Before there was a general, there was a queen.
She witnessed joy and tragedy and carried thousands of passengers up and down the Cumberland River showing off Nashville’s skyline.
She is the Music City Queen, a 125-foot paddlewheel riverboat, christened on an autumn night in September 40 years ago.
At the time, the 350-passenger boat was owned by the Belle Carol Riverboat Co., and when added to their fleet was the largest vessel they owned.
“A four-deck restaurant riverboat, the Queen has two custom-made mahogany bars, chandeliers and decorative handrails which lead to enclosed decks decorated with floral print carpets and elegant draperies,” a September 1984 article in The Tennessean said of the boat.
She also featured an open-air deck on the third level with an air-conditioned private lounge. The pilot house sat on the fourth deck.
The Music City Queen hosted evening cruises, luncheons and private events. Days before her official christening, a 16-year-old Patrick Day stepped aboard to better understand life cruising down the river. He went on to play Huck Finn in the 1986 adaptation of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” and continues to have a successful career as a character actor.
In 1985, visitors could pay $30.70 per person for a romantic Valentine’s dinner and dance aboard the boat. But by 1986, the crew had their first drowning when a man participating in a “beer-spitting contest” flipped over a railing into the water below. It wouldn’t be the last drowning in the history of the boat.
In 1995, the much larger 1,200-passenger General Jackson, owned by Gaylord Entertainment, launched on the Cumberland River. The Queen competed against the Jackson for about a year before she was acquired by the Gaylord.
After a face-lift, she continued to paddle down the Cumberland for sightseeing tours, Sunday brunch and city lights dinner cruises, according to advertisements from 1997. In the 2000s, she became limited to private charters for work events, weddings and high school proms.
Then, the Queen quietly left Nashville.
It’s unclear exactly when she was sold, but records kept by the U.S. Coast Guard show she was last inspected in Nashville on February 6, 2014. Three weeks later the boat was in Peducah, Kentucky and remained there until at least April 24, 2014.
By May 30, 2014, the Music City Queen was in Boston.
Now owned by Massachusetts Bay Lines, a tour boat company, the Music City Queen lives on hosting weddings, corporate dinners and cocktail parties on the waterways around Boston.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: From the archives: Music City Queen christened 40 years ago on Cumberland River
