Belle of Louisville
1914 · Stern Wheel Drive · Work 173 of 1,871
The stern wheel of the Belle of Louisville turning on the Ohio River, wooden buckets set between steel arms, pitman rods reaching forward to the engine, water boiling under the fantail.
- What it was used for
- Built in 1914 by James Rees and Sons of Pittsburgh as the Idlewild, she worked from January 1915 as a ferry between Memphis and Hopefield Point, Arkansas. For excursion trips the Steamboat Inspection Service allowed her up to 1,600 passengers. From 1931 she carried pleasure-seekers out of Louisville to the Fontaine Ferry amusement park and to Rose Island. In the Second World War she pushed oil barges on the Mississippi and Ohio and doubled as a USO venue for troops. On 24 May 1962 Jefferson County bought her at auction for $34,000; on 14 October 1962 she was rechristened Belle of Louisville.
- What was new
- Nothing about her was new, and that is the point. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers describes her shallow-draft flat-bottomed hull braced by hog-chain trusses as characteristic of hundreds of steamboats on America's rivers in the 19th and 20th centuries. Her significance lies entirely in survival: she is the oldest operating western rivers steamboat, a National Historic Landmark, and since 2010 an ASME Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark. The barb: this plain working boat, mocked as Marlow's Folly when bought, lost her first Great Steamboat Race to the Delta Queen in 1963 — and outlasted every grander rival.
Further reading
- Belle of Louisville – National Register of Historic Places Registration Form (NPS)
- Belle of Louisville – ASME Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark
- Celebrating the History Surrounding the Belle of Louisville – Louisville Public Media
- Belle of Louisville (Betreiber): History (Idlewild, Stapellauf 18.10.1914 Pittsburgh; Fähre Memphis-West Memphis; USO; Avalon 1948; 1962 von Judge Cook für 34.000 Dollar ersteigert und umbenannt; erstes Rennen gegen die Delta Queen am 30. April; National Historic Landmark)
- Steamboats.org: Belle of Louisville (Rees 1914; Abfahrt nach Memphis 9.1.1915; Avalon Februar 1948; 1962 an das Jefferson County Fiscal Court verkauft und umbenannt; Rennen gegen die Delta Queen 1963 verloren)