Topic starter
04/03/2009 6:13 pm
News comes from Marietta that the city council is considering action to evict the Str. BECKY THATCHER (formerly the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers steamer MISSISSIPPI III) from her city owned mooring along the Muskingum River. The BECKY has been closed since 2006 and efforts to sell her have been unsuccessful thus far. The city wishes to collect back rent on the property and to lease it to another bidder.
The BECKY was sold by Ohio Showboat Drama in 2004 for $60,000. She has been listed on Ebay for several years, first at a starting price of $550,000. This has been reduced to a bit less than $300,000. The owner says that a surveyor inspected the boat a month ago and divers found the hull and the epoxy hull coating (applied after the 1984 sinking) to be in good shape.
Like the perils in a showboat melodrama, the old BECKY seems to have one problem after another!