The riverboat captain is a storyteller, and Captain Don Sanders will be sharing the stories of his long association with the river — from discovery to a way of love and life. This a part of a long and continuing story.
By Capt. Don Sanders
Special to NKyTribune
Conway Twitty, the celebrated American country and pop music star looked as nervous as a geek at a biker’s rally standing on the tarmac at the Jackson, Mississippi Airport.
Conway Twitty stood apart from the small clutch of the others of us and eyes us suspiciously. (Photo by Movie Market)
He and about three or four others of us waited to board a puddle jumper for Memphis, where I had a flight to Chicago and another short hop to the Quad Cities on the Upper Mississippi River. At Bettendorf, above Davenport, Iowa, and across the river from Rock Island and Moline, Illinois, an anxious licensed mate aboard the paddlewheel gambler, the DIAMOND LADY, watched for my arrival. It was my turn to relieve him after his two weeks aboard the boat while I savored a couple of weeks at home with my family in Natchez.
Conway stood apart from the small clutch of the others of us and eyed us suspiciously. “What’s he think we’re going to do?” someone wondered, “Jump his bones?”
None of us seemed to care if he was on the plane with us or not. Everyone had their obligations and purposes in mind that didn’t include interrupting those of a musical celebrity. Once aboard, though, the aircrew ushered Twitty into a seat behind the cockpit, and that was the first and only time I saw the country music entertainer born Harold Lloyd Jenkins at Friar’s Point, Mississippi in 1933, outside a television screen.
Only recently, I posted several photographs on a social media page I help administer, “Rivermen & Riverboats,” of the sidewheel, steam ferryboat PELICAN.
The sidewheel, steam ferryboat PELICAN once transferred railroad cars across the Mississippi River at Helena, Arkansas.
The PELICAN once transferred railroad cars across the Mississippi River at Helena, Arkansas for the Louisiana & Mississippi Railroad, a division of the Illinois Central. During the Summer of 1960, when I was an 18-year-old deckhand on the excursion steamboat AVALON, we landed in Helena inside the inlet below the PELICAN. There, the sight, sounds, and smells of the coal-burning, fire-breathing, steam-spitting sidewheeler thrilled me no less than would the palatial cotton packet J. M. WHITE had she paddled into sight.
Had I known then, standing on the airport tarmac with Mr. Twitty, what I do now, I might have asked, “Excuse me, Sir, but wasn’t your father Captain Floyd Dalton Jenkins who piloted the PELICAN?”
It would be years, however, before I knew of the famous entertainer’s connection to the river by way of the awe-inspiring PELICAN. The same steamboat that dazzled my sensations when I watched the moss-covered 40-foot side paddlewheels roaring to life at the command of, quite possibly, Conway Twitty’s father.
The Mighty SPRAGUE, the largest steam towboat ever built. New at St. Louis, 1901.
The 306-foot-long by 88-and-a-half-foot-wide sidewheeler PELICAN began construction in 1901 at the Iowa Iron Works, Dubuque, soon after the launch of the mighty SPRAGUE, the largest steam towboat ever built. Incidentally, the same boatyard fabricated the namesake of my boat, the original Rafter CLYDE, the first iron-hulled steamboat on the Western Rivers, over 30 years earlier than that date, 1901, one of the most successful years in the history of the ironworks.
Captain Clarke C. “Doc” Hawley, Mate and Alternate Master of the AVALON, and I ambled over to visit the PELICAN, early of a morning while our steam excursion boat played Helena. Though we walked the main deck among rows of railroad tracks accommodating the railcars and peeked into the engine room of the port wheel, we never visited the pilothouse where, quite-possibly, Captain Jenkins patiently waited for the fires beneath the boilers to set the safety valves a’ dancing.
Soon after Cap’n Doc and I climbed back ashore, we stood with mouths agape as the banshee-like screams of the escaping engine exhaust from the Hopkins Patient steam engines roared like a thousand tyrannosaurs. The larger-than-a-house, uncovered, elliptically-shaped, wooden paddlewheels thrashed the water, and the behemoth, a living dragon of medieval proportions, backed out of the inlet and into the Mississippi River bound for the far shore where a smokey steam locomotive waited with a string of railcars for the crossing to Arkansas.
We stood with mouths agape as the banshee-like screams of the escaping engine exhaust from the Hopkins Patient steam engines roared like a thousand tyrannosaurs.
While the AVALON remained in Helena, I ventured down to the city front landing where the charred hulk of the small, steam, sternwheel automobile ferry, the A. C. JAYNES burned just a few months before my visit. The JAYNES, built by the Midwest Boat & Barge Co., Grafton, IL in 1925, operated at Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and Greenville, Mississippi, until bridges replaced the ferries at those locations. Overhead, above the remains of the once handsome paddlewheeler, loomed the nearly-completed Helena Highway Bridge. Inside the blackened engineroom, the miniature, compound steam engines, although unscorched, were likely slated for the scrap pile instead of finding new use on another steamboat had the A. C. JAYNES burned at an earlier time when steam ruled the river.
The few days the AVALON spent in Helena was an escape into the glorious era of steamboating with whistles blaring and paddlewheels turning. At the same time, a steam calliope called the rubes to the river, where two authentic steamers thrilled the dullest senses. It was nearly enough to make Huck and Tom turn shades of emerald green. All too soon, the AVALON departed for ports-of-call further down the Mississippi. On the return trip, we bypassed Helena, so I barely saw the PELICAN as it lay cooled-down deep within its slough. When I returned a decade later, aboard the overnight tourist boat DELTA QUEEN, the once-glorious steamboat PELICAN sadly floated while reduced to a conventional deck barge towed by a tiny, insignificant, diesel push boat. A memorable era in steamboat history passed while I was away.
Looking for clues into the life of Captain Floyd Dalton Jenkins, a photograph emerged of the pilot stooping alongside a small lad in the pilothouse of an old-fashioned riverboat.
Looking for clues into the life of Captain Floyd Dalton Jenkins, a photograph emerged of the pilot stooping alongside a small lad in the pilothouse of an old-fashioned riverboat. The boy, it turned out, was not the youngster who grew up to combine the names of two small towns, one in Arkansas, the other in Texas to become a popular stage name known to all fans of country music. Instead, it was Conway Twitty’s son Michael posing with his grandpa alongside an old-fashioned steering wheel, possibly that of the PELICAN. As Captain Doc and I never made to the pilothouse that day in Helena, I cannot say if the photo was, or was not, taken inside the wheelhouse of the railroad transfer steamboat.
In an interview, Michael Twitty, telling of his father’s extended absences, remembered: “Dad was constantly on the road. I didn’t see him a lot growing up. It’s what he was. It’s what he was born to be.”
The same might apply to riverboat crew members, I thought, as I read Michaels’s words and remembered my situation gone from my growing sons while away on the boats.
“But don’t feel sorry for me. Growing up, I had three dads — not one,” Conway Twitty’s son continued. “Papaw (Captain Floyd Dalton Jenkins), my granddad, he was a Steamboat Captain on the mighty Mississippi. My uncle Howard was also there for me. And Conway, my natural dad.”
Perhaps, the most important discovery I made delving deeper into the life of the country star from Helena on the Mississippi River, was: Twitty and the Jenkins family were beloved by their friends, hometown neighbors, and music fans. Not only those admirers of Conway’s but also his son Michael, and now his grandson, Tre Twitty. Together, Michael and Tre continue to perpetuate the life and legacy of that son of a Steamboat Captain I briefly shared a few moments while waiting on the tarmac at the Jackson airport for the puddle jumper to Memphis.
Together, Michael and Tre continue to perpetuate the life and legacy of Conway Twitty that son of a Steamboat Captain.
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.
Cap’ Don does it again! Excellent storytelling and history of our river culture! Thanks for running this column.