thestar.com

Delta Queen, now one of the only two paddlewheelers in North America carrying overnight passengers, was constructed in 1926, a $850,000 investment in teakwood handrails, stained glass windows and mahogany paneling, designed for a San Francisco passenger line. After wartime service as a troop ferry, she was sold at auction to the Greene Line president, who had the doughty old queen of San Francisco Bay towed through the Panama Canal, across the Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans and on to Pittsburgh for refurbishing and a new career on the Mississippi.

The tariff was lower in June of 1890 when Gordon Greene brought the steamboat H.K. Bedford, first in a succession of 29 family operated vessels, into his newly formed Greene Line service. The forebear of the Delta Queen Steamboat Co. was a folksy enterprise in the beginning, with Gordon's bride, [Mary Greene], who also held a master's licence, serving as co-pilot and hostess.