Former Cincinnati riverboat Delta Queen to offer overnight cruises again

CINCINNATI (WKRC)- An iconic riverboat that called Cincinnati home for several decades will get another chance to cruise the river.

The Delta Queen was granted an exemption that will allow the wooden vessel to carry passengers on overnight cruises once more. While the Delta Queen will not be based in Cincinnati, her first planned cruise trip will be to the Queen City.

Cornel Martin, president and CEO of the Delta Queen Steamboat Company, said if everything goes right, we could see the ship on the Ohio River as soon as 2020.

Most recently, the Delta Queen had been a floating hotel in Chattanooga, Tennessee, from 2009 until 2014. Tuesday, Congress passed an exemption for the 91-year-old wooden ship to return to overnight cruise service after a decade-long forced retirement.

In 2008, the Delta Queen was forced to retire from service when her congressional exemption from the 1966 Safety at Sea Act expired.

The law intended to prohibit ocean-bound vessels from carrying overnight passengers unless completely made of non-combustible materials included the Delta Queen, even though she was never more than several hundred yards from shore. Congress approved nine exemptions over four decades to allow the Delta Queen to continue operations until 2008. The exemption is mainly due to Rep. Steve Chabot.

"[Chabot] introduced that exemption bill in every Congress [from] 2008 until this current Congress," Martin said.

The boat needs extensive renovations and repairs though.

"While she's been well-maintained and while we've taken good care of her, we've got a lot of upgrades. We've got to replace the boilers that are almost 100 years old. They were built in 1919. We've got to replace all the generators, the main steam line, the HVAC systems," Martin said.

The Delta Queen is a National Historic Landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places. The steamboat is also included in the National Maritime Hall of Fame and was named a National Treasure by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Martin said the vessel was built in 1927. It served from Sacramento to San Francisco between 1927 to 1940. He said once World War II started, the ship was painted battleship grey and ferried soldiers from ships anchored in the San Francisco Bay to the shore. He said it was then purchased by the Green family in Cincinnati.

"They towed her through the Panama Canal and up the Mississippi River to Cincinnati where she made her home port there from 1947 until about 1987. So, just over 40 years," Martin said.

Local riverboat Capt. Alan Bernstein, whose father Ben started BB Riverboats, currently in Newport, said the city should be excited about the iconic ship's future.

"Steamboats are very few now. There's just about a handful. I believe there's five total in the United States and there might not be many old steamers left in the world," Bernstein said.

Bernstein said he got his riverboat start on the Delta Queen out of high school.

“It was one of the things that contributed to the love and affection I have for the inland rivers and, in particular, the Ohio River,” Bernstein said. "I think everybody should be excited at the opportunity. It's a one-of-a-kind, now-unique vessel, that was a part of history in sort of the latter years of steamboating, but it gives you an indication of what people had to do to get from one city to another.”

Bernstein said steamboats, like the Delta Queen, were the mass transit of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

“It is what made the interior of our United States what it was, or what it is today. If you were in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and you wanted to get to St. Louis in the mid-1800s, if you couldn’t get on a steamboat, you had to [ride] horseback or you had to horse and buggy it. I mean, it is what opened up the interior of the United States,” Bernstein said.

The goal is 2020 but there’s no set date for the initial cruise of the Delta Queen.

"It's hard to nail down a date because, again, she's a boat that hasn't cruised [the river] in 10 years," Martin said. "We know that the inaugural cruise will be from Kimmswick, Missouri, to Cincinnati. So, hopefully that will be a big homecoming for the Queen.”

There’s more potential good news for the riverfront. A local group is working to put together an event similar to Tall Stacks that was held in the 1990s and 2000s.