Sternwheelers

At New Richmond, Ohio, crowds lined the river banks. A shout went up when smoke was discernible in the distance. On Dam 35 the judges grew prematurely alert, fingered their watches. Up the river, belching like twin-snouted dragons, sloshing along at an uproarious nine-knots-per-hour came the doughty Sternwheelers Tom Greene and Betsy Ann at the grim finish of a 21-mile race upstream from Cincinnati. Long before they could see which was ahead the crowd could hear the roar of the laboring engines. Children cringed, fearing an explosion. Old rivermen felt young again at the familiar sound.

Past the finish line the packets steamed, engines wide open, passengers hullaba-looing. Spectators on the banks were still disputing the result when the ships, carried far upstream by their momentum, returned. The judges declared the Tom Greene had won by a few feet, repeating the performance of its sister ship the Chris Greene which defeated the Betsy Ann in last year's first revival of an old-time race.

Tom Greene, 25, master of the ship bearing his name is descended from a long line of rivermen. His first mate, the only woman on the Ohio river to hold a pilot's license, was his mother.

From New Orleans, heading for St. Louis 1,200 miles upstream, "out to beat the record of the Robert E. Lee," sleek express cruiser Martha Jane and a smaller mahogany runabout called Bogie started up the tortuous Mississippi. The Robert E. Lee's record, made in 1870 when she beat the Natchez and many a shiny dollar changed hands, was 90 hr. 30 min.