Looks like a ramming..........
Posted on 02/22/2010 11:12:49 AM PST by PghBaldy
NEVILLE ISLAND, Pa. - A piece of sternwheel and Marietta history was apparently lost this weekend as the showboat Becky Thatcher sank at its mooring on Neville Island in the Ohio River, just north of Pittsburgh, Pa.
"It's gone - not salvageable, a total loss. It's the end of the chapter for the Becky," owner Jeff Levin said Sunday.
Levin said the 83-year-old sternwheeler sank sometime late Friday night or early Saturday morning, and the top two decks had collapsed onto the boat's main deck.
"We don't know what happened - a passing barge could have hit it," Levin said. "But we won't know if it was hit until we get the hull out of the water. If it looks like it was rammed the (U.S.) Coast Guard will investigate.
"But we may never know," he added. "It's pretty devastating - we never envisioned this."
(Excerpt) Read more at newsandsentinel.com ...
How terrible! The Muskingum river runs through my city too and we have our own sternwheeler here,the Lorena. This may mean ours is the last one left on the river?
Insurance job?
Seems like a lot of damage from a sinking at dock. Plus he’s in quite a hurry to get it cut up and sold as scrap.
Maybe the restaurant plans fell through?
Looks like a ramming..........
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According to the article, he only carried liability insurance, so it doesn’t sound like an insurance job.
Now, we have had about 2+ feet of snow the past few weeks. Not sure if that would be enough weight to do her in or not...
Not even close. His plan take us into much deeper water before he scuttles the ship.
No. It's what our health care after it gets taken over by Obamacare.
Sounds like it was just moored and not able to go anywhere on it’s own power. Riverboats are like any other watercraft. They require maintenance thats a bit more than just a coat of paint and new curtains. If it was rammed thats one thing but I suspect it is more a matter of neglegence and poor if any repairs. I’ll bet the hull was paper thin. The way she looks buckled makes me think of hull failure. I was stationed on the Ohio in the Coast guard and remember many old boats that when you stood in the middle of a hull plate and jumped up and down would shake and vibrate like crazy.
Looks like a “World Without People” still.
I’m very sorry the Becky Thatcher is gone. But I want to point out the obvious to the writer, the headline writer and the editor, all of whom apparently went to some really demanding journalism school, and who have informed us that the reason the Thatcher went down is not known:
The reason it went down is because there was a hole somewhere in the hull. You guys ought to demand your journalism school tuition back. Your school needs a course in avoiding journalistic stupidity.
Ate at this McDonalds a couple of times, think it broke it's mooring, and was lost, during one of the floods.
Yeah insurance job is my guess....times is tough all over
It’s a shame. They don’t build ‘em like that any more.
This is a very sad ending for such a beautiful piece of history. The Becky Thatcher had been listed for sale on EBAY for about the last three years at a listing price of $299.000 with no takers. I couldn’t resist looking at all the pics of this glorious vessel every time I ran across the listing. What a sad ending.
It was that time of month?
Oh, you mean the SHIP Becky Thatcher. . . .
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