Majestic America Line, the owner of the historic steamboat DELTA QUEEN, has alarmed the steamboat and riverboat community that the DELTA QUEEN might not be able to run after November 2008 and support from her passengers and friends is needed. MAL asks for contacting local Congressmen to support a law that will renew the exemption for the DELTA QUEEN from security laws and Coast Guard regulations due to the wooden superstructure of the boat.

Obviously the law for the exemption has passed the Senate last year but didn't make it to the House of Representatives for some technical reasons. MAL states that now there is some union interest groups opposing the exemption, questioning the safety of the DELTA QUEEN.

An important fact to remember in this issue is that all this indeed is about issuing an exemption from a more than 30 years old law about the safety of passenger vessels that was issued mainly with seagoing vessels in mind to prevent from desasters on high sea where a wooden superstructure can be desastrous in case of a fire onboard. The DELTA QUEEN never cruises on open sea, in fact she is always very close to a river bank (except for a few cruises to the Gulf of Mexico coast in the past) and on most rivers the channel is only 12 feet deep. So the boat - even in the worse case the boat sinks - will never fully submerge and the pilot in case of emergency will always be able to ground the boat within minutes and set the passengers ashore.

The DELTA QUEEN over many years has proven to be a very safe boat and there is no reason at all to question her safety now. There might be a political background in this story. I'm researching this at the moment and will keep you updated here.