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
Where’d all the riverboats go? A couple of weeks ago, they were all anyone talked about until River Roots ended and the paddlewheelers departed the Middle Ohio River for home. The New Orleans-bound Steamer NATCHEZ flew by Aurora Bend the day after Roots held its last boat ride. We tracked her all the way home to the Crescent City.
Instead of heading south toward home, the 111-year-old BELLE OF LOUISVILLE steamed in the opposite direction to the shipyard for its five-year inspection, a United States Coast Guard requirement for all passenger-carrying vessels of the BELLE’s size.
The chill on the river is more than autumn temps returning to the Ohio River Valley. It’s invasive to the bone.
Recently, William “The Boat Whisperer” Bryant and I touched base after a long, quiet spell. William bought my SUN*FISH not long after I acquired the sternwheeler CLYDE from Ed Newcomb in Alma, Wisconsin. The SUN*FISH, built as the MARY R in 1970, a small workboat shoving coal barges for the Dairyland Power Cooperative, became obsolete when the Genoa, Wisconsin, generating station switched from fossil fuels to nukes.
I found the scrappy tug listed for sale in Decatur, Alabama, where I bought and kept her for 13 years until William, an expert mechanic and boatman, came to work on the FISH’s diesel engine. After finding that I had the boat listed, the Boat Whisperer bought it, and together we had a great trip on the Tennessee River, making a delivery run to William’s home-based moorings at Euchee Marina on the stunning Watts Bar Lake in Eastern Tennessee.
Talking with William was a treat, aside from hearing the disappointing news that he recently sold the SUN*FISH to a construction company that had been leasing the boat to tow small barges and flats. I’d always held the faint hope that I’d eventually get the SUN*FISH back, again.
Along the Cumberland River, at Nashville, “Country Music City, USA,” Tennessee, a new riverboat has recently arrived in town. According to Ted Guillaum, formerly the Purser on the DELTA QUEEN in the late 1970s, the immaculately restored sternwheeler CAPITOL, the former SPIRIT OF PEORIA, came as the first of two revitalized excursion boats for the Music City tourist trade.
Late next year, the NASHVILLE’s original Captain Dennis Trone’s JULIA BELLE SWAIN, built in 1971, will join the CAPITOL in a joint venture, the doings of Captain Troy Manthe, formerly of New Orleans fluvial fame and a fifth generation riverboat captain, now deeply immersed in the Tampa, Florida maritime entertainment industry. Cap’n Troy oversaw my last commercial sternwheeler, the HILTON FLAMINGO, nee: QUEEN OF NEW ORLEANS, before Hyatt Gaming purchased the vessel and Manthe and crew delivered the boat to Louisville, where my employers assumed ownership.
According to the “sternline telegraph,” the river community’s pre-internet news hotline, the two newly revamped riverboats should make quite a splash in the NASHVILLE tourist market. Photos posted on social media by former purser Guillaum show the CAPITOL landed at a beautifully constructed dock in the heart of the downtown tourist quarter of Nashville.
Surprisingly, this was the exact location where the Steamer DELTA QUEEN landed over 55 years ago, when the Nashville waterfront was a rough, rocky, and rugged place to park a steamboat. Since then, a revamped waterfront provides an inviting setting for riverboats and pedestrians alike.
We’re figuring that the M/V CAPITOL and the Steamer NASHVILLE have found their true homes. The CAPITOL will begin carrying passengers sometime after the first of the coming year. The NASHVILLE, we heard, should get fire beneath her boilers later in 2026. Stay tuned.
Just this past week, my friend and former Chief aboard the DELTA QUEEN in 1972, Chief Engineer Kenny P. Howe, Jr, celebrated his birthday. I’m not revealing Chief Kenny’s age, but he and I are a year apart. Both of us got our start steamboating on the same boat, but at different times, when the vessel had other names. I started on the paddlewheeler when it was called the AVALON. Ken began soon after it was renamed the BELLE OF LOUISVILLE. Same boat, same engines, same, just about everything but the name.
One hundred eleven years after Captain James Rees launched and christened the newly built boat IDLEWILD in Pittsburgh on the Allegheny River, not far above the juncture with the Monongahela to form the Ohio River, the venerable steamboat still operates in Louisville, Kentucky.
While the venerable Steamer BELLE OF LOUISVILLE (BOL) is fresh on everyone’s mind, let’s focus on where she is, presently. After the River Roots festivities ended two weeks ago, the BELLE overnighted at the Cincinnati Public Landing before paddling across the Ohio River to Covington, Kentucky — my hometown — to refuel.
Afterwards, with her nose into the current, the BOL began a 207-mile run to the Amherst Madison Shipyard near Gallipolis, Ohio, for her required five-year examination and recertification by the men and women in blue, the U. S. Coast Guard Inspectors. From photos posted online, at this writing, the BELLE sits high and dry in Amherst Madison’s floating drydock.
My only involvement with the BELLE OF LOUISVILLE while in a similar situation was in the Spring of 1996 when the BELLE was in the drydock at the Jeffboat Shipyard, across from Louisville, in Jeffersonville, Indiana. I was in town to assume command, as Senior Captain, of the FLAMINGO, as soon as all the bigwigs completed the formalities between the two casino parties. With time on our hands, some of my fellow officers and I decided to visit the BELLE and nose around while she sat above the water, not too far from the Falls of the Ohio River.
Before coming to this command, after leaving a Captain’s slot on the GRAND VICTORIA I, a faux sidewheeler on the Fox River in Elgin, Illinois, about 35 miles west of Chicago, I bought a pair of steel-toed shoes. Why I purchased the hard-toe footwear was beyond me, but apparently, I felt a need for protective shoes.
As I entered the cold, lifeless engine room of the sleeping steamboat, a young, possibly a rookie engine room helper hurried by carrying a length of hefty steel pipe. Suddenly, without warning, the greenhorn stumbled and lost his grip on the heavy metal. BAM! The pipe dropped like a sledgehammer right onto the toes of both of my shoes and bounced off onto the cold steel deck with a clatter that nearly shook the boat.
Miraculously, my reinforced shoes saved the toes on both my feet from amputation. Although a bit rattled from the experience, and with no other damage than the hard abrasions on the steel toes of my new footwear, I was uninjured. At other times, aboard different boats, Guardian Angels in human form, my crewmates, saved me from worse fates — but those are tales for another time.
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.