Cold cripples historic Delta Queen; water damage closes riverboat indefinitely

A closed gate restricts access to Delta Queen riverboat hotel Monday as it is docked at the shore near Coolidge Park on the Tennessee River.

The Delta Queen is dead in the water, its bar closed, its decks manned by plumbers and carpenters who are working against time as the clock ticks down toward the boat's last month in Chattanooga.

The bitter winter cold, which played havoc with plumbing all over the Scenic City in January and February, took a gruesome toll on the floating hotel. Single-digit temperatures split pipes and ruined historic wood trim on all decks of the 87-year-old landmark, which was named a National Treasure by the National Trust in September 2013.

"The boat was never built to sustain cold weather for that long of a period of time," said Leah Ann Ingram, general manager of the Delta Queen, which since 1927 has logged more than two million miles and carried half a million passengers.

With the 2008 expiration of the Delta Queen's Congressional exemption to a Coast Guard rule that forbids boats with wooden structures from carrying more than 50 passengers on overnight trips, the floating hotel has remained moored in front of Coolidge Park in Chattanooga in what have become unfriendly waters.

Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke sought to boot the boat shortly after he took office in 2013 for nonpayment of rent and to clean up the shoreline, according to a spokesman, but the city has periodically extended the lease in response to requests from Delta Queen owner Xanterra Parks and Resorts.

There's no way to predict how long it will take to repair the Queen or how much it will cost, Ingram said, because of the difficulty involved in repairing a historic structure, and because crews are still running into damage.

Simply finding the leaks in the first place was a challenge. Ingram had to track down the Delta Queen's former captain, who previously oversaw the installation of the boat's sprinkler system in the 1990s, to help isolate and fix broken pipes and damaged panels on the boat. That alone took three weeks.

Even today, workers -- including craftsmen brought in to recreate the historic tongue-in-groove wood design that prevailed just before the Great Depression -- continue to find leaks and other issues, she said, which pushes back the completion date and pushes up repair costs.

"It could be next week, it could be two weeks, it could be a month. It just depends on what the crew finds," Ingram said.

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Cold cripples historic Delta Queen; water damage closes riverboat indefinitely