The Steamtug Blog

Look where I was on the weekend. Another bucket list item ticked off… the Mississippi steamboat Natchez, pride of the “Big Easy”, New Orleans Louisiana.
Famous name, but not so exciting boat. Well, to be fair, I was excited to go for a spin on her. But uncovering her secrets, I found some disappointment. Ok, I did know she was built in 1975 from a recycled engineroom from the Str Clariton which was built in 1925.
Boiler room holds 2 big arse (or is that ass?) Cleaver-Brooks packaged boilers which I would estimate to be about 200 hp each. They didn’t need to have fire in both for the whole 2 hour cruise. The push button operation allowed the fireman to spend the whole time messing around with his phone. I could not see water gauge mountings, and asked about them. He said this boiler doesn’t have any, and he doesn’t know how anything works, and walked off to look at his phone again.
Between the boilers and engineroom was a separate walk in compartment, quite large with 2 big arse diesel gensets that power everything. I guess in a modern built ship, you have to expect this….
Turning in the river had the suspicious sound of a bow thruster. The very interesting steering gear had the steam cylinder replaced with a hydraulic actuator.
The chief engineer sat at his desk with ear buds in and reading a book. The 2nd who did the maneuvering was either messing with his phone or nodding off to sleep. Quite a boring ship, obviously. I told the 2nd I was engineer on steam yacht Ena, and he had never heard of it, or any other world famous steamboat I could name. Even though they had pictures of the Earnslaw (NZ) and Hjeilan in Denmark which is the world’s oldest paddle boat, and I been on her too!
What did impress me, was the twin tandem compound engines, port and starboard. Built in 1925 the cylinders were 15″ and 30″ with 84″ stroke. We raced down the river at a blistering 14 rpm!
The massive stern wheel has no eccentrics, instead the cranks being set at 90 deg, allowed the cross head from each engine set to rock a pipe/rod held above the engine, with green links and rod from the port side, and right beside was a yellow rod, linked from the starboard engine each in turn controlling the opposite valve gear. Being only single motion from each side, the valve gear resembled something loosely based on the walschart system. A steam powered reversing engine was mounted just under the deckhead to raise and lower the link bars at the valve gear. How is that for a run down?
Ok, the impressive parts outside the engineroom… an antique whistle comprising 3 individual whistles tuned to a mismatched dischord and oh, so loud, making an impressive echo across the river banks and city of New Orleans.
Also, on arrival the whole city was bathed in the sound of a steam calliope echoing off the buildings in Toluouse Street. This was extremely exciting to hear, and see the clouds of steam emminating skyward from the roof of the aft deck.
Natchez, is the 9th riverboat to carry this famous name. It was many years earlier that the last river boat carried that name, and the present company has no connection with the original. She does carry the record for fastest river boat on the Mississippi and competes annually in the riverboat race, but has never been beaten.
Personally, I prefer my favourite paddler Adelaide on the Murray river. But this was worth the effort to go and see!