The Sprague was built in 1902-3 by the Iowa Iron Works Company at Dubuqu, Iowa, for the Monongahela River Consolidated Coal and Coke Company, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her feet in dimensions are:- 315 x 62 x 9 feet. Her stern wheel was 40 feet in diameter with buckets 40 feet long. The compound, condensing engines are 28's by 63's with a 12-foot stroke. There were 6 boilers, each 7 feet in diameter and 14 feet long. The pilot house is 26 x 20 feet and houses a pilot wheel 13 1/2 feet in diameter. The Sprague was designed and built to tow coal from the Pittsburgh coal district down the Ohio and Mississippi River to Southern ports. When completed and placed in service Captains Henry B. Nye and Calvin Blazer (spoken affectionately as \"Poor Boy\" and \"Quaker Oats\") became her pilots. It was then that one of the largest coal tows ever made came down the river. The tow consisted of 60 coal boats, dimensions of which were 180 x 26 x 8 feet draft. The tow was arranged five lengths, 12 barges wide. The tonnage was 50,000. People lined the river banks to see the mighty tow of \"Black Diamond\" pass by. On December 9, 1905 she passed Cairo upbound with a tow of 48 barges and several pieces, the largest tow ever to come up the Mississippi. In January 1906, she went to New Orleans with 50 coal boats and six barges of coal, a total of 292,000 bushels. In early 1907, she brought 54 empty coal boats up to Louisville. On her return trip she took down stream 71 loaded coal boats containing 1,780,000 bushels of coal or 71,200 tons, the record tow of all time. At still another time she took 56 coal boats south carrying 54,000 tons or approximately 1500 train car loads. On February 11, 1907, with a tow of 57 pieces, enroute from Louisville to New Orleans, she struck a rock dike just below Memphis, Tennessee and sunk and destroyed 9 loaded coal boats containing 240,000 bushels of coal valued at $25,000. On January 22, 1910, when near French Island, enroute down the Ohio River with a tow of coal, she was caught in a severe windstorm. Before she could land 14 boats and 3 barges were sunk; loss $50,000. With the advent of fuel oil and natural gas the demand for coal diminished and after about ten years of good service the Sprague was idle. She was acquired by the Standard Oil Company of Louisiana in 1925 and after repairs was placed in service between Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Grank Lake, Arkansas and Memphis, Tennesse, towing oil products. She is still in operation. The Sprague is the largest, sternwheel towing vessel ever constructed in the world and is known along the river affectionately as \"Big MAMA.\" Her record tow with the Standard Oil Company consisted of 19 steel barges loaded with 224,000 barrels of crude oil. The overall dimension of this fleet approximated one city block wide and four city blocks long. It would have taken 1120 tank cars of 200 barrels each, to have moved the cargo by rail equivalent to 28 trains of 40 cars each.
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