Hell at the Dock

Rivermen have a saying that Pittsburgh's Golden Triangle harbor--where the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers meet to form the Ohio--is "great for towboats but hell on showboats." It was hell last week on one of the biggest, whitest and trimmest of U.S. inland excursion steamers, the Island Queen.

A five-deck sidewheeler with a 20,000-sq.-ft. dance floor, the Island Queen operated out of Cincinnati, where for years she had made daily summertime trips to an amusement park called Coney Island. When the Coney Island season closed on Labor Day, she went barnstorming upriver, booked ten days of excursions out of Pittsburgh.

One noonday, as she lay moored alongside a municipal parking wharf at the foot of Wood Street, a spark flew wild from a welding torch being used to repair a section of loose railing. Within a few seconds, the Island Queen's fuel tanks went up in two explosions so violent that frightened Pittsburghers cried, "Atom bomb!" Fire swept her decks. No passengers were aboard and many of the boat's 96 crew members, concessionaires and musicians were shopping ashore, but the toll was high: 19 dead, 17 injured.

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