Topic starter
22/12/2007 8:03 pm
A Steamboat 101 question.
The wake of the DQ is also referred to by the term "rollers". If the wheel is turning at a constant RPM I would assume that all of the buckets are hitting the water with equal force. So what causes the roller effect?
Wesley
22/12/2007 9:00 pm
A screw-wheel boat also has similar rollers. What causes them?
23/12/2007 1:49 am
The rollers that you are speaking of are common on almost all types of vessels. We on the river refer to them as "rollers". Technically speaking rollers are an effect called a "displacement wake". A displacement wake is cause when water rushes around the stern of a vessel due the displacement by the hull. This phenomena is exagerated by the paddlewheel or propellers of a vessel. This happens on blue water as well as brown.
Capt. Joe
Magnolia Belle
23/12/2007 3:08 pm
Right, essentially the hole in the water where the boat was, wants to rebound, and in doing so creates a swell. The swell can't defy gravity forever, and it falls, etc, etc. This action creates a pattern which eventually fades the farther behind the vessel it gets. I've noticed particularly for sternwheelers, if you hold a straight line on a long fetch, you often get a "super" roller near the very end of the string of rollers. That last big roller is more like a tidal (or "Hawaii Five-O") wave. Not sure what causes that!
23/12/2007 6:12 pm
Dad said that Chief Frank Heath told him that when you got that wave back there you were rollin' a good wheel.
24/12/2007 10:04 am
Another interesting trait of rollers is that they change amplitude and frequency in response to depth of water. When a boat passes over a bar or reef, or a long stretch of shallow water, the rollers get higher, steeper and closer together. Pilots use this information to outline bars, etc., and remember them for the next trip. Harris Underwood and Fred Way both pointed out this phenomenon to me. It doesn't help on the current run, but later the knowledge can be useful at that place.
26/12/2007 1:59 pm
In my obession with SAVING THE DELTA QUEEN and always wearing my SAVE THE DELTA QUEEN button - over the long weekend I ran into someone that grew up on the river as a kid, but has no interest in boats any longer. However, upon seeing my John R. Weise calendar and a picture with big "rollers" he said "she's really putting out some 'haystacks'". Anyone ever hear rollers called haystacks?
26/12/2007 2:40 pm
Riding the Rollers
An interesting descriptive term, but that's a new one here on this stretch of the river.
Mother likes to tell of "riding the rollers" of the ISLAND QUEEN when she was a teenager living near the Ohio River in Ludlow, Kentucky during the 1930's. She couldn't swim a lick, but habored no fear of climbing into a wooden canoe with her boyfriend, George, and another couple, maybe more, and "taking the first roller" behind one of Big Liz's great sidewheels.
When asked if they ever capsized. "Flipped all the time."
Did you wear a lifejacket? "Never."
How did you keep from drowning? "Held onto George."
And she got upset when she found out, many years after the fact, that my brothers and I swam in the Licking River when she and Dad were working?