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Time table of the Delta Queen and the Delta King in their first season in 1927. Delta Queen is an American sternwheel steamboat.She is known for cruising the major rivers that constitute the tributaries of the Mississippi River, particularly in the American South, although she began service in California on the Sacramento River delta for which she gets her name.
[1] [2] In 1969, a charter airline, Overseas National Airways (ONA) bought the company [3] and changed its name in 1973 to "Delta Queen Steamboat Company". [4] ONA commissioned the construction of the Mississippi Queen, but by the time the new ship first sailed in 1976, ONA had sold the company to the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of New York. [5] [6]
The Mississippi Queen was the second-largest paddle wheel driven river steamboat ever built, second only to the larger American Queen.The ship was the largest such steamboat when she was completed in 1976 by the Delta Queen Steamboat Company at Jeffboat in Indiana and was a seven-deck recreation of a classic Mississippi riverboat.
She won in 1976, beating better-known vessels such as the Delta Queen and the Belle of Louisville. [5] The Great River Steamboat Company owned the riverboat starting in 1995. [6] In 2009 the owners of the Julia Belle Swain canceled their season because of the slow economy, and considered putting the steamboat up for sale. [7]
Launched in 1814 at Brownsville, Pennsylvania, for the Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Company, she was a dramatic departure from Fulton's boats. [1] The Enterprise - featuring a high-pressure steam engine, a single stern paddle wheel, and shoal draft - proved to be better suited for use on the Mississippi compared to Fulton's boats.
A few paddle steamers serve niche tourism needs as cruise boats on lakes [a] and others, such as Delta Queen, still operate on the Mississippi River. In Oregon , several replica paddle steamers , which are non-steam-powered sternwheelers built in the 1980s and later, are operated for tourism purposes on the Columbia and Willamette Rivers .
2008 was the last year to feature the Delta Queen as a competitor prior to it being renovated into a dry-dock hotel; the Belle of Cincinnati has subsequently entered the races in the Queen ' s stead. In 2009, the event organizers changed the format prompting the Belle of Cincinnati ' s Capt. Kerry Snowden to note that "[t]here are no rules in ...
That race was the beginning of an unparalleled river tradition. To this day, Belle of Louisville and another competing steamboat, previously the Delta Queen, still square off every year on the Wednesday before the Kentucky Derby in the Kentucky Derby Festival event The Great Steamboat Race.