SS ADMIRAL dismantling

Admiral pics

Here are several more photos from 6/15. I heard that the boat is still going to be dismantled in Alton after 4th deck removal.

A few more Admiral pics from the 15th. Notice that the 4th deck is being removed.

Dismantling at dock

I suppose they figure they might as well remove as much as possible here, since she can't get under the bridges as is, and it doesn't look like the river is going down anytime soon. The more they remove, the sooner it can be towed up to Alton. The landing barge has been sold to Jeffersonville, so that needs to be taken out of there soon in order to be made ready for that journey and new life.

Admiral departed from above the MLK bridge this morning about 10:45am with the towboat backing through the MLK and Eads bridges and then was turned out at the foot of Washington Ave which was, of course, where it was landed throughout it's cruising days and also where it always turned out to heas south. The destination is Columbia, IL, which IIRC is about where admiral made it's turn to normally head back on night cruises. Guess the end is finally here!!

Columbia

Is there a scrap yard/service there? She's obviously too big to be scuttled like the remains of the SENATOR....

According to local TV, Admiral is going to a construction company at Columbia. Presumably they also do not such nice things to boats.

My father-in-law, Irv Shrake, passed this along to me in an email ealier today. I could not see the source of his info., so copied and pasted it into this post.

Vmix : Raw Video: Admiral leaves the St. Louis Riverfront

UPDATED at 11:35 a.m. Tuesday
ST. LOUIS • The Admiral pulled away from the St. Louis Riverfront late Tuesday morning and is heading south to Columbia, Ill.

Towboats were on either end of the Admiral as it began its journey. It is supposed to arrive in Columbia by the end of the day. There, the remaining parts of the boat's superstructure will be dismantled for recycling.

About 10 people were watching the workers with Luhr Bros., the towboat company that is handling the removal. The small crowd included a couple that dated on the Admiral, starting in 1956. They had fond memories of the boat.

Jim Rodgers, 77, of St. Louis County, is a retired Monsanto chemical engineer. He and his wife, Patti Rodgers, 73, met on a blind date in the 1950s when he was in Air Force flight school in Malden, Mo.

Every other weekend, he would drive to St. Louis from Malden and they would go on the Admiral. They said it was romantic to be on the top deck.

"It was a big deal to go on the Admiral," Patti Rodgers said.

EARLIER STORY

7/18/2011

Get ready to wave goodbye to the Admiral.

The old excursion boat last used as a casino is scheduled to leave the St. Louis riverfront Tuesday morning. St. Louis Marine, which bought the Admiral last year from Pinnacle Entertainment, plans to take the boat down the Mississippi to the Columbia, Ill., area.

Bill Kline, St. Louis Marine's spokesman, says work will begin at about 9 a.m. tomorrow to remove the Admiral from its mooring just north of the Eads Bridge. The river level has dropped enough in recent days to allow the Admiral--its top deck already removed--to clear the old bridge.

Three towboats will take the Admiral to Columbia, where the remaining parts of the boat's superstructure will be dismantled for recycling. Kline says a decision has yet to be made on what to do with the Admiral's hull.

Hull weakness discovered by the Coast Guard in 1979 led to the Admiral's banishment from cruising the river. Streckfus Steamers, which had put a million-dollar Art Deco steel skin on the Admiral in 1940, sold the boat in 1981 to a Pittsburgh businessman who removed its diesel engines and announced a plan to move the boat there. He later sold the Admiral to interests in St. Louis, where it reopened in 1987 as an entertainment center managed by Six Flags Corp. It flopped.

Refashioned as the President Casino in 1994, the Admiral was again busy for a few years. A dispute in 2010 between Pinnacle and Missouri gaming officials over the President's declining revenue led to the company's decision to surrender the casino's state license, remove the gaming equipment and sell the Admiral to St. Louis Marine.

And now, stripped of all artifacts of its cruising and gambling days, the Admiral is almost gone for good.

Luhr Brothers

Luhr Bros. construction company is a company that specializes in river construction work -- revetments, dikes, etc. They own towboats, dredges, rock barges, cranes, earth moving equipment, etc. and have a small shipyard operation at Columbia, IL about 3 miles below the Jefferson Barracks (JB) Bridge on the Illinois side. They do work all over the inland waterways system and have been responsible for transferring a good bit of Missouri and Illinois to Louisiana.

Adieu to the ADMIRAL

Thanks to all for the inevitable sad news and images concerning the final journey today of the ADMIRAL. Many of us "elders" on this board have enjoyed riding "the big silver boat" on both daytime and moonlight cruises when she was still a steam sidewheeler. It was a unique thrill to roam the lengthy decks, hear the blasts of the 4 barrel whistle (from the Streckfus Str. J.S. Deluxe) and the steamy tunes reverberating around the riverfront from the calliope, formerly on the Streckfus Str. CAPITOL. Also awesome was watching the huge dancefloor moving up and down (often seeming to keep time with the orchestra!) as the giant vessel, usually with a capacity crowd of 4,000 aboard, cruised up and down the Mississippi.

Just last week I had visitors at the museum, a delightful couple from St. Louis, who told me that their first date was aboard the ADMIRAL in the 1950's. Although not steamboat fanatics, they, like many of us, are mourning the loss of the unique excursion steamboat that was long an icon of St. Louis and will always occupy a prominent place in river history.

Farewell Steamer ADMIRAL.

Definitely a sad day in the Gateway to the West. Approx. 100 degrees. St Louis Gage 25.2F

She was turned loose at 1116 and completely tied off approx 1500. The M/V Michael Luhr faced up to her stern and dropped her down thru the Missouri span of the Eads Bridge, left drift run out then nosed alongside a Luhr Bros. spud barge to let drift more run then rounded her up and went downriver--directly under the center of the center span of MacArthur & Poplar St. Bridges and later JB Bridges.

The man behind the sticks of the Michael Luhr could not see over the top of the BSB and was being relayed instructions from the roof of the towboat. Excellent boat handlers.

The owner will continue demo. at Columbia, IL, which I suspect, will proceed rather rapidly.

Here's a TV video of the move

Admiral move prompts moving safety zone | ksdk.com

Emotional day for a lot of St. Louisans, including me. Here are a couple of pics taken from the Eads Bridge.

Her last trip

Forget about the upper deck carnage, and she could have been going out on her 6 hour excursion! Thanks for being there and sharing with us.

Poignant Pictures

Thanks very much, Mike, for sharing those sad, but poignant, pictures of the ADMIRAL. Watching the videos from St. Louis television stations of her final journey was truly heart wrenching. How appropriate that, one final time, she was turned around at the foot of Washington Avenue, her longtime landing place, and then headed gracefully downriver as she had done literally thousands of times on her excursions during the four decades that she was the pride of Streckfus Steamers.

Image: ADMIRAL departing from the St. Louis Levee - 1961.

SS Admiral Forever........

I watched the little video of the MV Luhr pulling out the boat. It would have been REAL NICE if instead of the horn blasts they used if for one last time they would have sounded the three short blasts the Admiral used when it backed away from the wharfboat. But no. As far as I am concerned the Admiral went away in 1980 (circa) when they removed the Cummins diesel
engines. Then they killed it for good in 1985 when Six Flags ripped huge holes in the side for entrance. What a folly that was. Since then it has been only a floating hunk of metal that suffered various indignities like the fire in January of this year and the time it was knocked loose of its moorings in 199? or 200?. This was like putting a much loved but sick dog to sleep to put it out of its misery.

A newspaper columnist in Belleville wrote that "Admiral finds new life as scrap."
I should write back and ask him if "Betty Ford finds new life as a corpse."
Stupid. More indignities to a once proud boat.

SS Admiral - Forever

4- Barrel Whistle

To hear the whistle once more....go to the part of this website that has sounds of the whistle and the calliope. Enjoy.

Luhr Brothers

Luhr Brothers has quite an extensive operation there and lots of heavy equipment to do whatever they want. When the Alton locks were being re-done, they got the railroad bridge and floated it downstream and use it as a ramp to walk from the upper level at Luhr Bros down to the area where the boats being repaired and serviced are docked. They have a whole yard where there are screws (propellers) sitting awaiting installation on other vessels.....

In the interest of historical accuracy the M/V Michael Luhr used the appropriate four short blast "whistle" signals albeit by airhorn for departing the Theater Barge and then backing down through the Missouri span of the Eads Bridge.

The Diesel Engines installed on the Admiral to replace steam were Caterpillar products.

Caterpillar Diesels

>>>Michael Luhr used the appropriate four short blast "whistle" signals<<<

That they did....that they did do<<<<<

You know, I would have sworn that the engines were caterpillars too.....until I visited a man who worked for Cummins (then retired) and claimed their company sold them to Streckfus. Also, he claimed that Cummins had to come back out and remove the engines because of non-payment. Other than what he told he, I cannot validate any of this information. He died a couple of months ago.

Not that it really matters anymore. It's gone....and this time forever.

ADMIRAL in Waterways Journal

The July 25th issue of The Waterways Journal just arrived and contains a lengthy editorial and another article, with a color picture, concerning the final journey of the ADMIRAL. Capt. Alan Bates' old boat column in this issue of the WJ is a most interesting photo and historical account of the Streckfus steamer SAINT PAUL/SENATOR.

I checked the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website and there are numerous, and very sad, images of the ADMIRAL being torn apart at Columbia, Illinois. They certainly have wasted no time in dismantling her. According to the news accounts, it still remains to be seen as to what will be done with the ALBATROSS hull.

Admiral Photos

I checked the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website and there are numerous, and very sad, images of the ADMIRAL being torn apart at Columbia, Illinois. They certainly have wasted no time in dismantling her. According to the news accounts, it still remains to be seen as to what will be done with the ALBATROSS hull.

Keith,

Can you post a link to the photos?

Thanks,

Wesley

ADMIRAL photos

Wesley,

Probably the best way to see ALL of the photos and articles from the past week or so is to first go to St. Louis Sports, News, Jobs, Classifieds, Entertainment & Weather and then type ADMIRAL into the search box. Scroll down and there are numerous images and articles -- and even some videos of the boat being towed away from the St. Louis riverfront.

Hope this helps!

Still Visible for a little while

If you go to Cliff Cave Park off Telegraph in South St. Louis County you can
still see the the remains of a big silver steamboat * tied up across the river at Luhr Bros. I was surprised at how easy it was to see it.

* I refuse to call it the Admiral anymore, after it has been raped and plundered. I looked at some of the pictures of the inside after it had
been torn down and saw a white 6-panel door! A 6-panel door in that 71 year old hulk. After 6 Flags and the casino got ahold of it it was definitely ruined for good.

Admiral book

The local St. Louis newspaper the Post Dispatch has a sale on books including the one they did on the Admiral. It is grouped together with 4 other books for $25, or by itself for I think $17.95. Here is the link:

Book Bundle A