Destrehan

by Gene Andes

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About the Vessel

Destrehan was a Mississippi River steam powered sternwheel towboat built in 1921 by the Charles Ward company in Charleston, West Virginia for the Pan American Petroleum company of New Orleans.  The vessel was primarily used to transport barges of oil and refined oil products up and down the Mississippi based in New Orleans.

She was sold in 1941 to the American Rolling Mill Company, renamed the Charles R. Hook, and based in Cincinnati, Ohio.  She transported barges between Cincinnati and Huntington on the Ohio River. The American Rolling Mill Company operated a small fleet of steam-powered towboats on the Ohio River and Wet Virginia’s Kanawha River pushing barges from the coal mines of West Virginia to its Ashland, Kentucky plant or  Cincinnati where the coal was transported by train to the Middletown plant.

Dismantled in 1957, The towboat was re-modeled by a locally renowned riverboat captain, Jack Beatty, and reincarnated as the floating restaurant, the Captain Hook, which opened in 1964 in Cincinnati.

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