The riverboat captain is a storyteller. Captain Don Sanders shares the stories of his long association with the river — from discovery to a way of love and life. This a part of a long and continuing story.
By Capt. Don Sanders
Special to NKyTribune
The SPRAGUE, the largest steam towboat ever built for the inland waterways, never ceases to amaze. “Big Momma,” as she was known, was built at the Iowa Iron Works in Dubuque, Iowa, and launched on December 5, 1901. The mastermind for her construction was Mr. William P. Hopkins, who, in 1870, supervised the construction of the first iron-hulled steamboat on the Mississippi River, the rafter CLYDE.
Born in 1840, William Hopkins learned the art of metal shipbuilding in his native Scotland on the River Clyde. After immigrating to America in the 1860s, he built ironclad monitors for the U.S. Navy. In 1867, he moved to Dubuque, Iowa, as a Master Mechanic for the Dubuque and Sioux City Railroad and eventually became involved in boat building. Mr. Hopkins spent 30 years at the Iron Works shipyard, where he revolutionized steamboat building with the CLYDE.
Other noteworthy Hopkins steamboats, besides the CLYDE and the SPRAGUE, were the BETSY ANN and the railroad transfer boat PELICAN. The BETSY ANN is remembered best in the writings of Captain Frederick Way, Jr. The SPRAGUE and the PELICAN were Hopkins’ steamboats, on which I was aboard.
After 1948, the SPRAGUE spent her final days at Vicksburg, Mississippi, and the PELICAN was still operating under steam power, transferring railcars on the “Father of Waters,” at Helena, Arkansas, when Captain Clark C “Doc” Hawley and I were visitors on the boat during the summer of 1960. Cap’n Doc and I were invited aboard during a break from our duties on the Steamer AVALON, docked nearby in Porter Slough close to the PELICAN.
My first encounter with the SPRAGUE was in 1960 when the AVALON followed the Lower Mississippi River to the Crescent City of New Orleans. As a steamboatman, the keepers of the SPRAGUE allowed me the complete freedom of their imposing steamboat. Most impressive was the cavernous expanse of the pilothouse and the immense Hopkins’ condensing steam engines with 28″ and 63″ cylinders with pistons stroking 12 feet. I was shocked to see the huge piston rods burned through by a cutting torch. Later, I learned this upsetting procedure was necessary when the SPRAGUE became a display for Pittsburgh’s bicentennial celebration in 1959. The gargantuan paddlewheel, rigged to turn by an electric motor, could not do so while still connected to the heavy, friction-bound steam engines.
Over the years, I often clambered around the SPRAGUE while the DELTA QUEEN lay alongside, where one of my favorite “tricks” was climbing inside and sitting in the ample iron bathtub inside the Captain’s quarters. The hull of the old towboat was said to be “paper-thin” by the time I was the Alternate Master of the DELTA QUEEN. Landing against the SPRAGUE required the most careful touch without disturbing the fragile bottom of the older steamboat. I can proudly boast of often laying the DELTA QUEEN alongside Mr. Hopkins’ masterpiece without causing the slightest twitch to the wispy, aged, metallic shell. Soon after I left the QUEEN, she could no longer dock alongside the fragile SPRAGUE.
The last time I saw the SPRAGUE was in the summer of 1978 on my first date with the lovely Deborah Anne “Fish” Fischbeck, a legendary crewmember aboard the MISSISSIPI QUEEN. We rowed up the Yazoo Diversionary Canal, which replaced the Mississippi River after the Great River severed and stranded Vicksburg during the Centennial Cutoff, some 102 years before our rowboat excursion on the Yazoo. A year later, the Flood of 1979 sank what remained of the SPRAGUE.
Big Momma’s last Master, Captain Gene Hampton, often visited the DELTA QUEEN during the early 1970s. He was there mainly to see Captain Ernest E. Wagner, the QUEEN’s skipper, and to share old times with Captain “Handsome” Harry Hamilton, who piloted the DELTA QUEEN and the SPRAGUE. Cap’n Hamilton, a Louisville, Kentucky native, served aboard the mammoth towboat when it towed oil for the Standard Oil Company of Louisiana.
Initially, the SPRAGUE towed coal for the Monongahelia Consolidated Coal & Coke Company, Pittsburgh, PA, the Combine. After a shaky beginning in May of 1904, the SPRAGUE departed Louisville, Kentucky, with her first big load of coal bound for New Orleans. According to Captain Fred Way’s Steam Towboat Directory, the tow consisted of “56 coal barges and two fuel flats, a total of 1,400,000 bushels of coal, or 53,200 tons… covering 5.9 acres. Her Master was Capt. Oliver A. Douds; Pilots, Captains Henry Nye and John Pierce. William Van Horn, the SPRAGUE’s Chief Engineer.”
In late summer 1904, the SPRAGUE visited Pittsburgh for the last time while operating. She would never work again on the upper Ohio River beyond Cincinnati after she came to the Queen City of the West for a load of automobiles in May 1920.
Despite being burned in 1974, the SPRAGUE was included on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, before being submerged beneath the water of the Yazoo during the 1979 flood. However, by 1980, local officials abandoned efforts to restore Big Momma. Following the removal of the immense paddlewheel and the towering smokestacks, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dynamited the remains of Hopkins’ paragon towboat before clearing the canal of the remaining pieces. Artifacts of the once glorious, largest steam towboat ever built still lie throughout Vicksburg.
Brightly painted cavels, capstans, and air vents scrounged from the SPRAGUE decorate children’s parks and playgrounds. According to photos on river-related websites, large parts, including the historic engines and stacks, languish in fields overgrown with weeds.
The last efforts to consolidate and preserve the remains of the proud steam towboat that I am familiar with are at least a decade old. What has happened in the past ten years to such efforts remains beyond my current realm of information. If anyone has later knowledge of efforts to conserve Big Momma’s remains, please note them in the comments below.
The SPRAGUE’s unparalleled steam whistle belongs to the collection of the Ohio River Museum at Campus Martius in Marietta, Ohio. Thanks to Captain Way and others of the Sons & Daughters of Pioneer Rivermen, an organization promoting history and preservation on the inland rivers, recordings of the thunderous tones of the SPRAGUE mighty three-chime steam whistle are available to enjoy.
Despite the Steamer SPRAGUE’s demise 45 years ago, excitement persists whenever a picture or story about the most compelling and captivating steam towboat ever built for the river posts online. This past year was tough for steamboats. The deliberate assassination of the largest of all passenger steamboats, the AMERICAN QUEEN, robbed America and the world of not only the last of the overnight steamers but also perpetrated the deliberate degradation and destruction of one of history’s most iconic maritime treasures.
The Steamer DELTA QUEEN, however, still exists, although languishing in a Louisiana backwater, and needs financial aid before she, too, is lost. Thankfully, the steamboats BELLE OF LOUISVILLE (KY) and the NATCHEZ of New Orleans are still operating. Please support these boats and those, whether steam or not, and help perpetuate a long history of passenger service on the inland rivers.
Captain Don Sanders is a river man. He has been a riverboat captain with the Delta Queen Steamboat Company and with Rising Star Casino. He learned to fly an airplane before he learned to drive a “machine” and became a captain in the USAF. He is an adventurer, a historian and a storyteller. Now, he is a columnist for the NKyTribune, sharing his stories of growing up in Covington and his stories of the river. Hang on for the ride — the river never looked so good.
Purchase Captain Don Sanders’ The River book
Capt. Don Sanders The River: River Rat to steamboatman, riding ‘magic river spell’ to 65-year adventure is now available for $29.95 plus handling and applicable taxes. This beautiful, hardback, published by the Northern Kentucky Tribune, is 264-pages of riveting storytelling, replete with hundreds of pictures from Capt. Don’s collection — and reflects his meticulous journaling, unmatched storytelling, and his appreciation for detail. This historically significant book is perfect for the collections of every devotee of the river.
You may purchase your book by mail from the Northern Kentucky Tribune — or you may find the book for sale at all Roebling Books locations and at the Behringer Crawford Museum and the St. Elizabeth Healthcare gift shops.
Click here to order your Captain Don Sanders’ ‘The River’ now.