Ed Smith (1914-1989) was one of thousands of firemen who kept the fires burning beneath the boilers of steam-powered riverboats. Born in Parkin, Arkansas along the St. Francis River, he grew up only 30 miles west from the steamboat landing at Beale Street in Memphis.
His first job in the boiler room was on the ADMIRAL, then served on the AVALON and the DELTA QUEEN. It was said he could throw a heavy lock line with such accuracy.
The late Captain Doc Hawley, one of the Hall of Fame’s founders and Class of 2024, recalled how Smith saved the DELTA QUEEN and its passengers and crew from disaster. In 1967, the QUEEN was upbound on the Ohio River and the EXXON WEST VIRGINIA was coming downbound on the one-whistle side with a string of empty gasoline barges. Without warning, the QUEEN’s tiller lines broke, causing her rudders to run hard-over to port. The QUEEN then aimed toward the head of the gas barges, about to penetrate the skin of the barges filled with explosive fumes. Smith bravely prevented an explosion by quickly grabbing a hefty rope bumper and placing it between the two colliding metal surfaces.
Smith saved the QUEEN passengers and crew again in the 1960s. The QUEEN was shoving upbound through a lower lock gate on the Tennessee River. Her three-ton swinging stage (gangplank) was still tied down and projected fifty feet beyond the stem of the bow like an oversized battering ram, aimed for the approaching gates. Smith snatched a long-handled ax and chopped the port side gunnel and heel ties where they fastened to the deck. The stage swung safely to starboard, its leading outboard corner slamming the cement lock wall with the sound of a cannon firing. The QUEEN and the lock suffered only cuts, scratches, and bruises. By the time the deckhands reclaimed their territory on the bow, Smith was back in the boiler room attending to the fires.
Smith was one of the best-known skilled firemen to work on America’s rivers and the first to be considered, and then inducted, into the National Rivers Hall of Fame.