Topic starter
23/03/2010 7:02 am
Greetings From New Orleans !
I have often wondered if the early steamers that roamed the Western Rivers were ever equiped with a compass ? I recently pruchased an antique Binacle that I believe came off an ancient sloop or sailing vessel and it started me thinking if the steamboats of old were equiped with a compass ?
I know for certain that the Str. Delta Queen had one and I believe it now resides in the museum in Marietta but I was told that it was a gift to Earnie Lee , Capt. Wagner's son and it really did not serve a purpose other than to entertain the passengers during the Pilot House tours .
Now you may think like many have before you why would a river steamer have a compass especially if she operated on a river or for that matter any other cofined body of water and the vessel's heading was not really an important issue with its overall navigation . This is true but one other important feature that a compass would provide , especially in the day before any type of electronic navigation gear , would be to indicate to the Pilot if his vessel ewas turning to either port or starb'd during times of limited visibility .
It has also recently come to my attention that years ago there were passenger steamers that crossed Lake Poncehtrain on daily excursions from New Orleans to Mandeville , La. on the north shore of the lake and in all likelyhood they were equiped with compasses due to the fact that the lake is twenty four miles across and with no prominent land masses to steer by .
So just possibly the areas that the early steamers navigated on also had some thing to do with wheather or not they were equiped with a compass or not ?
Food for thought ??
Smooth Sailing !
Ted Davisson
23/03/2010 2:19 pm
I have often wondered if those intrepid (or mad) captains that ran cotton to Cuba in river boats during the Civil War took along a compass. Surely they would have needed one for that 90 miles of open water. (Crazy enough to cross that changeable body of water in a low freeboard boat whose boilers and engines were designed to use fresh water.) You have a good point about the Poncehtrain boats. At least some of them were more like coastal steamers than river boats, but a lot WERE river types.
23/03/2010 2:31 pm
Ted, you're probably right that some did carry a compass. The DELTA QUEEN
23/03/2010 2:34 pm
Compasses....on the river???
Actually, you are both right! The DELTA QUEEN compass was for the San Francisco Bay...she made the crossing daily and needed it for the reasons you both mentioned. The DELTA QUEEN compass is at the Ohio River Museum in Marrietta.
River steamers rarely, if ever carried compasses unless they were traversing large bodies of open water. It was not unusual to see a compass on any lake steamer, coastal steamer, Sacramento River steamer, or Columbia River steamer because of the open waters they would encounter in their routes.
On the Mississippi River system, a compass would have been useless (except maybe on Kentucky Lake after TVA). Many passengers commented on the lack of a compass on the DELTA QUEEN, MISSISSIPPI QUEEN, and AMERICAN QUEEN when I did Pilothouse tours. Once I mentioned the fact the river never runs in a straight line much longer than 4 miles (if that) they understood why it would be like watering the proverbial dead plant.
It was easy to explain this if the first Pilothouse tour of the cruise was at Vacherie, LA (Oak Alley Plantation). We would have landed in the night and the passengers awoke to the sun coming up over the plantation. They would be convinced we were headed downbound because of the bend in the river. When I told them we were upbound they would be aghast...because that meant the sun had come up in the west? I would show them the navigation charts and all would be back to well in their world.
The next thing some wag would say is ....so where's the compass!
By the end of the Pilothouse tour they all knew enough about navigation that a compass was never again mentioned!
Travis
23/03/2010 2:36 pm
Ted, you're probably right that some did carry a compass. The DELTA QUEEN and DELTA KING carried compasses in their California days. Stan Garvey says in his book "King and Queen of the River" that the compasses were used for just what you state -- running in limited visibility. Good question as to whether any other boats on the Mississippi system did this. I'd bet they did.
23/03/2010 2:47 pm
Our Fancy Compass
Some still do..... Here the one on the 2700 passenger, GV2.
Don't you still have to draw a compass course through the New Orleans harbor when you "set" for your 1st Class Pilot's license down there?
Topic starter
24/03/2010 3:16 am
Fancy Compass ??
Greetings From New Orleans ,
Capt. Don , to answer your question , Yes , I do believe that inorder to receive a First Class Pilot License from the Coast Guard , one still has to draw the New Orleans harbor with a compass course and a distance for each compass course heading . The only difference that I have heard of today is that now the Coast Guard will now give you a blank sheet of paper with the out line of the river already drawn .
Also , here are a few shots of my new prize antique Binnacle that I discovered in the corner of an antique shop here in the Greater New Orlenas area . I did a Google search on it and the best that I could come up with is that it was built in the 19 th. century , in Denmark . Wow , the stories this nautical instrument could tell !
Smooth Sailing !
Ted Davisson
Shipyard Sam;20784 wrote: Some still do..... Here the one on the 2700 passenger, GV2.
Don't you still have to draw a compass course through the New Orleans harbor when you "set" for your 1st Class Pilot's license down there?
24/03/2010 10:15 am
We had an idiot/inspector here about 20 or 30 years ago who forced a couple of owners to install compasses in towboat pilothouses. Pilots walked in and asked, "What is THAT thing?" He is gone and so are the compasses.