American Queen To Add Stop?

Dad said that Greenville, Miss. was a good stop for high pressure boats. The GORDON C. GREENE would head up into Lake Ferguson and the engineers would blow the boat's boilers down. The waters of the lake are not as muddy as the river itself and the boiler make-up water from the lake would not have the sediments that Ole Man River carried.

*"Blow the boilers down"/Lake Ferguson*
Hi, Marcus, Frank & Steamboating colleagues,
Just catching up with postings/photos from Judy etc. on Steamboats.org up here in the north woods. Computer server up here again acting up and just got back on line this m****ing. Not many around now who remember seeing or 'hearing' the boilers of a steamboat being blown down as Frank mentions with the GORDON C. GREENE. Others on this web may perhaps remember hearing the then AVALON "blowing boilers" with that unmistakable sound. And Bill Prudent, Frank's dad, would have known in his career and great expertise. Fred Way, Alan Bates and others have written/talked about it. The fresher, clearer waters of Lake Ferguson would make sense.

Though not "pure steamboats" the same happened/happens [?] with big U.S. Naval ships transiting the Panama Canal going from salt water to the fresh water of central Lake Gatun. Bilge tanks, storage holds etc. no longer permitted to do this with new international environmental regulations. Yet, our own navy vessels with extensive exterior piping systems for decontamination would secure all on deck, turn on the system to flush the brine off the superstructures. I don't know if even this is now permitted.

Likewise Bill Prudent, before his passing, confirmed the memories I had as a small kid being terrified aboard the last ISLAND QUEEN seeing the lavatory pipes dumping directly into the river below. The old 'dollar holes' on other steamboats dumped cook house wastes directly into the river. No doubt this the same on the GORDON C. GREENE and, possibly, the then AVALON. Bill Judd, David Tschiggfrie, Shipyard Sam, Bob Reynolds and others may know more.

Anybody else here remember the controversey around even the DELTA QUEEN being cited for dumping certain materials into the river or along the shore? It even made the news in Cincinnati. That was a LONG time ago. Well, again, what do I know?

R. Dale Flick fighting coyotes and 'coywolves' in the far north on the shores of Lake Michigan.

Lake Ferguson water - another aspect

Back in the day when the DQ toilets used 'filtered' river water, you could tell where you were by the color of the toilet water. On the lower Miss, it was always a brownish tint, except when you went into Lake Ferguson. Then it cleared up for that day and was a nice normal clear sight. Back out onto the river, back to brown. Here on the Upper, the toilet water would be clear to just a slight hint of color - until the confluence of the Missouri just above St.Louis. That is the source of the mud in the 'muddy Mississippi' - this can easily be seen when flying into St. Louis. I loved it as people went to their rooms for the first time in St. Louis - you'd hear a toilet flush and flush, as the water was a light brown. Finally they'd give up and someone would tell them the situation. Of course, later day DQ passengers never had that situation to deal with as the water systems were refined greatly.
I can remember the 'direct route' in the AVALON bathroom, and also those canvas stall 'doors'...

*Lake Ferguson water/Another aspect*
Morning, Judy and Steamboating colleagues,
Great memories, insights from you on a topic many would consider 'icky.' Yet it's all part of steamboat history and that's how it was then. Alas and alack, I never had the experience of tripping on the DELTA QUEEN below Cairo due to university, Naval training etc. with 'time and place, set and setting' building obstacles. In fact I went at times for several years never laying eyes on the DQ. I do recall seeing the DQ engineers [Ralph Horton, Cal Benefeld] testing the DQ's water with chemicals on the little shelf down in the engine room. I 'think' when they dropped chemicals in the flask it turned either a litmus blue or another color. Bill Judd, Bob Reynolds, Don Sanders, Frank Prudent would know along with Tom Schiffer from his career days working with steam.

Garbage/trash removal in port was another headache as we all have seen and know. Up until the mid to late 1960s, I witnessed tons of garbage being shoved out of companionway doors on the hulls of the old QUEEN MARY and her sister QUEEN ELIZABETH directly into the sea and into the violent vortex of the props at the stern. Well, what do I know?

R. Dale Flick on the shores of mighty Lake Michigan for the summer.

Greenville, MS to substitute Helena, AR

The AMERICAN QUEEN will stop in Greenville, MS instead of Helena, AR for the 2015 season, according to many reports.

R. Dale Flick;33446 wrote:
Garbage/trash removal in port was another headache as we all have seen and know. Up until the mid to late 1960s, I witnessed tons of garbage being shoved out of companionway doors on the hulls of the old QUEEN MARY and her sister QUEEN ELIZABETH directly into the sea and into the violent vortex of the props at the stern.

There was no difference in 1980 when I made my first crossing on the QE2. I think that you could follow the ship across the Atlantic following her trail of discarded garbage. Those days of watching the refuse going overboard are thankfully long gone.

That's a good thing, because to go to Helena, Alaska (AK) would be much harder than going to Helena, AR (Arkansas) 😉

Whoops

Haha, thanks for catching that mistake for me. I'll edit that!