Glory days of the Delta Queen

Published on 20/09/2007 00:11

THE Delta Queen, last of the old Mississippi paddle steamers, is facing defeat in its long battle to avoid being beached. The Queen was built in Dumbarton, and MSPs are backing the campaign to save her. We give Mark Twain the last word:

"In the 'flush times' of steamboating, a race between two notoriously fleet steamers was an event of vast importance. Politics and the weather were dropped, and people talked only of the coming race. As the time approached, the two steamers 'stripped' and got ready. The chosen date being come, and all things in readiness, the two great steamers back into the stream, and lie there jockeying a moment, and apparently watching each other's slightest movement, like sentient creatures; flags drooping, the pent steam shrieking through safety-valves, the black smoke rolling and tumbling from the chimneys and darkening all the air. People, people everywhere; the shores, the house-tops, the steamboats, the ships, are packed with them, and you know that the borders of the broad Mississippi are going to be fringed with humanity thence northward twelve hundred miles, to welcome these racers."

What a shame if those days are over.