Sandy Scull’s Poetic Take on Steamboat Lingo — Hearing a Ghost on the Delta Queen

Sandy Scull’s Poetic Take on Steamboat Lingo — Hearing a Ghost on the Delta Queen

A Ghost on the Delta Queen

Ted’s brother Sandy wrote this poem that integrates words and phrases derived from the Mississippi River steamboat era following a Delta Queen river cruise they took together a little over a decade ago from Chattanooga to Memphis via the Tennessee, Ohio and Mississippi rivers.

Delta Queen at Paducah, Kentucky. * Photo: Ted Scull

 Steamboat Lingo — Hearing a Ghost on the Delta Queen

Captain Mary Greene cottons to the Delta Queen

like cargo cotton used to stick to hair.

Out of the main channel now, she bushwhacks

her way along phantom shores.  Dead for years,

she spooks around cabin deck aft.

Acknowledged my brother Ted, as a kindred spirit,

wrapping on windows as he walked by.

We were relieved she knock knocked

back by the paddlewheel.  Not

in our stateroom where she died.

 

A benign spirit, she saved this steamboat

from sinking.  Guided a gangway guard

to a broken water pipe.  But Mary’s

been known to blow her stack.

Steam cleaning her insides.  Like when the bar

was expanded—broke some glasses did she.

 

Never high falutin mind you.

Like this Delta Queen, her stack hinged.

Humble enough to cruise under whatever

bridged her path.  She’d say, “You’ve got to

bend a little to get somewhere.”

 

And determined, like crossing

Muscle Shoals, come hell or high

water.  As a river pilot, she knew

the hell of low water was hitting

rock bottom—then you’d be singing

the blues to an Alabama moon.

 

Approaching Shiloh, Tennessee,

a passenger’s voice croaks through

the morning mist, “That low-flying

blue heron looks like General Sherman

after he got shot.”  A stick in the mud

remark from a rebel keelboater

whose pole got stuck.

 

In the pilot house, I imagine Mark Twain

at the wheel.  Cap cocked to one side, toothpick

in his mouth doing a slow bob as he says,

“The day was a dead and empty thing,

when steamboats left Hannibal.”

I hear ole Mary chiming in over paddles

churning. “You ain’t just fiddling around.”

A boatman’s disdain for all but the real work

that keeps “steamboats a-comin.”

 

The bitter end—the uncleated end

of an anchor line that pays into the river.

May it be a long time a-comin

for the Delta Queen and its elder passengers

now gathering on the sun deck to hear

the captain play the calliope, a steam organ.

Mist from the organ, the paddlewheel,

and my eye mix a Mississippi River gumbo.

The kind that keeps Mary afloat.

Ted & Sandy Scull

Note: Italicized words and phrases originated with steamboats.

a Ghost on the Delta Queen

Ted & Sandy Scull

© This article is protected by copyright, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission from the author. All Rights Reserved. QuirkyCruise.com.

About The Author

Theodore Scull

I am happiest near water, over water or better still on a conveyance moving through water. When my brother Sandy and I were deemed old enough, mother took us to Europe by ship.

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Heidi and Ted HEIDI SARNA

I'm up to 78 countries and 110+ cruises worldwide, and it's the small ship journeys that I love writing about most. And so QuirkyCruise.com was born, an excellent research tool for planning your own unforgettable small ship trip.

THEODORE W. SCULL

I have traveled between all continents by sea and cruised along three dozen rivers. Ships and travel are in my blood, and so is writing. My journeys have translated into many books and many hundreds of articles.

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