Steamboat Natchez Dock — Toulouse Street Wharf

Docked at the Toulouse Street Wharf in New Orleans, the Steamboat Natchez is an undefeated steamship christened in 1975 that operates with vintage 1925 engines. The vessel features a 32-note calliope capable of exceeding 120 decibels, a whistle from a 1908 shipwreck, and a copper bell cast from 250 silver dollars. It continues a centuries-old Mississippi River tradition of boats bearing the Natchez name.

New Orleans · from the walk “Moon Walk: New Orleans Riverfront Revealed” · audio ~4 min · Generated

Steamboat Natchez, 400 Toulouse St, New Orleans

How loud is the steam calliope on the Steamboat Natchez in New Orleans?

Stop. Listen. Can you hear that? That bright, joyful shriek of steam and brass echoing across the water? That's the sound of a Calliope... a thirty-two note steam pipe organ perched high on the deck of the vessel right in front of you. The Steamboat Natchez.......... She is the Ninth boat to carry the name Natchez, and she has never... Ever... lost a steamboat race. Not once. Let that sink in.......... Now, here's where the story gets fascinating. This boat was christened on April twelfth, nineteen seventy-five, right here at Toulouse Street Wharf. But her heart is much older than that. Her powerful steam engines were built for U.S. Steel Corporation's sternwheeler Clairton back in nineteen twenty-five. That means the engines beating inside this boat are over a century old... salvaged from a vessel that once pushed steel and coal on the Kanawha River in West Virginia.......... And that copper bell you might spot on board? It was made from two hundred and fifty melted silver dollars to produce a purer, sweeter tone. The whistle itself came from a ship that sank in nineteen oh eight on the Monongahela River. This boat is a floating museum of salvaged river history!......... But what about the Name, Natchez? The first boat to bear it was a small sidewheeler built in eighteen twenty-three. Its most notable passenger was the Marquis de Lafayette, the French hero of the American Revolutionary War, in eighteen twenty-five. Then came Captain Thomas P. Leathers... nicknamed "Old Push"... a man so fierce and competitive that he would sometimes throw fatty bacon and hog fat into the engine to dramatically increase the speed of his boats. He built Seven boats called Natchez.......... His sixth was the racer in that legendary eighteen seventy race against the Robert E. Lee, from New Orleans to Saint Louis... twelve hundred miles. The Lee won by stripping down and carrying no cargo, steaming straight through fog. The Natchez carried her normal load and stopped as usual... and still arrived only six hours later. Leathers insisted until his dying day that His boat was faster.......... And here's a detail most people walk right past. Every Natchez since Leathers' first has carried the same ensign... a bale of cotton between its smokestacks. Look up. You might just spot it. A tribute to the cotton trade that once made this river the richest waterway on Earth.......... Now, that Calliope you're hearing? Its inventor, Joshua C. Stoddard, patented it in October eighteen fifty-five and originally intended it to be played in a church. Instead, it found its way onto showboats, where it could blast at over a hundred and twenty decibels... loud enough to be heard for Miles. The player wears heavy ear protection for every single performance. So the next time you hear that wild, joyful music drifting over Jackson Square... remember. It was meant for a Sunday sermon... but the Mississippi had other plans.