The Sabino steamboat is the oldest wooden, coal-fired steamboat in regular operation in the U.S. Built in 1908 in East Boothbay, Maine, by W. Irving Adams, she spent most of her career ferrying passengers and cargo between Maine towns and islands. First she operated on the Damariscotta River in midcoast Maine. After sinking during an accident in 1918, she ran on the Kennebec River. From 1927 to 1960 she served the islands of Casco Bay, running out of Portland. For this service her narrow hull was widened with sponsons to make her more stable in the open waters. Although her configuration and passenger capacity changed through the years, her engine did not. The Sabino Steamboat is still powered by the two-cylinder Paine compound steam engine installed in 1908.Until now.
The museum has announced plans to its donors to install an electric propulsion system in the steamboat Sabino, whose coal-fired engine is now used to take visitors up and down the Mystic River during warm-weather months.There is no "magical experience" of riding a battery powered boat. Part of the fun of riding a steam-powered anything with a reciprocating engine are the smells, the sights and the sounds of an operating steam plant. Yes, the coal smoke is a feature of that.
While the steam engine will remain operational and be used on occasion, Chris Gasiorek, the museum’s vice president of watercraft preservation and programs, said most of the trips would be powered by electric batteries.
He said the electric power would allow more visitors to have the “magical experience” of riding aboard a historic steamboat.
People who buy a ticket for a ride on a steamboat are going to feel as though they've been gypped if the boat is actually powered by batteries. And they should.
If the Seaport can't run the Sabino all of the time under steam, then they should use another boat to schlep tourists when they can't run her.
3 comments:
Last time my wife and I visited Mystic Seaport was by kayak, coming down the Mystic River. Fun paddling around the wooden sailing ships and looking back in the portholes at the tourists.
No, I would not pay for a fake steamboat ride, after having been on the real deal.
When I wuz a kid in Louisville KY in the 50's & 60's, the city acquired a good-sized paddle wheeler renamed the Belle of Lousiville which it continues to operate to this, which competes in two contests during Derby Week against another paddle-wheeled steamboat, one of the big hotel barges of the American Steamship company. One's a race with the BoL agile and quicker to accelerate/turn, against the faster (in the straightaway) ones of the ASC, the other is a calliope duel. Lord God, but being in a paddle wheeler at speed is the biggest more physical percussion experience I've had.
Across the river in Jeffersonville, IN, is JeffBoat, which started out as the Howard Shipyards that built many of steamboats of the great midwestern rivers. It's on the banks of the Ohio. Across the street from it is the Howard Steamboat Museum. When I wuz 13 or so, in 1950, I bicycled the seven miles from here there...the last Howards, two dear spinsters, were still living there and running the museum....the photographs and careful ly detailed models were stunning.
I once sailed a Thistle class sailboat through the wake of of a freight sternwheeler...the rollers generated by and marching behind the paddlewheels had us bouncing up and down like a yo-yo for 2-3 minutes.
Finally....before the Ohio was dammed & locked (which essentially turned it into a year-round navigable set of lakes), it caught dwindle to a creek in a dry summer. As a boy my father, born in 1914, walked across in it one such.
http://www.howardsteamboatmuseum.org/howard-steamboats/
https://youtu.be/39qE1WWkc3E
Apologies for my fingers mistyping....they insert dictionary correct but wrong words...often homonyms. You get older, you roll with the punches
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