Steamboat Replica Anyone?!

That would be great, W.R. All it takes is money.

Here´s the website of the Erik Nordevall II. Although it´s all Swedish you can click on the youtube videos.

Carmen

Does anyone else think this vessel could be very similar to Roosevelt's NEW ORLEANS? It's a beautiful piece of work. A reason to go to Sweden.

How very fascinating! Bob is right - all it takes is money -and I might add, interest. Last year Jack White (John H. White, Jr.) tried to raise money to build a replica of the New Orleans, the first steamboat on the Western Rivers. True, he got off to a late start, but he couldn't come up with enough money. The estimate for building a full size steam powered replica that would comply with all the present day regulations was around eight million dollars. There's the problem, in my opinion. Perhaps Sweeden doesn't have as many rules and regs as the US does. Shucks, we can't even get the Delta Queen back in operation.

There aren't enough moneyed history-minded folks in this coutry. We can send people into space, fiight usless wars all over the world and come up with new do-everything cell phones every six months, but we can't restore one perfectly good and very historic steamboat that already exists.

My hat's off to our Sweedish friends!

W.R. Dancey;29009 wrote: While browsing around online, I found a pretty remarkable story. Granted, it is not in the United States, but regardless is a very inspiring endeavor. It is that of the steamship Erik Nordevall.
The original steamer was built in Sweden in 1836 for service on Lake Vattern. She sank in 1856 in a storm, and as is often the case, the steamer faded from common memory and was slowly forgotten. This was until her wreck was found in 1980.
After her wreck was found, a great amount of intrest began to form. So much so that a group was formed with the ultimate goal of recreating a full size, fully operational STEAM POWERED replica of the ship, and construction began in 1995. The group had full size replica side lever steam engine built to original dimensions of the first, along with a custom built wood fired boiler.
2011 was the first year that the ship sailed under its own power, and will soon be entering service as a passenger vessel.
Moral of the story is if these people can do it, then why couldnt the people here in the states' recreate a fully operational replica of one of our very unique breed of riverboat! Take the steamboat Arabia for example. Someome could take dimensions of the old boat, re-cast engines, build authentic boilers, and run the boat like the Belle of Louisville and Natchez. Just a thought! Anybody else ever have this idea??

Liam

US Government doesn't like smoke so much anymore.
Nor can we just burn wood or coal or oil as we wish.

Maybe a solar Arabia. 🙂

Sweden has a very restricting government too as I understand.
One wonders how they got that done there.

Thanks for da video ya.

Gotta love the sveeds, you know.

(I'm like 1/2 or something) 🙂

Ron Anderson;29015 wrote: US Government doesn't like smoke so much anymore.
Nor can we just burn wood or coal or oil as we wish.

I know that the Natchez burns diesel, but don't both the Delta Queen and Belle of Louisville burn oil?

Liam

The DQ burned bunker C....

Fuel oils

Judy Patsch;29019 wrote: The DQ burned bunker C....

for the better part of her career. However, when Bunker C was not available, she could and did burn diesel fuel. Bunker C, by the way, is another name for #6 fuel oil, a very viscous oil which must be heated to be burned in atomzing burners. Diesel fuel is #2 fuel oil. At one time, the BELLE OF LOUISVILLE burned #4 fuel oil, and may still as far as I know.

Makes you "vonder", all right. If the Swedes can do it, seems anyone could. But they are a very nautical nation, going way back, so maybe they haven't over-regulated their maritime industry to death. Note: BIG new Disney ship getting under way, not US registered, probably not US built (99% sure). As are all of the Disney ships. What's wrong with this picture? Ron, do you live in Keystone?

Lexie,

The new Disney Fantasy (as her sister Disney Magic) was built in Germany. It can´t be registered in the US as she´s not built in the US. And as NCL America does have problems to get qualified staff for their - now only one / used to be three - Hawaii ships I doubt that anyone will ever build a large cruise ship in the US and register it in the US. BTW there´s no shipyard capable in the US to build a cruise ship of this size. They simply don´t have the knowledge anymore.

Here in Europe we do have three big companies Meyer (Germany), STX (Finland and France) and Fincantieri (Italy) which are the global players regarding the construction of cruise ships. Now Mitsubishi and other Asian shipyards are trying to get some of the business.

Carmen

Carmen you are absolutely right when you said "They simply don't have the knowledge anymore". A local example of this is Jeffboat. Not too many years ago they used to build some of the finest large horsepower towboats on the river. But, because of changing markets, retirements, reduction in staff, etc. they have no one there who has experience building towboats. The same principal holds true in the ocean going shipyards; they have no one left who knows how to build large passenger ships. Rumor has it that a couple of years ago a customer came to Jeffboat and inquired about them building a towboat, but they declined because the investment in hiring the right personnel and the learning curve needed to build towboats was just too great for them to be competitive.

Other projects

Instead of building a replica from scratch, there are plenty of other projects to work on if one had the proper funding.

For instance:
Sorting out the Str. Mamie S. Barrett legal ownership mess and getting her to a shipyard for rebuilt/restore (cost - approximately $5 million)

U.S.S. Williamsburg Presidential Yacht currently in Italy - $35 million approximately

Goldenrod Showboat - Cost unknown at this time.

U.S.S. United States luxury liner currently in Philadelphia - cost unknown but huge.

Acquiring the Str. Julia Belle Swain - a few more million (to entice owner to sell)

We lost a lot of vessels in the last few years because people didn't have the cash to pony up. The Mississippi Queen, Becky Thatcher, Admiral and a few others.

I have a great knowledge in a lot of areas - history, managing businesses, advertising, public speaking, data management, brochure design, political management/lobbying, website design, writing/editing books and magazine articles along with marketing - but starting businesses and finding investors is not in my skill set yet.

In order to preserve what we do have for assets that need to be restored, it will take - 1. A well-thought out business plan 2. Lots of investors. 3. Time 4. Lots of luck and prayers.

I'm slowly gathering people who have knowledge in some of these areas, but the problem I have is time and seed capital. Both are at a premium right now. Acquiring and restoring the Mamie S. Barrett is a high priority for me, but because of delays in my schedule in the last two years - finished Bachelor's Degree in December, father died in November, working on Master's Degree since January; I'm afraid that I'm going to run out of time.

With today being the 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Hampton Roads, I would absolutely LOVE to have a fully functioning replica of the U.S.S. Minnesota operational - but there are more pressing concerns for those of us who love steam.

Pontificating

To elaborate just a bit on my above statement:

Carnival Cruise Lines, which operated the ill-fated Costa Concordia, has total assets valuing $38,637,000,000. They operate approximately 100 vessels. Their total liabilities (not including Costa Concordia) are $14,805,000,000 with a market capitalization of $24.68 billion with 777 million shares of stock outstanding at $30.43 per share at the close of business yesterday. That's a lot of money, but there is a lot of risk.

I use Carnival as an example because it is a similarly structured business model - using ships as entertainment, as the Great American Steamboat Company, Blount Small Ship Adventures and American Cruise Lines are all privately held companies.

To compete with GASC, BSSA and ACL in today's day and age, a company needs to be structured like CCL in order to attract the capital necessary in order pursue investors who could fork out the kind of money mentioned above (the figures only include acquisition and rehabilitation estimates, does not include moorage fees, fuel, crew, licensing, advertising or any miscellaneous business operating expenses).

It wouldn't be too difficult to start a company and take it public, though it would most likely end up on the Pink Sheets (Over-the-Counter-Bulletin Board - also known as Penny Stocks) but investors would not receive dividends or an increase in the company's valuation (impacting the stock price positively) until the vessel is operational - which would probably take a couple years from the time the money is raised until the rehabilitation and launch are complete. Herein lies the problem. Unless you are trying to develop a cure for cancer or some other disease, where the investors look more at the goodwill of your research efforts more than the financial investment, I don't know of too many people who would invest in a startup operation to rescue a steamboat that has a 50-50 chance of success in today's recessionary economy.

What would a company due for revenue in the interim? Unless it was already operating a vessel or two successfully and the capital requirement only goes to adding to the fleet, the investment would languish and eventually you'd get kicked off the board of directors of your own company for not turning a profit.

Asking for commercial loans on a start up like this is out of the question, unless you have the assets from another successful business to serve as collateral during the interim. But if you are already operating one business successfully, why would you want to put that in jeopardy if cost-overruns require more capital later on, or if something happens to your original business where you need capital in order to save what you've already built.

Herein lies the problem. We'd all like to see old vessels restored, or replicas of historic vessels built, but this isn't the 80s anymore where we had a healthy economy with banks lending freely and investors willing to take on risk for startups (like Microsoft and Apple). Oh for the good ole days again!

Projects

You also have the Kalakala and and other current vessels that are owned and in need of interest.

The Belle did burn #4 up to 4-5 years ago. We stopped due to our fuel oil supplier going out of business. We did try to burn #6 for a season after that, but our system could not keep it hot enough to atomize very well. Now we simply burn #2 (diesel).