The Island Queen

by John H. White

For more than twenty years, the Island Queen carried day-trippers on the Ohio River between Cincinnati and Coney Island amusement park. Built in 1925, with paddlewheels thirty feet in diameter and a capacity of 4,100 passengers, she was one of the largest passenger steamers on the inland river system. Taking thousands of city dwellers each day out of the heat and soot of Cincinnati and into the cool river breezes, the gleaming white boat was called "a fairy steamer, the dream of every riverman." When the Island Queen finished her summer season, she ran excursions along the inland waterways from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. Constructed of steel and meticulously maintained, the Island Queen seemed destined for a long service life. But in 1947 a freak welding accident at the dock in Pittsburgh caused a catastrophic explosion that left the once proud steamer a scorched and twisted ruin. John and Robert White tell the story of the Island Queen in evocative detail, from her construction to her