Place to Display Remnants of Fabled Vessel : Park May Preserve River Boat’s Memory

The Sprague, or “Big Mama,” a once-proud Titan of paddle-wheelers whose exploits linger in Mississippi River folklore, is gone but not forgotten by the towns where she was born and where she died.

“There’s a special love for that boat,” said Steve Golding, a barge company official and leader in efforts to have surviving parts of the Sprague placed in a new riverside park here.

“I watched the Sprague die in a fire, and I think we owe it to future generations to pick up the pieces and make something of what we have left.”

The Sprague, set afloat in Dubuque, Iowa, in 1902, was a legend among river boats at a time when the giant paddle-wheelers were disappearing from the nation’s rivers.

“It was quite a vessel, in fact it was the world’s largest stern-wheel towboat,” said Robert Osborne, curator at the Woodward Riverboat Museum in Dubuque.

Measuring almost as long as a football field and half as wide, the 20,000-ton workhorse set the world’s record for the largest tow. In 1927, she hauled 56 barges and four coal boats loaded with more than 67,000 tons of coal from Louisville, Ky., to New Orleans.

Rescued Flood Victims

In the great flood of 1927, the Sprague pushed empty barges to the failing levees at Greenville to help rescue thousands of people from the flooded Mississippi Delta.

The vessel was sold to the City of Vicksburg for $1 by Standard Oil Co. in 1948 and for years served as a floating river museum and home for a colorful Vicksburg Little Theater melodrama, “Gold in the Hills.”

The Sprague burned at its mooring in 1974, and its giant hull was later ripped apart during salvage operations on the Yazoo River diversion canal. All that remains is mostly large pieces, including the smokestacks, boilers, engines and the paddle wheel, which is 40 feet in diameter and weighs 150 tons.

“We’re not the only ones interested in the Sprague,” said Vicksburg City Alderman Melvin Redmond. “The city of Dubuque people want everything we don’t want and they are more than willing to take anything off our hands we’ll give them.”

Golding said plans now call for construction of a small park near the riverfront where the Sprague was moored for years before the fire. He said the paddle wheel, engines and other artifacts would be restored at city shops and placed in the park.

Hopes for Restoration

At one time, hopes were bright to actually restore the vessel, with officials in 1975 seeking $1.34 million from the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration. They had hoped to use part of the money for an outdoor amphitheater.

However, the only funds made available to Vicksburg for such work were earmarked instead to restore the city’s aging auditorium, said Golding.

“The park project developed after a small group of us went to the mayor and he agreed to set aside enough dollars to create a display park” and use city manpower to restore the artifacts.

Golding said a number of items not suitable for display at the park had survived the fire and the botched salvage operation, and “we would like to see maybe one of the warehouses down by the river be used as a river heritage museum.”

Osborne said efforts by the Dubuque museum to secure additional artifacts were “pretty much up in the air right now. We had hoped to get some of the decking to use for the floor in a section of the museum devoted to boat builders but the Yazoo River (where the hull remains) just wouldn’t cooperate and we couldn’t get in to haul things out.”