The Splendor & Captain Kelly
( Returning to the ship after a bus tour. Capt. Kelly was ALWAYS there to greet us and several red-shirted helpers to ensure our safety. Remember, the river was 40-feet low so we had to walk downhill a ways on newly-laid gravel.) The American Cruise Ship Splendor could carry 185 passengers; on my trip there were 164 of us, with a crew of 59, including the captain. The Splendor drew only 7 ½ feet of water (“think of it like a hotel on a flat-bottomed barge”) and only needs 9 feet of water to proceed….. and I understood that many times that was the river’s depth during my cruise. The average ship’s speed was 7 to 8 miles per hour (yes, on the rivers, length is measured in miles) and the average river flow is 3 miles per hour. The captain explained in a Q&A session that the biggest usage on the ship was potable water but they did carry 28,000 gallons…….. and resupplied with a sometimes very long hose at every port stop. The ship had a MSD, a marine sanitation discharge system, ...