The River: Finding night watchman’s job after college, meeting characters and gathering up stories

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. This story first appeared in April, 2019.

By Capt. Don Sanders
Special to NKyTribune

Captain Ernest E. Wagner found an opening for me aboard the DELTA QUEEN as a relief night watchman after I was finally graduating from college in 1965. Back then, there were no days-off, vacations, or such on the celebrated steamboat. If a crewman wanted some time off, he (the rule probably applied to what few women worked on the boat) had to either find someone to fill in for them or else quit.

Captain Ernest E. Wagner found an opening for me aboard the DELTA QUEEN as a relief night watchman in 1965.

Bruce Edgington and Jimmy Powell, two older gentlemen, were the regular watchmen who, according to the U. S. Coast Guard regs, took alternate turns walking the rounds of the steamboat from ten PM to six AM while most of the crew and passengers slept.
 
What was especially comforting about the arrangement, I got to occupy Jimmy’s room on “Skid Row,” starboard side aft; back by the soothing rhythms of the paddlewheel on the outside of the Cabin Deck. “Brucie,” a retired Army Corps of Engineers veteran, slept in a folding deck chair outside his room in the Officers’ Quarters on the Sun Deck, forward, where the Captain and other licensed personnel roosted. Bruce, a notorious “packrat,” kept his quarters stuffed with anything he could salvage (mostly used DQ monogrammed napkins and placemats, picked from the garbage cans down on the “U-shaped deck” in front of the engineroom.

After a while, Bruce’s room was so stuffed, entry into the room became impossible, and that is when a borrowed deckchair became the old riverman’s bunk. Ever now and then, the Captain ordered the old watchman to clean up the mess. Bruce then had to make a slow journey into a town with an Army-Navy store and return in a cab stuffed with newly-bought footlockers which were soon stuffed with his plunder and sent off by Greyhound Express to Aberdeen, Ohio. There the lockers joined similar others inside a ramshackle brick house with timbers supporting the outside walls lest they collapsed and fell into the yard.

Eventually, the old boys got their fill of being away from the steamboat, and I was without a job. Fortunately, a Striker Engineer’s slot, one of the few positions for an entry-level white boy in the engine room, became available in those days of racial segregation and I was once again employed. These days, a man or woman engaged in that position may be called an “Oiler,” a name adopted from the sea, but before the ocean’s influence reached that far inland, the apprentice engineroom helper was simply called a “Striker.”

 Cal Benefiel was the DELTA QUEEN’s Chief Engineer.

Engineering was the only division on the DELTA QUEEN that maintained an electric washing machine. During the hitch I was “punching the clock,” I fashioned a crude clothes cleaning appliance from a five-gallon pail and begged the use of a live steam line next to the engineer’s gleaming Maytag wringer washer to steam-blast my knickers. But once I joined the engine crew, the Chief Engineer granted me the full use of his carefully guarded machine as an added benefit for membership.

Cal Benefiel was the DELTA QUEEN’s Chief Engineer. Ralph Horton and Jim Sanders were Assistant Engineers. I was the Striker on the front watch from 6 AM to noon and 6 PM to midnight and an obese boy a few years younger than I was the Striker on the back watch. This slop kept the dirtiest, sloppiest engineroom and the only thing messier was his lack of personal hygiene. He stunk so bad; his smell permeated the air for several rooms away from the one we mutually shared.

After each shift, I lost an hour of sleep airing out our digs before I could climb into my rack. Working in a steamboat engineroom is hot, sweaty work and without a shower between shifts, the stench soon overpowers the bathless. But in spite of my persistent complaints, nothing was done to force the vile boy to bathe. I spent most of my watch tidying up the neglected engine spaces on both levels only to have them looking as unruly, greasy, and grimy as they had been the last time I reported to duty.

The job most distasteful to most young engineroom Strikers was cleaning the “hot well” where condensate, turned back into a liquid from the spent steam by the condenser, was run through layers of luffa sponges to separate the grease and oil from the water before re-injecting the clean water back into the boilers through the feedwater pump. While the system was shut down, makeup water had to be taken directly from the river, and the best place for that was while the DELTA QUEEN landed at Kentucky Dam Village, on Kentucky Lake, where the surrounding H2O was cleaner and more free of silt than anywhere else we floated.

When I was only seventeen, I handled the non-condensing, variable cutoff Rees steam engines on the Steamer AVALON, now the BELLE of LOUISVILLE.

For some reason, cleaning the hot well was my favorite engineroom assignment. Following the shutdown of the well (and it was HOT!), the luffa sponges soaked in a deep sink in a small room off the lower pump room where the luffas bathed in a solution of scalding hot water, trisodium phosphate, and boiled with live steam piped directly from the boilers. Once the steel well was drained and cooled sufficiently, I preferred to get inside instead of reaching over the sides to clean it of greasy, oily residue. After the clean sponges finished boiling, moveable racks stowed them inside the hot well. When all was made ready, the system returned to service.  

The licensed engineers wasted no time in teaching me how to “handle” the two one-thousand horsepower, cross-compound condensing steam engines. When I was only seventeen, I handled the non-condensing, variable cutoff Rees steam engines on the Steamer AVALON, now the BELLE of LOUISVILLE in its 105th year of operation at this writing. If the AVALON engines were comparable to a “standard shift” automobile, the DELTA QUEEN Evans-built steam engines were like an “automatic transmission” in comparison. The difference being, the valves in the older Rees engines had to be lifted using a “steam jack” before the engine direction changed from going forward to reverse, and vice versa; whereas the Evans twins did not. Controlling the water levels inside the boilers, however, was more difficult on the QUEEN than it had been on my former steamboat.

While the DELTA QUEEN loaded another full boat of passengers for the always-popular one-week Kentucky Lake round trips at the Greene Line Wharfboat alongside the Cincinnati Public Landing, I was alerted to go up top to the outside, forward Cabin Deck to replace some burned out light bulbs. As the last lamp twisted into place, a lovely college-age lass approached and began asking what I was doing. We talked a few minutes, and I told her I worked in the engineroom, but I didn’t get my hopes of ever seeing “Ilene” again once the boat departed. Young women were often aboard to see their aging kinfolk off on a cruise, but they usually went ashore before the last call: “All ashore going ashore. The DELTA QUEEN is departing in five minutes.”

A few hours later, just as the after-dinner entertainment in the dining room wound to a close, into the engineroom, swept the lovely lady Ilene I met before departure. As I was showing her the workings of the great engines and all the “whistles and bells,” she suggested we meet somewhere on-deck after I was relieved at midnight. Fraternization between crew and passengers was generally discouraged aboard the steamboat, but rendezvous sometimes happened if done discreetly. We agreed to meet on the Cabin Deck outside the Purser’s Office on the port side after I had time to clean and change.   

At the appointed hour, Ilene appeared dressed appropriately for the chilling river air. With nowhere else to go, I offered my date a seat beside me inside an upright funnel on the deck that vented warm air up from the lower boiler and made a cozy hideaway on a crisp, brisk evening. After a while inside the intimate, but noisy funnel that vented the clamorous sounds from the work area below along with the warm air, my companion surprisingly suggested: “Would you like to meet my mother and father?” Though I had hoped for a less crowded arrangement, I could do no more than agree to meet Ilene’s folks. So, I followed her to her AAA Cabin on the aft, port Sun Deck where she unlocked the door, threw it open, and announced firmly:

The DELTA QUEEN 1965 Brochure and Schedule.

“Mom and Dad, meet my new friend Don.”

As I stepped in ready to greet Ilene’s parents, I found the room empty.

For the next few days, Ilene and I spent every moment I was off duty together. When the boat landed, we went ashore cheek by jowl. Sleep was the least of my concerns. Usually, I was back in my bunk just before Stinky knocked on the door to rouse me for the watch, but after three days and nights without slumber, I awoke in Ilene’s room as sunlight streamed between the louvered windows. My wristwatch said “Seven,” and I was due on watch at Six!  Quietly I opened the cabin door only to find two deckhands wiping down chairs on the deck outside.

Luckily, Lewis “Red Rooster” Bayless and Ernest Johnson were facing away from Ilene’s door; ever-so-quietly I slipped around them and made tracks for the engineroom without getting into my work clothes where I went into the deepest recesses of the lower pump room and began cleaning equipment that hadn’t seen a wiping rag in years.

Meanwhile in the Officer’s Dining Room, which in those days was alongside the kitchen on the port side behind the passenger dining room, later renamed the “Orleans Room,” Captain Wagner noticed my absence at the engineer’s table and bellowed,

“Where’s Don?’

Although my relationship with Ilene was on the QT, everyone saw us together often-enough that practically all the crew knew something was going on. Immediately, the DELTA QUEEN’s prominent and talented First Mate, Captain Clarke C. “Doc” Hawley, assessed the situation and attempted to cover for me when he added:

“Don ate earlier and went on down to the engineroom.”

“Oh, no he didn’t, Cap,” Stinky Boy volunteered loudly, refuting Captain Hawley. “And he wasn’t in the room, either, when I went to wake him,” he added, sealing my fate with the no-nonsense master of the vessel.

By 11 AM, with just an hour before my watch was over and I hoped my high jinks of the morning had gone unnoticed by the Big Captain, and I had gotten by without having to face him, heavy footfalls on the metal stairs announced Cap’n Wagner’s arrival.

“Don, I know where you were at last night,” he began as he dressed me down as only he could as more sweat than usual for the lower engineroom popped out on my brow.

“And besides,” he added, “Mrs. Greene is aboard, and you know she wouldn’t approve. I don’t want to hear you’ve been in that girl’s room for the rest of the trip. Understand?

An upright funnel on the deck that vented warm air up from the lower boiler and made a cozy hideaway on a crisp, brisk evening.

Of course, I said, “Yes, Sir,” and promised, but that was the first and only time I deliberately disobeyed Captain Wagner’s orders. After the DELTA QUEEN returned to Cincinnati, I took Ilene home to meet my folks, but nothing further came of the relationship. Months after she returned home and I was in Officers’ Training School in the Air Force, a letter arrived telling me she was engaged to her hometown boyfriend, and that was the last I ever heard from lovely Ilene.   

By mid-way in September, the DELTA QUEEN was upbound on the Upper Mississippi River heading to St. Paul, Minnesota, the head of navigation for the QUEEN. Mrs. Letha Greene and her daughter Jane were riding after they brought their car aboard in Louisville expecting to drive back to Cincinnati after the boat returned to St. Louis after returning from St. Paul. Jane Greene and I were friends once we met earlier in the year when I was still making watchman rounds. Jane was an early-bird who liked to be out and about on the boat before I got off at 6 AM. She often joined me at the small, round table in front of the Purser’s Officer, the only piece of furniture original to the DELTA QUEEN from her California days, where I would have another story waiting for her to peruse I’d written the night before about a fanciful steamboat named the HONEYDEW and its comical crew.

By the time the DELTA QUEEN reached St. Paul, the weather according to Mrs. Greene in her classic book, “Long Live the DELTA QUEEN,” was “dreary, damp, and the river rising.” The Flood of 1965 on the Upper Mississippi River was one for the record books with the QUEEN poised to run the tide to return safely to St. Louis.   

Again, Mrs. Greene:

“Coming downstream on a full river with a strong current is similar to being pushed downstairs by a strong force, knowing that just at the foot of the stairs is a narrow door and corridor through which one must pass.”

Mrs. Greene, of course, was alluding to the navigation locks as the “narrow door and corridor” through which the DELTA QUEEN had to pass. She described hearing the orders of the captain to the pilot as he guided the QUEEN into those narrow corridors, but that was only half the story. Down below in the engineroom, the engineers were following the commands, too, as the pilot called for various “bells,” or settings, for the powerful steam engines, the DELTA QUEEN’s only means of propulsion on those troubled waters:

“AHEAD FULL. STOP. BACK SLOW. AHEAD FULL. ALL STOPPED,” and whatever else was ordered to steam safely into the locks on those flood waters.

By the time the DELTA QUEEN reached St. Paul, the weather according to Mrs. Greene in her classic book, “Long Live the DELTA QUEEN,” was “dreary, damp, and the river rising.”

The Chief and his assistants were talking in hushed tones as I stood by. Coming up, was an especially testy lock that required the DELTA QUEEN to be driving ahead on a full ahead of steam until it was securely inside the 110 by 600-foot lock; then the pilot had to call for all the steam the engineers could apply to stop the QUEEN before she crashed into the lower lock gates. This seldom-needed maneuver was called, “Backing on a Double Gong!” I expected the Chief Engineer, himself, veteran Cal Benefiel, to be handing the throttle and feedwater controls, but, instead, I was surprised and thrilled, though a bit apprehensive,  to hear my name called:

“Don, step up there. You’re going to be handling the controls during this lock!”

Looking out the side window, I saw the trees whizzing on the bank by like telephone poles seen from a speeding car. Chief Cal and my engineer, Ralph Horton, began instructing me on what to expect. They told me how to keep the water in the boilers low so that when I stopped the engines after entering the lock, and as soon as the bell was given to open the throttle with everything I had, the surge would cause the boiler level to rise quickly. Had the level been too high, water would get into the main steam line and, consequently, the engines. Or as Captain Wagner was fond of saying in such situations, it would be:

“Katie, Bar the Door!”

Carefully, the boiler water levels were at least a notch lower in the gauge glasses as the DELTA QUEEN flew past the massive lock gates. Then: ALL STOP. BACK FULL. And, BACK FULL, again. A DOUBLE GONG ASTERN!

As I opened the throttle, the Chief Engineers stood a creditable distance away, but they never missed a lick of what I was doing, nor did they add or subtract from my actions as I must have learned my lessons well. The DELTA QUEEN shuttered as the full force of 190 pounds of live steam coursed into the high-pressure cylinder before it exhausted across into the doubly-large low-pressure engine. As the QUEEN ate up the distance to the lower lock gate, the speed of the steamboat rapidly diminished, and I was able to ease up on the throttle while the water inside the boilers remained at a perfectly healthy level. Not a drop entered the main steam line. Quickly, the DELTA QUEEN was snubbed off to the lockwall without further adieu.  

Mrs. Greene described a similar encounter with a lock as such:  

“The boat must have speed enough to shape-up and enter the lock chamber properly… the orders given by the Captain to the pilot influence the success of this procedure greatly. As the boat ran head-on towards a dam, I would hear the blast of the whistle, which assured me we were coming ahead full towards the entrance gate of the lock chamber. Suddenly, I’d hear, ‘Stop her – STOP her!’ At this point, I’d brace my feet… expecting to hear a crash… as the boat slammed into the concrete lock wall. At last, came Captain Wagner’s, “All fast.” Relieved, I’d return to the comforts of my bed.”

The Captain-in-Command of the DELTA QUEEN when it landed on its “victorious “ return as she watched from afar, was the very same fellow who rode the airplane back to Cincinnati with her and her daughter Jane after the eventful flood trip in 1965.

Later on, in the middle of the night during the run to St. Louis, the lift span on the Keithburg, Illinois railroad bridge knocked the top of the smokestack onto the roof of the DELTA QUEEN causing all sorts hullabaloo that Mrs. Letha Greene so vividly recalls.  When the QUEEN arrived safely in St. Louis with no damage other than the crestfallen smokestack lying on the roof, the river was too high to get the Greene’s automobile off the boat. Jane, her mother, and I got off the steamboat and were on the same flight back to Cincinnati. All of this, Mrs. Greene recalled in the book, but, of course, the mention of a certain lowly Striker lad did not appear in any of Mrs. Greene’s recollections.

Within 52 months after serving on active duty in the Air Force, I would return to the DELTA QUEEN. Six months after my arrival, I would be the First Mate in Captain Hawley’s slot who left in April 1970 for the BELLE of LOUISVILLE. Mrs. Greene and the rest of her family were no longer associated with the QUEEN after Overseas National Airways bought the company soon before my return. And after a hard-fought battle to exempt the DELTA QUEEN from the so-called “safety at sea law” during the exciting “Save the DELTA QUEEN Year of 1970,” the QUEEN received a last-minute reprieve when its exemption request passed attached as a rider to a bill the Congress could not fail to approve.  

When the DELTA QUEEN returned to her homeport after the airline initiated extensive improvements after the passage of the exemption, Mrs. Greene recounted watching her former steamboat land at the Cincinnati Public Landing. She describes in “Long Live…” the conversation between her and her son, Tom, Jr.:

Tom: “Mother, are you going down to see the boat come in tomorrow?”
Mrs. Greene: “No, Tom… it’s too far to park and walk down on my bum knee.”

“Thus the conversation went between my son, Tom, Jr. and me the day before the DELTA QUEEN was scheduled to dock at the Cincinnati Levee, April 29, 1971: the date of her victorious homecoming.”

Again, what Mrs.Greene did not include in her lovely book was that the Captain-in-Command of the DELTA QUEEN when it landed on its “victorious “ return as she watched from afar, was the very same fellow who rode the airplane back to Cincinnati with her and her daughter Jane after the eventful flood trip in 1965!

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.

Click here to read all of Capt. Don Sanders’ stories of The River.