Sprague, built at Dubuque, Iowa's Iowa Iron Works in 1901 by Captain Peter Sprague for the Monongahela River Consolidated Coal and Coke Company, was the world's largest steam powered sternwheeler towboat.[1] She was nicknamed Big Mama,[2] and was capable of pushing 56 coal barges at once. In 1907, Sprague set a world's all-time record for towing: 60 barges of coal, weighing 67,307 tons, covering an area of 6+1⁄2 acres, and measuring 925 feet (282 m) by 312 feet (95 m).[3] She was decommissioned as a towboat in 1948.

Legacy

Mural of the Sprague on Vicksburg floodwall

After decommissioning, Sprague became a museum on the Vicksburg, Mississippi, waterfront. For many years the long-running melodrama Gold in the Hills was performed there. The boat burned in Vicksburg on 15 April 1974,[4] and as of 2019, pieces still remain in Vicksburg, Mississippi.[5]

A model of Sprague is in the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium in Dubuque, Iowa. The model was made in 1908 by Elizabeth Marine Ways a steamboat yard in Elizabeth, Pennsylvania, and was put on show at the Pittsburgh Exposition of 1908.[6] Another model of Sprague can be found in the Portland Museum in the Portland neighborhood of Louisville, KY.[7]

The Friends of the Sprague organization sponsored a mural entitled The Big Mama of the Mississippi as one of the Vicksburg Riverfront Murals. It was dedicated on 23 March 2007.[8]