Columbia and Little Sister Ste. Claire
Reported by Erik Smith
Web produced by Christiana Ciolac

The Bob-Lo steamers: Columbia and St. Clair Video

Who can forget the Bob-Lo boats sounding off as they headed to the Detroit River to an island filled with fun and games. This is all that remains, what the vandals, the accountants, the dreamers and the evil twin sisters, time and neglect, have left behind for us.

The yards of rotting canvas flapping hopelessly in a season's wind, a hundred, maybe ten hundred orange jackets littered across a wooden dance floor where now only the feet of pigeons sway to the rhythm of the river's swells.

"She was built for the ferry company. She arrived from the ferries that went before her. She had this ballroom that no boat had ever had before. She had a lot of things that were different," Bill Warden of the Steamer Columbia Foundation said.

Columbia

She floats on a sea of sadness, surrounded by the hissing sounds of packaged air from a factory that conjoins her to her rotting dock.

The silence of Columbia is deafening. She is dying. Painfully, deck by deck, season by season, hours by minutes. The pride of the river when she was born almost 100 years ago, now has little left to her but a good name and an unusual reputation.

"She was built to be a boat of reputation. The mahogany and stained glass brought people to her."

Bill is a man in love, in love with a mistress named Columbia, a river goddess who once reigned over an island where thousands came to make merry, to dance the night away, perhaps to fall in love, but always to quilt a patchwork of pleasant moments into a tapestry of lifetime memories. She was, after all, Columbia, an aging benevolent queen, driven from her throne, exiled, abandoned and simply left to die.

"These are the last two excursion boats in existence. They're all gone, except these two," Warden explained.

While she is clearly the victim of acute exposure, Columbia is still pure and strong. She was made of sturdy stuff back in 1902, so her heart is ready to pump again.

Columbia

If Bill Warden and the Steamer Columbia Foundation can interest a few more of us in yet another walk down her romantic gang plank, a treasured jewel of the city's past may once again sound her thundering whistle in the dawn of a new century.

What's it going to cost? Do we really know?

"I think at this point we're looking at $5 million or $6 million to get back to the painted rose buds," Warden said.

Then she'd be the Columbia again.

"Not only that, she'd be the only thing of her kind in the world."

Sadly, if the call to save Columbia is not answered, she'll be gone. She just can't take too many more nights of below zero temperatures and long summer days with nothing to do.

Steamers Columbia and St. Clair

Her little sister, St. Clair, still clings to her side, but she, too, will be gone, hopefully to a renewed life in another place, leaving Columbia alone. She needs the care of those who know and love her best.

"I gotta tell you, everywhere I go, anytime I go anywhere and I say bringing one of the boats back, all I get are smiles. It's just wonderful. There are a lot of people out there who think about standing back there by that rail and watching the engine go around," Warden said.

The boat is in need of repair.

While she's been away, Columbia's only child has been taken from her. Bob-Lo is forever gone, but there are other islands in her waters, other venues in which to seek dominion, other memories to make if we want to believe once again in the magic of the mistress of the moon light. I know I do. Maybe we'll hear the whistle blow again.

"I'm counting on that," Warden said.

So many good memories. It would be nice to have some new ones.

More information:
The Steamer Columbia Foundation
P.O. Box 43232
Detroit, MI 48243
Phone: 313-331-9920
Online: http://www.steamercolumbia.org/

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