The Steamboating Forum

Took a trip Down the Delaware and up the Schuylkill River at Philadelphia.

Lower portion of the river is all industrial, upper area is the much modernized parts of the city, with great old and new buildings. Endpoint of travel is the dam and famous “Boathouse Row” with the rowing teams located just upstream of the dam.

The Philadelphia Waterworks, built about 180 years ago, used waterwheels, then steam to pump city water. Water was pumped up to a high reservoir (now the site of the Philadelphia Art Museum), with gravity flow to the city. The picture shows the original waterwheel outlets (left), the 1820 vintage engine house (two big beam engines then, a high-end restaurant now), and the Art Museum on the right.

A good touring day, 10 hours round trip.

A few more pictures of the trip, lower industrial zone, then center of the city, but wthout the traffic!

Way to go Fred! My son proposed that very trip to me just the other day, he must have spoken to you. While you were enjoying yourself on two rivers, we were getting our hands all gooey bedding and installing bronze half oval gaurds.

Don Fenstermacher, Sr.
(New onboard - my first post)

This stirs up memories of merchant marine days, Fred.

One Sunday in a former employ, we were coming up from Wilmington with the MV Jean Turecamo and a petroleum barge. This was a nice, medium size model bow tug with twin 567C's of a configuration I can't remember. They weren't V16's at any rate. Once we had set out north from Wilmington, I put the tug on the shaft generator and shut down the screaming 671's. With relative peace and quiet, I set about "sujjing" the engine room, as we called it. In my happy place for a couple of hours, I didn't sense the turn at the Navy Yard to head up the Schuylkill. All of a sudden the mains throttled back - we had wheelhouse control - and the shaft generator dropped her load. The mate came flying down the ladder from the fidley into the darkness just as I was lighting off the one 671 genset, saying they had no power in the wheelhouse, in the narrow confines of the lower Schuylkill without rudder indicator or anything. Needless to say, I was one embarrassed engineer ...

Tragically, a year or two later, the Jean caught fire off Point Judith and sank. There were no casualties among the crew.

Anyway, that all came flooding back looking at the pictures of your fine excursion.