Queen And King

In the November issue Alan Hall wrote that a recent article on the Delta Queen had “solved a minor mystery that has plagued me since 1946”—namely, what was that drab-gray sternwheeler doing surrounded by Navy vessels in San Francisco Bay? But I’m afraid Mr. Hall’s mystery is not as neatly solved as he thinks.

The vessel in the photograph is not the Delta Queen . The Delta Queen had a wide stairway leading up to the hurricane deck, where the steam calliope is today, and she never moored in the old railroad-car float slip shown in the photograph. Only the Delta King moored there. Delta Queen , when at Treasure Island, moored at a pier not visible in the photo. I was a crew member of the Delta Queen during all of 1945 and 1946, up to the time the vessel was sold to a contractor, taken to Alaska, and converted into a barracks for construction workers. I was probably on board when your picture was taken.