Topic starter
14/05/2010 3:12 pm
I just got off the telephone with Scott Fassler, former marine ops director for the Delta Queen Steamboat Company and now with Boland Marine. He requested, received and rescued the bell from the MISSISSIPPI QUEEN before she was towed to the scrapyard and it has been donated to the Howard Steamboat Museum. The donation also includes the transportation of the 700 pound artifact.
The bell will make a fine addition to the DQ paddlewheel shaft exhibit, the Belle of Louisville brig and other steamboat haberdashery that is displayed on the grounds.
Many thanks to Scott for this thoughtful and generous gift to the museum, appropriately at Jeffersonville where the MQ was "born" and where hundreds of steamboats before her slid down the ways of the famed Howard Shipyard.
Stay tuned for further developments.
"Curator Keith"
14/05/2010 4:05 pm
Thanks Keith,
Finally some good news comes out of this. And thank you Mr. Fassler!
Aaron
14/05/2010 4:35 pm
Good news
Point of information: Boland Marine leases the Perry St. Wharf where the MQ molded away since Jan. 2007, so Mr. Fassler saw the wreckage firsthand. Thank goodness he appreciates the history there heading to the scrapyard. According to Doc, the bell was made expressly for the MQ, no prior history to it.
14/05/2010 5:18 pm
Pictures of the bell
Here are 2 pix: the first, a Polaroid I took on her first UMR trip in 1979. I was lockhopping from Muscatine, 16, to Rock Island, 15, courtesy of Capt. Gabe Chengery. What the antlers were from, I don't know. The second picture is on one of her 2003 trips as she's downbound in Lock 15.
14/05/2010 5:50 pm
Great news, Keith! Sounds like a belated birthday present :-)!
Thank you, Scott, for all your efforts to save the bell and donate it!!
Carmen
Topic starter
14/05/2010 6:34 pm
Indeed! I'm already thinking that we'll need to have a dedication ceremony and party of sorts when the bell is in place -- and it would be great to have folks who have been on the MQ as officers, crew and passengers in attendance. And those who never set foot on board but were "fans" will be most welcome too!
We already have a large and fine model of the MQ as she looked when new in 1976. And, in the last days of the MQ's operation, a kind lady from the office called the museum to ask if we would be interested in a BOX of photographs and other MQ memorabilia that was destined for the dumpster. Thanks to her thoughtfulness, those items are now part of the collection.
Again, people on the river are happy to give!
14/05/2010 7:19 pm
The MQ's bronze bell came from the Holy Cross Monastery high atop Mt. Adams in Cincinnati. Inscribed on the bell is that it is a gift to the Steamer MISSISSIPPI QUEEN from the people of Cincinnati, Ohio.
14/05/2010 7:36 pm
Bell history
hmm...a prevarication from the Old Man of the River?!!!!
17/05/2010 1:06 pm
I'm glad to know they saved the bell. How about the whistle?
Topic starter
17/05/2010 3:13 pm
Herewith is a photo, courtesy of Scott Fassler, of the MQ bell, just after it was removed from the boat. It originated in 1876 at the Buckeye Bell Foundry in Cincinnati. The inscription on the bell reads: TO THE MISSISSIPPI QUEEN - FROM THE PEOPLE OF CINCINNATI - JULY 1976.
17/05/2010 10:50 pm
Glad it's saved, but OUCH, torched right off the boat. . .
The cutting has begun. . ..
David D.
17/05/2010 11:32 pm
Cutting
That wasn't the first cutting that was done, by a long shot. The boat has sat ravaged and savaged for over two years, trust those of us who have seen her. Yes, we are the gloom and doomers, but taint no other way to look at the reality of the situation. Sure, she could have been saved in the condition she was in January 2007, but that's not the condition she is in now, please believe that.
18/05/2010 3:16 am
Began before now
Based on what I saw, today, when I visited the Mississippi Queen the "cutting" and gutting began way before this past week. It would take a miracle for her to be saved in her current neglected condition.
What is happening, now, to the Mississippi Queen is a testament to the end result of blind Corporate greed.
18/05/2010 12:57 pm
Hey Judy the Antlers could have been from the first "company" Great Steamboat race between the MQ and DQ from NOLA to Cincy in May of 79 but I honestly forget who one. It was my first month as Mate on the DQ. This is all from foggy memory. Let me know if Im wrong.
18/05/2010 4:46 pm
mel hartsough;21633 wrote: Hey Judy the Antlers could have been from the first "company" Great Steamboat race between the MQ and DQ from NOLA to Cincy in May of 79 but I honestly forget who one. It was my first month as Mate on the DQ. This is all from foggy memory. Let me know if Im wrong.
Mel is correct. Those were the antlers awarded to the winning steamboat of the first race between the DQ and MQ. Unless Jim Blum just got on the boat in Cincy on 1 June 1979, the day the race ended, he would have been the DQ's captain for the trip up from New Orleans. That night the DQ left on a 7 night round trip from the Queen City to the Iron City with Jim in charge.
18/05/2010 7:40 pm
Thanks for clearing that up Frank. And Jim Blum was the Master on the DQ for that first race because when the whistle was blown to start the race some fool had fouled the backing line on the Kevel and Jim was hollering down at me to cut it with an axe. I'll never forget that one.
18/05/2010 7:43 pm
And yes that was my first trip to Pittsburg too.
18/05/2010 8:58 pm
Harry Louden was one of the pilots and his partner might have been Fontaine Johnson. Dick Weber was your partner, if I remember correctly. Terry Severns was Cruise Director. Jim's parents were on as passengers that Pittsburgh trip. C.W. Stoll got on the boat in Huntington; Lucy was on already. C.W. was needed to pilot the MQ down to Louisville from Cincy, and he had to high tail it up to West Virginia to catch the DQ. Ahh..those are sweet memories of a seemingly better time.
19/05/2010 5:19 am
Wow Frank you're really good and yep Dick was my partner, Harry Louden was one of the Pilots and yeah Fontaine was probably the other, Fontaine and I worked together alot over the years I was mate on those boats. It just happened that way and funny as he was about things I got along with him fairly well. Yes I remember CW being on that trip and Jims parents. And I remember being on the News in Huntington WV on that trip.