Delta Queen
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Delta Queen is an American sternwheel steamboat that is registered as U.S. National Historic Landmark. The boat is operated by Majestic America Line.
The Queen is 285 feet long (86.9 meters), 58 feet (17.7m) wide, and draws 11.5 feet (3.5m). The boat weighs 1,650 tons (1,676 metric tons), with a capacity of 200 passengers. Its compound steam engine generates 2,000 horsepower, powering a stern-mounted paddlewheel.
History
The hull, first two decks and steam engines were ordered in 1924 from the William Denny and Brothers shipyard on the River Leven, Dunbartonshire adjoining the River Clyde at Dumbarton, Scotland. The Queen and her sister boat Delta King were shipped in pieces to Stockton, California in 1926. There the California Transportation Company assembled the two vessels for their regular Sacramento River service between San Francisco and Sacramento, California, and excursions to Stockton, on the San Joaquin River.
At the time, they were the most lavishly appointed and expensive sternwheel passenger boats ever commissioned. Driven out of service by a new highway linking Sacramento with San Francisco in 1940, the two vessels were laid up and then purchased by Isbrandtsen Steamship Lines for service out of New Orleans. During World War II, they were requisitioned by the U.S. Navy for duty in San Francisco Bay.
In 1946, Delta Queen was purchased by Greene Line Steamers of Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1948 she entered regular passenger service, plying the waters of the Ohio River, Mississippi River, Tennessee River, and Cumberland Rivers. Ownership of the vessel has changed a number of times over the last fifty years, and since 1971, Delta Queen has operated with a presidential exemption to the law prohibiting the operation of overnight passenger vessels with wooden superstructures.
The Delta Queen was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970 and further was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1989.
Current duty
The Delta Queen cruises the Mississippi River and its tributaries on a regular schedule. The Queen recreates historic steamboat races each year during the Kentucky Derby Festival, when it races with the Belle of Louisville on the Ohio at Louisville, Kentucky in the Great Steamboat Race.
On August 1, 2007, Majestic America Line announced that the Delta Queen would cease operations permanently at the end of the 2008 season. The temporary exemption from International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) needed to keep the Queen running was reportedly thrown out in a recent Congressional decision. However, devotees of the boat have begun staging a "Save the Delta Queen" campaign. Her future is currently uncertain.