75-03-A5
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The Delta Queen
TranscriptSometimes even bureaucrats can bring out the best in people. I'll be right back. With her great stern wheel churning, the Delta Queen quietly plies her way up and down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, just as if she'd been doing it for a hundred years or more. Actually, though, she's only been at it 27 years since the green line of Cincinnati finished refurbishing her and put her into passenger service between Pittsburgh and New Orleans in 1947. Though she looks antebellum, the Delta Queen is really only middle-aged. She was built in Glasgow, Scotland in 1926 to carry passengers, autos and freight between San Francisco and Sacramento, California. The navy used her to ferry troops during World War II and the Green Line, which then had a big fleet of riverboats, bought her after the war. Today, she's the last reminder of those bygone days of river travel. the only overnight riverboat for passengers in America, so important is she as a symbol of an old and historic means of transport that the U.S. Department of the Interior has listed the Delta Queen in the national register of historic places, making her a sort of floating monument to the thousands of boats that helped open up a continent by making the Mississippi a great artery of commerce. The Delta Queen is an endangered species, though, and thereby hangs a tale. In the mid 1960s, tragic fires on two cruise ships not of U.S. registry, prompted a worried Congress to pass a so-called Safety At Sea Law in 1966. This law specified that all American flag ships with overnight passenger accommodations had to be fire proof and this spelled trouble for the Delta Queen. Though her hull is steel, her superstructure is entirely made of hardwoods. Technically she fell into the provisions of the new law though she's never out of sight of land, never goes to sea, has never had a fire and operates for a line that in 80 years has never had a loss of life due to either accident or fire. "No matter," said the bureaucrats in Washington, the Delta Queen could not be made an exception. At this point, remember that bureaucrats more than Congress decide what's legal and what isn't for they're the ones who devise and implement the regulations which accompany the laws passed by Congress. That did it for the friends of the Delta Queen and they numbered into the thousands. Governors, Congressman, Chambers of Commerce, former passengers and history buffs the nation over rode in asking for the Queen to be saved. For to rebuild her all of steel would have been prohibitively expensive and if not, would have robbed her of the very qualities that made her so appealing. All this fell on deaf ears at the House of Representatives. Merchant marine and fisheries committee petitions and special bills were turned back, but in the end the people who cared won the day. Goaded by the bureaucrat's stubbornness they persuaded friendly Congressmen to attach a rider to save the Delta Queen to an unobtrusive bill. The bill sailed through both Houses of Congress, the President signed it and the Delta Queen has a reprieve till late 1978. Meanwhile, her supporters and defenders have bought some time to find a way to keep her going even longer, and this month the Delta Queen moved out into the river from her home birth in Cincinnati for the 28th year of delighting Americans with an experience in floating history. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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