-powered piano of sorts. It salutes them with concerts when we’re in a lock or when we leave town, but not (thankfully) before 9 a.m. nor later than 9 p.m.
Everyone seems thrilled to see this Queen cruising again after it and sister-boats Delta Queen (a National Historic Landmark) and Mississippi Queen got beached when the previous owner, American Classic Voyages, declared bankruptcy and ran aground soon after the Sept. 11 tragedy devastated the travel business. The boats were tied up for months in New Orleans until Delaware North Companies, a Buffalo, N.Y., outfit with interests in food, hospitality and gaming operations, paid $80 million in May 2002 and brought them back in stages. They now operate as the Delta Queen Steamboat Co.
The 436-passenger American Queen, built at a cost of $65 million and inaugurated in 1995, resumed “steamboatin”‘ in late January.
Meander at 9 mph
Life is leisurely along The River – it is not referred to as the Mississippi, but rather The River, with a capital T and a capital R. We cruise at an average speed of 9 mph as we wander downstream, from St. Paul, at mile marker 839.0, to St. Louis, mile marker 180.0, a distance of 659 miles we make in a week. We feel virtually no motion on the flat-bottomed boat – and to think I brought along Sea Bands to help stem seasickness. Another big surprise this first week of August: no mosquitoes, coolish temperatures and no unbearable humidity here in the Midwest.
Riverboating is different from cruising on an ocean. You see land at all times. You can use your cellphone to keep in touch at home. And you’re likely to find a town with a Walgreens if you need one.
“This is wonderful, it’s different,” says Laura Shepley of Tucson, who is on a “girls’ trip” with her two sisters and 79-year-old mother. “We like the smaller boats a lot better,” she adds.
A trip on The River is a unique way to see Middle America, stopping at towns most of us would never bother visiting unless we happen to come from there – Winona, Minn.; Dubuque, Iowa; Davenport, Iowa; Burlington, Iowa; Hannibal, Mo.; and Grafton, Ill. This is not the Old South antebellum country with plantation homes. But longtime Riverboaters say the upper Mississippi is more scenic – with locks (we drop more than 400 feet between St. Paul and St. Louis), trees, bluffs and birds. The lower Mississippi, they say, has no locks, and levies obstruct the views.
Shore tours are available in each of the six stops, where we dock between four and six hours. We bypass one port, however, because Ol’ Man River takes control in the middle of the night. Heavy fog prompts the pilot to “choke a stump” – throw a rope around a tree – and we tie up from 2:45 to 8 a.m. So we miss Dubuque. This cruise is about The River, though. Except for Hannibal, boyhood home of Mark Twain (see separate story, Page 9T), the towns are incidental.
We roll past pleasant little places where:
They celebrate Eagle Days (Wabasha, Minn., home to 130 nesting pairs of bald eagles) and eat themselves silly at the Sweet Corn Festival (West Point, Iowa, near Burlington).
Thousands of steamboats rounded the bend during the late-1800s heydays of steamboating, taking passengers and cargo from here to there (Winona, Minn., saw more than 8,500 steamboats come through).
Casino boats try to mirror this paddlewheeler (the Quad Cities – Moline and Rock Island, Ill., and Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa – operate three, more than any other U.S. destination). There is no gambling on the Delta Queen boats, but casinos can be found in plenty of places the boats stop.
They preserve quirky lore (Oquawka, Ill., has a monument to Norma Jean, a 6,500-pound circus elephant who was struck by lightning when she was chained to a tree on the town square and buried where she lay. Oquawka is believed to be the only city to have an elephant buried in the village square).
Entrepreneurs left legacies in the growth of America’s Heartland (Moline, across The River from Davenport, is home to John Deere, who created a company that evolved into the largest agricultural equipment manufacturer in the world).
Everyone still talks about the 1993 flood (tiny Grafton, Ill., was all but devastated).
City promoters cling to their claim to fame (Burlington is home of “I Love Lucy’s” Fred Mertz (William Frawley), Hollywood gossip columnist Louella Parsons, and Snake Alley, “the crookedest street in the Midwest;” Hannibal is boyhood home not only of Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, Becky Thatcher and Huckleberry Finn, but of Molly Brown. Of course she was unsinkable – she was a child of The River.
Twain extolled The River
Mark Twain, then Samuel Clemens, became a riverboat cub pilot in 1857 and a certified pilot in 1859. He immortalized the watery highway that runs 2,350 miles through 10 states and took his nom de plume from the leadman’s call for 2-fathom depth, or 12 feet, a safe depth for the steamboat.
Clemens left riverboating when the Civil War broke out and commercial traffic ceased along The River. He returned 21 years later after achieving recognition as an author and speaker as Mark Twain.
He … “felt a strong desire to see The River again, and the steamboats, and such of the boys as might be left …” Twain writes in “Life on the Mississippi.”
The first half of his book is about growing up in Hannibal and the demanding training to be a river pilot. The last half is about his return, when he went up and down The River from St. Paul to New Orleans, saw the steamboats and “the boys as might be left,” living his memories and sharing stories of the region and The River in his folksy manner.
Twain’s mark can be felt throughout the American Queen. A bust of him with trademark white shaggy hair graces the boat’s Mark Twain Gallery, a quiet spot to read or write a letter. A Ken Burns documentary about the author is shown in two parts in the boat’s theater.
In the Chart Room, where passengers can look at navigational charts and discuss steamboatin’ with “Riverlorian” Clara Christensen, Twain’s quotes from “Life on the Mississippi” encircle the rotunda: “The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book, and it was not a book to read once and be thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day;” “I supposed that all a pilot has to do was to keep his boat on the River, and I did not consider that much of a trick, since it was so wide.”
And this on a replica pilot’s wheel in the Chart Room: “Your true pilot cares nothing about anything on Earth but The River, and his pride in his occupation surpasses the pride of kings.”
41 years on The River
American Queen Capt. John Dugger, also a pilot and as crazy about The River as was Twain, takes pride in being a pilot but doesn’t necessarily agree with the quote.
“When you’ve got a wife and kids, you have to think about other things. When Twain wrote that, that’s probably all he had on his mind,” he says.
Dugger, 59, has been on The River 41 years. He is in control of the boat when it docks and when it departs a port. Otherwise, two pilots, who alternate shifts, navigate.
“Mark Twain and I have a lot in common,” Dugger says. “But I stayed on The River and he didn’t. And I can’t speak or write.”
Like Twain and all pilots, Dugger had to memorize The River. And, from Baton Rouge, La., south to New Orleans, he had to draw it – every bend, every turn, every bridge, every buoy, every wire and, only slightly exaggerating, every twig and tree.
How is that possible?
“Study, study, study. Cram, cram, cram,” he says. “It took nearly a year to draw the 130 miles.”
Dugger says he’s never thought about anything else. “I hate to know I’d have to get off The River. Every trip is different.”
Many passengers don’t want to get off The River either. Lon Scarborough of Austin, Texas, has been steamboating 31 times and on every river each of the three Delta Queen boats travels. He loves watching the barge traffic.
“There is always something to see,” he says. “You don’t get seasick. You can buy a newspaper every day and can keep up on sports and business. People might not like these small towns, but they’re different.”
Company officials say that while most cruise lines have a repeat passenger business of 5-6 percent, these riverboats have a whopping 30 percent.
And why not?
The American Queen is a beauty, with excellent entertainment and fabulous river fare – the down-home cookin’ is hard to resist, although we could order from the Light Menu – plain steamed vegetables or grilled chicken breast with plain baked potato. Right.
American Queen is homey
Also, she’s homey, from her “Front Porch of America” on the bow of Texas Deck, where we can “sit a spell” in a white wooden rocker or wicker porch swing with a lemonade or ice cream and cookies (available every day from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.); to the Ladies’ Parlor with its balloon lamps, swooning couch and pair of caged finches, Bert and Ernie; to our smallish stateroom, decorated Victorian-style with paisley wallpaper, Tiffany-style lamp, tiny twin beds with lace shams and flowered bedspreads, oak antique writing desk and flowered carpet. Double doors open onto the deck, where we can pull up a chair and watch The River.
Plus, riverboating on the American Queen is pure Americana. It is why most of us are here, in addition to the lure of The River. We want to feel patriotic with other Americans.
This is evident our last night. Engaging piano man Phil Westbrook, who never fails to come up with anyone’s request, is playing in the Captain’s Bar. For his closing number he calls up two darling little girls, Kayla and Lauren.
Here we are, in the Heartland of America, on an American-owned boat with an American crew. Westbrook plays and they sing Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA.”
It’s the final verse that gets us:
“I’m proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free. And I won’t forget the men who died, who gave that right to me. And I’d gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today, ‘Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land. God bless the USA.”
We stand and applaud. Tears stain Kayla and Lauren’s pretty little cheeks. And mine. There isn’t a dry eye in the room.
And Ol’ Man River just keeps rollin’ along.
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If you go
Delta Queen Steamboat Co. boats – Delta Queen (174 passengers), Mississippi Queen (416 passengers) and American Queen (436 passengers) – cruise on the Mississippi, Ohio, Cumberland, Tennessee, Atchafalaya, Red, Black, Old and Kanawha rivers and on the Intracoastal Waterway in Louisiana and Texas. The American Queen is the newest of the three boats.
Amenities: The 77-year-old wooden Delta Queen is on the National Historic Register and thus does not have some of the same features her newer sisters have, although all of her staterooms are outside cabins.
The Mississippi Queen and American Queen, with outside and inside staterooms, have elevators, small exercise rooms, swimming pools, beauty salons, gift shops and movie theaters.
The twin-accommodation staterooms can be on the small side with narrow beds, but unless you are a huge person, the beds won’t be a problem.
All three boats have “Riverlorians” who lecture on the lore of the river and are available to answer passengers’ questions.
Two-for-one fares: Book by Oct. 31 to receive two-for-one fares on trips in 2004.
Nondiscounted fares range from $695 a person to $1,945 for three nights; $995-$2,595 four nights; $1,195-$3,245 five nights; $1,495-$3,895 six nights; $1,695-$4,540 seven nights; $1,995-$5,190 eight nights; $2,195-$5,840 nine nights; and $2,695-$7,135 11 nights. Fares are per-person, double occupancy, and include all meals and entertainment. Shore excursions, drinks and tips cost extra, as does air travel to and from the cruise.
If you book any January, February or March cruise, the company will throw in a one-night hotel stay before or after the cruise, plus breakfast, city tour and transfers to or from the riverboat.
New Orleans packages: In an attempt to attract baby boomers, the company in April will begin vacation packages that combine a three- or four-night cruise on the American Queen with a stay in New Orleans, one of the country’s top vacation destinations. The boat will leave New Orleans every Monday for a four-night cruise and every Friday for a three-night cruise along the lower Mississippi River. Stops will include Oak Alley Plantation, Baton Rouge, La., and Natchez, Miss.
New Orleans hotel selections – among them, Windsor Court, Astor Crowne Plaza and Hotel InterContinental – will be determined by the stateroom categories guests book for their riverboat cruise. Passengers also will receive vouchers for meals at well-known restaurants and for New Orleans attractions.
Prices for either the seven- or four-night riverboat package start at $995 a person and go to $2,595. An early-booking savings of $300 a person is offered for packages booked by Dec. 31.
Information: Contact a travel agent or the Delta Queen Steamboat Co., 800-543-1949; or go to www.deltaqueen.com.
– Mim Swartz
