Topic starter
04/04/2007 4:08 pm
We just received notification at the Howard Steamboat Museum that the M/V SERGEANT FLOYD, built at Howard's in 1932 and now a "high and dry" welcome center and riverboat museum at Sioux City, Iowa, will be celebrating its 75th anniversary with some special events. The Floyd spent a 46 year career as an inspection boat and buoy tender on the Missouri River for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. After retirement in 1976, she was moored as a museum boat on the St. Louis waterfront until 1983. Today she is permanently "drydocked" between Interstate 29 and the Missouri River on Larsen Park Road in Sioux City. Nearly 30,000 people visited the boat in 2006.
Kathy Meisner, supervisor of the museum and welcome center, sends us this list of fun events to commemorate the 75th anniversary celebration, entitled "Diamond on the Shore".
May 31st - "Treasure the Floyd" - Formal program (2:00 PM) with speakers who will discuss the the boat's contribution to the Missouri River. Several former crew members will be on deck. Music, an anniversary cake and a re-christening of the boat will follow.
May 31- June 3rd - Visitors of all ages will be invited to take part in photographic opportunities aboard the Floyd. They may be either a deckhand "mopping the deck" or a steamboat pilot named "Capt. Massie".
June 2nd - "Fun Day on the Floyd" (10:00 AM - 4:00 PM) offering games, guided tours and children's activities. Special displays, prepared by the staff and the Army Corps of Engineers will be exhibited in the museum. New exhibits will be featured detailing river history. "Boats on the Missouri" will be on the museum grounds with local boat owners and organizations showing many types of vessels used on the Missouri River.
More information can be obtained from the Sioux City Public Museum, 2901 Jackson Street, Sioux City, Iowa, 51101. The telephone number is 712-279-6471.
04/04/2007 4:40 pm
Hi, Keith & steamboating colleagues:
Thanks to Keith for his always informative postings on the Howard Museum and the latest on the Howard built SERGEANT FLOYD, C.E., 1932. Interesting history and good to hear of such positive programs in preservation and continued use of a venerable boat.
Next to WAY'S PACKET & STEAM TOWBOATS DIRECTORIES, another I 'run and pull down' is 'From PADDLE WHEELS to PROPELLERS,' Charles Preston Fishbaugh, Indiana Historical Society, 1970. Where would be be without these stellar volumes filled with data, statistics and related information? 1932to 1938 were slim years for the Howard yards stemming from the Great Depression, and other financial factors [See Pgs. 173/174]. The FLOYD at 138 X 30 X 5 ft. was built for the unbelievably low cost then of $21,000. No doubt other costs were added in final equipping/outfitting.
Cheers,
R. Dale Flick
Topic starter
04/04/2007 5:31 pm
For 18 months, before and during the Bicentennial year of 1976, the Floyd towed an exhibit barge up and down the rivers. She stopped at her birthplace of Jeffersonville in the fall of 1975 for several days. I have a slide taken at that time of the gleaming brass plates on the bitts which state that she was built at Howard's in 1932. The Floyd opened as a museum at St. Louis in 1977.
Many often ask for whom the boat is named. Sergeant Charles Floyd was the only member to die during the 1804 Lewis and Clark Expedition. His burial place is marked with a 100 foot obelisk in a 23 acre park along Highway 75, one mile north of I-29 exit143 in Sioux City.
I was on the boat numerous times during her St. Louis sojourn when she was moored alongside the St. Louis Visitors Center Barge at the lower end of the levee. During my tenure on the DQ, I'd always go down there to visit when the boat was in port. The kindly volunteer ladies who staffed the Floyd and gift shop once accepted my invitation to tour the DQ, after which I served them lemonade and cookies. One of those dear ladies, Mrs. Emma Kraleman, who had been a volunteer during the days that the visitors center gift shop was aboard the Str. Becky Thatcher and knew Ruth Ferris, kept in touch and never forgot her visit to the DQ. She passed away last year at age 100.
From photos I've seen and a visit to the website (www.siouxcitymuseum.org) the Floyd is very well maintained and has a fine museum on board, including some good steamboat models and other memorabilia. Hope somebody from Steamboats.Org will pay her a visit soon!