Riverboat (1f).
L/B/D:
285 × 58 × 11.5 (86.9m × 17.7m × 3.5m). Tons:
1,650 grt. Hull:
steel. Comp.:
200 pass. Mach.:
compound engine, 2,000 ihp, sternwheel. Built:
California Transportation Co., Stockton, Calif.; 1926.
Prefabricated at the Isherwood Yard on the River Clyde in Scotland, Delta Queen and her sister ship Delta King were shipped in pieces to Stockton, California. There the California Transportation Company assembled the two vessels for their regular Sacramento River service between San Francisco and Sacramento, and excursions to Stockton, on the San Joaquin River. At the time, they were the most lavishly appointed and expensive sternwheel passenger boats ever commissioned. Driven out of service by a new highway linking Sacramento with San Francisco in 1940, the two vessels were laid up and then purchased by Isbrandtsen Steamship Lines for service out of New Orleans. During World War II, they were requisitioned by the U.S. Navy for duty in San Francisco Bay.
In 1946, Delta Queen was purchased by Greene Line Steamers of Cincinnati and towed via the Panama Canal and the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers to be refurbished in Pittsburgh. In 1948 she entered regular passenger service plying the waters of the Ohio, Mississippi, Tennessee, Cumberland, and Tennessee Rivers between Cincinnati, New Orleans, St. Paul, Chattanooga, Nashville, and ports in between. Ownership of the vessel has changed a number of times over the last fifty years, and since 1971, Delta Queen has operated with a presidential exemption to the law prohibiting the operation of overnight passenger vessels with wooden superstructures.
Greene, Long Live the "Delta Queen." Way, Way's Packet Directory.
