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Encyclopedia Dubuque

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Affiliated with the Local History Network of the State Historical Society of Iowa, and the Iowa Museum Association.




SPRAGUE

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Largest stern-wheel vessel of her type in the world in 1902.

SPRAGUE. Largest and most famous of the MISSISSIPPI RIVER paddle wheel steamers. Manufactured in 1901 by the IOWA IRON WORKS, the 318-foot Sprague was named in honor of Captain Peter Sprague, the marine construction superintendent of the Monongahela River Consolidated Coal and Coke Company.

The boat was often called "Big Mama." Her hull measured 276 feet in length by 61 feet in width. The paddle wheel was 38 feet in diameter and 40 feet wide with 21 buckets (a river term for paddles). One of the first boats of its kind to push rather than pull its cargo, the Sprague, with its 160-ton paddle wheel, was capable of moving 67,307 tons at a time. In February 1907 hitched to 56 coal boats and 4 barges, she set a record. The cargo of 67,307 tons of coal was the greatest cargo every handled in marine history in a single movement. The barges covered an area equivalent to 6.5 acres.

Built to push coal down rivers, the Sprague spent her last twenty-three years towing oil from Baton Rouge to Memphis. Beginning in 1925 she was operated by Standard Oil of New Jersey on the lower Mississippi. In 1926 the Sprague moved eleven million gallons of oil.

Before being' retired to Vicksburg, Mississippi, as a restaurant, museum, and theater boat, the Sprague operated on the rivers of the Midwest for fifty years. In 1927 she played an important role during the flood which struck Greenville, Mississippi. She was one of several boats that transported an estimated 20,000 people to shelters established by the Red Cross. When the Sprague's towboat career ended in 1948, the city of Vicksburg bought the boat from its owners for one dollar. In its service around Vicksburg, the Sprague attracted more than twenty thousand tourists annually.

Painted capstans from the Sprague can be found in Catfish Row Landing Park. Photo courtesy: Steamboats.org

In 1974 a fire gutted the boat without damaging the paddle wheel. In 1979 the once mighty boat sank in the mud of the Yazoo River and split in half. Remains can be found in several places around Vicksburg.