Mississippi Queen Aground With 400
The Mississippi Queen, a replica of the 19th-Century paddle-wheel boats that plied the Mississippi River, ran aground on a sand bar for two hours on Friday, the U.S. Coast Guard said.
The river boat, carrying about 400 passengers, lodged on a sand bar at a particularly tricky area in the drought-shrunken Mississippi 50 miles north of Memphis, said Petty Officer Dean Jones, a U.S. Coast Guard spokesman. It was refloated with some assistance about two hours later.
The grounding interrupted the “Great Steamboat Race” that matched the 11-year-old Mississippi Queen against its sister ship, the 62-year-old Delta Queen, in a cruise from New Orleans to St. Louis. The race went ahead this year despite record-low water levels in the Mississippi.
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