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
Thirty years ago, yesterday, on February 28, 1996, I began a 16-year stint as the senior captain of the GRAND VICTORIA II casino boat.
A small group of us met in a motel in Jeffersonville, Indiana, where, during the “Golden Age of Steamboats,” some of the most celebrated steamboats came off the ways at the old Howard Shipyard, several blocks from the location of the motel. We were there to assume command of the New Orleans paddlewheeler, still called the HILTON FLAMINGO, as soon as the legalities between Hilton and Hyatt Gaming, our employers, were settled. Until then, the boat’s owners forbade us to transgress the colossal gambling boat moored on the Kentucky side of the river above Louisville.
Manned by a skeleton crew of security and engineering personnel from the Crescent City, the FLAMINGO, a 330-foot,four-deck sternwheeler, patiently awaited, unaware of the anxiety our crew suffered to get aboard and out of the motel. Eventually, after completing the required legal formalities, we took charge of the vessel, which was now moored in a fleet at Marine Builders, upriver from Jeffersonville in Utica, Indiana. There, the riverboat, now named the GRAND VICTORIA II, waited several months for the completion of mooring facilities at her new port-of-call, Rising Sun, Indiana.
Arriving in Rising Sun, mile 506 on the middle Ohio River, opposite Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, the casino boat began an exciting 16-year venue of employment for licensed personnel, like myself, on a lovely stretch of the river. By 2002, the GRAND VIC went “dockside,” although the casino owners, now Full House Resorts, kept the licensed marine officers on the payroll until late 2012. Once the casino let us go, I retired as a professional riverman and returned to my river roots in the pleasure boat world with two Wisconsin-built vessels, the SUN*FISH and the CLYDE, now owned by others. Since their sale, my attention has focused on family issues and this weekly river column.
As last week’s column explained, the gaming license for the Rising Sun riverboat casino will soon move to a more profitable location elsewhere in Indiana. The GRAND VICTORIA II riverboat, all casino property, and the jobs required to maintain them will cease operations on the day the license transfers. What remains for the community that found new prosperity in them is unknown. So, in four paragraphs, you have the condensed, summarized history of what, just 30 short years ago, seemed like salvation to a desperate, tiny town on the Middle Ohio River.
February 28 also marks another personal anniversary. Yesterday, February 28, 2026, marked my 44th year of sobriety, fulfilling the curious advice I received aboard the Steamer AVALON 23 years before the day I imbibed my last snort.
As I recounted in the original version of this story:
“Captain Wagner had a way of appeasing the alcoholic desire of his crewmen. At the end of the last trip of the day, the crew gathered at the hotdog stand on the forward end of the Boiler Deck for what else but hot dog sandwiches, and quite frequently, Cap treated each member to two cans of cold Burger, the Steamer AVALON signature brew. Both the AVALON and the Burger Brewing Company claimed Cincinnati as their hometown. As long as the AVALON operated, she was the brewery’s largest customer.
Being the steamboat’s only non-consumer of alcoholic refreshment, I preferred a mixture of half-grape and half-orange soda from the five-gallon glass water bottles behind the counter, where I worked the first day I signed on to the crew as a “cabin boy,” dispensing the soft drinks in cups generously filled to the brim with ice. My preference for the orange-grape concoction caught the eye of a middle-aged, crusty deckhand who, for whatever reason, decided to give me a few words of advice that seemed peculiar to a non-drinking seventeen-year-old youngster:
“I see you’re not drinking alcohol, boy, but if you ever start, you got to remember… when the barroom floor comes up and hits you in the face, it’s time to stop.”
For whatever unfathomable reason, I engraved my fellow steamboatman’s strange words of wisdom into the deepest recesses of my mind.
Finally, during the last days of February 1982, the ominous words of the crusty deckhand ultimately struck a cord as I sat at the bar of a popular Covington, Kentucky hangout carrying what I perceived was an intelligent conversation with those crowded around me until…
“Suddenly, the room exploded with a jarring shudder and deafening roar as though a bomb had gone off beneath my seat. For a moment, everything got dark as night as my eyes closed tight as if to protect them from the blast.
After the noise finally abated and the barroom became as quiet as a deserted church, I carefully opened my eyes. Above me, peering down, were several frightened, puzzled faces staring at me in wonder at what had just transpired. As I looked into their eyes, I slowly understood what had just happened. Somehow, the advice given to me on the AVALON many years before I started drinking came back to mind, and I realized that the barroom floor had, indeed, slammed me in the face.
A week later, I blundered into a friend’s house who, coincidentally, was fixing to attend an AA meeting with the late Mr. Don Reisenberg, formerly the juvenile officer for Kenton County and a Covington city commissioner. Until that evening, I never knew of his strong commitment to helping alcoholics with their drinking problems through the Alcoholics Anonymous program. Surprisingly, Mr. Reisenberg was taking my friend to a church meeting in a nearby community.
“Do you want to go?”
At the meeting that night, Sunday, February 28, 1982, I was paired with an older gentleman who spoke with broken English. As a carpenter, he built houses for a well-known home contractor in Northern Kentucky. He divulged that he’d been sober for 13 years. Something I thought was unimaginable at the time. But whatever he said, and whatever transpired at that AA meeting, I have yet to taste another alcoholic beverage since. That’s been 44 years of sobriety — count ‘em.
Not long after, I returned to the river as a “sober and reliable man,” and served another 20 years as a Captain on five different casino boats on the Mississippi, Fox, and Ohio Rivers, as well as the Mississippi Sound in Biloxi– something I could have never accomplished had not that barroom floor given me a not-so-gentle reminder to quit boozing.
Since my original story about being face-down on the barroom floor appeared in the NKyTribune, several people contacted me with their own tales of their struggles with alcoholism and thanked me for writing about mine. At least one fellow reported that reading my story motivated him to attend AA sessions. He also celebrated his first year of sobriety, he added. If you have a problem, seek help. Meeting places are just about everywhere — even AA websites offer help. Don’t wait. Your life may depend upon it.
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.
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