A New Queen Reigns on the River

Once they were the undisputed mistresses of the world's greatest commercial waterway. They still evoke memories of a long-departed era that Mark Twain --whose very nom de plume is derived from navigation terminology of the day --described in Life on the Mississippi. Today the great paddle-wheeling river steamboat is a species almost as endangered as the whooping crane--and likewise protected by the Government. The last wooden-decked steamboat, the 50-year-old Delta Queen, plies the 1,500 miles of river from Cincinnati to New Orleans under a special congressional exemption from the federal safety-at-sea law. Now she has company on her route: the spanking-new, 379-ft. Mississippi Queen, an all-steel stern-wheeler that this week completes her 18-day maiden round-trip voyage. TIME Correspondent Anne Constable was aboard on the first leg of the journey. Her report:

"All ashore that's going ashore! All aboard that's coming aboard!" Resplendent in a white dress uniform with new, gold commodore's bars on the shoulders, Captain Ernest Wagner, 66, pulled a well-chewed cigar from his mouth to shout his time-honored warning from the end of the gangplank. Then he climbed five decks to the wing bridge adjoining the pilot house and ordered the long pitman driving arms of the 2,000-horsepower steam engine to begin turning the 35-ft.-wide red paddle wheel. American flags fluttered to port and to starboard. Decked out in red, white and blue bunting, the Mississippi Queen pulled slowly away from Cincinnati's Public Landing. The maiden voyage of the first overnight steamboat built in 50 years was officially under way.

A 100-year-old brass bell rang out from the bow. Music from the world's largest steam calliope floated to the shore, where hundreds of spectators gathered to watch. A flotilla of small craft escorted the shining white steamer under the Cincinnati Suspension Bridge as it headed for Louisville at the start of its leisurely journey to New Orleans and back.

Longer than a football field, 77 ft. high with her twin stacks raised, the Mississippi Queen is a world apart from the wooden tinderboxes that traveled the Ohio and Mississippi rivers in the 19th century. By the time she left the shipyard in Jeffersonville, Ind., last month, the Queen had cost $23.5 million. She has seven decks, with 218 staterooms tastefully appointed in muted grays and browns. There is a swimming pool, a sauna, a movie theater, a two-deck dining room and a grand salon. Originally the Queen was intended to be a much closer copy of her predecessors but, as one river regular explained, "steel and asbestos don't lend themselves to curlicues and steamboat gothic."

The new Queen's owner, the Delta Queen Steamboat Co. (a subsidiary of the Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of New York), estimates that it will take 25 years for her to pay off. Even then, she will have to carry 300 passengers every time she leaves port just in order to break even (passenger capacity: 500). Nonetheless the company is convinced that its gamble is a good one. The faded Delta Queen has run at over 90% occupancy for the past three years, with many cruises fully booked six months in advance. But a week's passage on the new boat can cost more than $1,000, and while it takes only two hours to fly from Cincinnati to New Orleans, the Mississippi Queen chugs along for seven days at a top speed of 15 m.p.h.

Who likes to travel this way? Many golden agers--retired couples with time and money. Of the 479 people on board for the maiden voyage, all were white, mostly upper-middle-class Protestants with ties in the Midwest. "It's for people who like things slow and pampered," says Betty Blake, president of the Delta Queen Steamboat Co. "They've read Mark Twain, and they want to recapture that. They buy a dream."

For Al Wyville, a Philadelphia engineer, the trip was exactly "a dream come true." Drying himself off from a sunset swim, he said: "I used to watch these boats go up and down this river and think I would never be able to afford to go on one. I don't think there will ever be an empty berth on this ship."

Burn Scars. Other passengers, veterans of the Delta Queen, revel in the luxury. Said Marcella Perunko, a Hazelcrest, Ill., nurse: "It's relaxing. You get nowhere slow. The people are sociable and friendly, and I like seeing the river towns." Most passengers seemed happy to sit out the voyage playing bridge or dominoes, following the boat's log.

Riverboating does seem to get into the blood. Witness Captain Wagner: he started out in 1927 on the old Island Queen, a steamboat that carried tourists from Cincinnati to Coney Island. Wagner worked as a deck hand, eventually became first mate. He still bears burn scars on his hands, arms and back from a fire in 1947 that swept the boat and killed 19 crew members. Undeterred, Wagner earned his master's papers and went back to the river.

The Mississippi is still neighborly --crowds gather on the bluffs, as in bygone days, to watch the steamboat pass --and so is the 130-member riverboat staff. But there are still a few shakedown kinks. Boiler trouble caused a seven-hour delay getting into Louisville. The sauna was closed, and elevators didn't always work. At the premiere playing of the steam calliope, a three-foot column of hot vapor shot from a nearby sink. Owners notwithstanding, the Coke machines were not working.

"A ship is like a woman," said a marine consultant on board to check out problems. "The more you get to know her, the more trouble she is." In spite of that, after only a few days out on the river, most of those aboard the newest Queen felt she was well worth knowing.

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