Woman continues campaign to save 82-year-old Delta Queen steamboat

CINCINNATI (AP) — The Delta Queen steamboat’s new role as a hotel won’t stop a grass-roots effort to save the vessel, said the Cincinnati woman behind the campaign.

Vicki Webster has fought since 1970 to preserve the exemption that allows the 82-year-old, mostly wooden boat — the last of its kind — to operate overnight river cruises for up to 176 passengers. Federal law prohibits such boats from carrying more than 50 overnight passengers.

The Delta Queen’s exemption expired in October. On Wednesday, the boat will leave its winter home in New Orleans for Chattanooga, Tenn., where it will be anchored as a riverfront hotel. Its owner, California-based Ambassadors International, had been shopping around the idea of a potential lease in recent months.

Webster said she thinks what’s happened to the boat is “stupid” and “horribly wrong.”

“I can’t imagine the river without her,” said Webster, a freelance writer who moved from St. Louis to the vessel’s former home port of Cincinnati in 2007 to be closer to the heart of the debate. “When she’s gone, so much will be lost.”

Webster plans to continue lobbying lawmakers to renew its exemption. Her “Save the Delta Queen Campaign” includes plenty of volunteers, but she’s the driving force.

“She can shoot down any argument against saving the boat in language that is clear and concise,” said former U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot, an Ohio Republican who championed Webster’s cause. “She’s not in this for the money or an ulterior motive. She’s doing this for the love of the boat.”

Individual preservation campaigns such as Webster’s aren’t unusual, said Peter Brink, senior vice president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington, D.C.

“Historic places are often saved by the efforts of one person,” Brink said.

The boat was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1989. Webster fell in love with it years earlier, in 1970, on a vacation from her job in President Richard Nixon’s White House. She lobbied that year for the boat’s exemption and thought it would continue to be renewed, only to realize she’d have to pick up the fight again.

Along the way, she’s learned to counter critics’ objections to the exemption, including that the boat is a fire hazard and that its crew should be unionized.

The Delta Queen’s on-board historian, Mary Charlton, said Webster has a knack for pitching her argument in terms that anyone can understand.

“To speak the specific language of steamboating, you have to love the boat and be a little crazy,” Charlton said. “That’s Vicki.”