The River: Life is just different in the winter without a boat, and come Spring there’s plenty to do ashore

By Capt. Don Sanders
Special to NKyTribune

(The riverboat captain is a storyteller, and Captain Don Sanders is sharing the stories of his long association with the river — from discovery to a way of love and life.

Winters seemed longer and more brutal when I was a teenager working for my supper at Walt’s Boat Harbor on the Ohio River below West Second Street in Covington, my Kentucky hometown. But no matter how intense and protracted those wintry months seemed, there came that one particular moment when southerly winds carried promises of milder days ahead. Hopefully, we’ve crossed that line with the departure of Old Man Winter for climes closer to his northern neighborhood.

What a difference it is not having a boat. Whether it was one under my command for the owners of the DELTA QUEEN or the GRAND VICTORIA II, or my smaller, personal version of a riverboat as were the SUN*FISH and the Rafter CLYDE, I feel incomplete without a deck beneath my feet. Either way, the coming milder season always meant the beginning of planning for the painting and sprucing up of those boats.

Essentially, the work remained the same, with the most significant difference being the scale in size of the vessels in question. Compared to the GRAND VIC, the CLYDE was like a tick on a Great Dane.

Every five years, Federal law requires certified, passenger-carrying passenger boats operating in freshwater an out of water inspection. Before returning to service, all corrections must have the approval of the U. S. Coast Guard before re-certification.

An exception to being hauled out of the water was awarded the casino boats. Had they not been exempted, all gambling operations would have ceased for up to two weeks, possibly more, while the boats were in transit to and from a shipyard. A lengthy inspection between the trips would take another three to five days, maybe a week. So instead, the government inspectors granted the gamblin’ boats an underwater, ultrasound inspection of the hull instead of a visual look-see of the vessel while out of its natural element.

Inspection time was always enjoyable for me, especially when the boat was “on the hard” out of the water. Perhaps, that is why I chose the moniker “Shipyard Sam” when I needed a non de plume to post on a river-related website using the company computer during duty hours in the pilothouse of the GRAND VICTORIA II.

Eagerly, I encountered my first “bottom job” on a riverboat while assisting Walter Hoffmeier clean, “cork,” and paint the underside of the hull of the PAL-O-MINE while it was on the ways, around the Spring of 1953 or ’54, at Helen’s Newport Yacht Club. Smelling the tarred oakum and slopping red lead paint onto the bottom planks of the PAL was the first time I realized I found my natural element working on a boat. I was 11 or 12, depending on which springtime found me crawling underneath the wooden cypress hull.

Child’s play didn’t exist around Walter, where a boy had to grow up fast and learn to do a man’s work if he wanted to stay around. But, I quickly learned to love every minute spent with the old riverman.

Born aboard a shantyboat on the Licking River, Walt was willing to teach if the student expressed the desire to learn. Every day was a delight, and I did my damnedest to wiggle my way to win and maintain a front-row seat in Walter’s riverfront classroom.

Talking about a classroom — the “Ernest E. Wagner School of Steamboating” was what Captain Frederick Way, Jr. called the time that I and other privileged youngsters spent under the tutelage of Cap’n Wagner’s guiding hand. “Big Cap,” as he was affectionately remembered by many of his former understudies, was a natural-born leader and teacher.

Cap’s style of steamboat mastery came from men who guided him after he arrived unexpectedly on the Cincinnati Public Landing while hoboing to Akron, Ohio, from Johnson City, Tennessee, to join his brother in a tire-making plant during the Great Depression. Wagner’s incredible size and easy temperament quickly won him a position of trust and responsibility on steamers belonging to the Cincinnati Coney Island Amusement Park. What Big Cap garnered from senior boatmen, he quickly expanded on that knowledge and later passed that wisdom on to those of us privileged enough to work under his command.

Fortunately, as a 17-year-old deckhand stepping aboard the Steamer AVALON, which Wagner commanded, I brought the experience garnered from Walter and a work ethic gifted from my Great Depression-era parents and grandparents. As a result, it wasn’t long before Big Cap realized he had a “Kentucky mule” ready, willing, and capable of carrying on certain demanding steamboat chores in the style and manner he required.

Perhaps some of my fondest memories of Captain Wagner are from the three late-winters and early-spring days we spent together aboard the DELTA QUEEN in the boatyards at Dixie Machine Welding & Metal Works in New Orleans in 1970 and Avondale Shipyard, above the Crescent City, in 1971 and 1972. By the second season, I was the QUEEN’s First Mate, and by the third trip to the shipyard, I was Captain Wagner’s Alternate Master aboard, what was then, perhaps the most celebrated steamboat in the world.

Taking full advantage of what I’d gleaned from Big Cap, and using that knowledge to the best utilization of the vessel, gave Cap’n Wagner the proclivity to delve into pet projects he always wanted to accomplish but never had the time to do. Among those chores:
 
1 The grand piano within the Orleans Room was stripped of its ebony color and refinished in the natural mahogany luster beneath the dark coloration.

2 The teak handrailings on the outer decks went from cheesy teal-green to natural teak.
 
3 The bronze filigree on the grand staircase from the Forward Cabin Lounge to the Texas Lounge lost the frightful black paint hiding the tinge of the natural, reddish ornamental metalwork.

The approach of Spring always brings forth primal fluvial urges to break out the paint buckets and brushes, caulk guns, saws, grinders, and drills. But as strong as the impulse might be, I need to remind myself that those cries are for younger generations; that I am retired and have no boat to call my own. Besides, my 95-year-old house lays neglected since I found the SUN*FISH and the CLYDE. So it’s time to look away from the water and focus on what needs doing the most, ashore. 

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 and will share his stories of growing up in Covington and his stories of the river. Hang on for the ride — the river never looked so good.