The steamer Omar is a sternwheel , steel-hull towboat, built in 1936 at Neville Island, Pennsylvania by the Dravo Corporation. Her hull is 171.4 x 34.6 x 7 feet; Length over-all is 202 feet and she draws six feet, two inches of water. She was built for the Ohio River Company of Cincinnati, Ohio. She has five return flue boilers which are especially designed for river steamers. All five of the boilers are over one fire box. Two Hanna locomotive stokers are used for firing. There are two compound condensing 575 H.P. Marietta engines, 16's by 32's with 8-foot stroke; 1150 total horse power. The water wheel is 24 feet in diameter and 24 feet long. The R.P.M. of the wheel is about twenty-five. The steamer Omar carries a crew of twenty-three consisting of the captain, two pilots, mate, steersman, watchman, engine room crew of four, two firemen, deck hands, two maids, cook, clerk and mess boy. The time required for the steamer Omar, with a tow of ten barges, to make the trip from Huntington to Cincinnati ranges from eighteen to twenty-four hours, provided there is an open river. If the river is in pool stage, making it necessary to lock, there are nine locks to go through before reaching Addyston. It takes approximately forty-five minutes for the boat and the tow to through a single lock. Whenever she is towing more than ten barges, it is necessary to lock twice at each dam. A notable record in the rapid movement of heavy cargoes was recently made by the Omar in February, 1943. Leaving Huntington, West Virginia at 3:30 P.M. on February 22nd, she delivered a 25-barge tow of 22,000 tons of coal to Cincinnati. She then returned to Huntington by 11 A.M. on February 26th, bringing in sixteen empty coal barges, having made the round trip in 91-1/2 hours. After being in town six hours, she was out with another coal tow the same Friday evening. By Sunday, February 28th, she had delivered a total of 40,000 tons of coal to Cincinnati within the week. Her log book shows that on George Washington's birthday last year the big steamer was leaving Huntington for Cincinnati with 22 barges of coal. That was also the day on which the G. W. McBride, also of the Ohio River Company fleet, was wrecked against a Cincinnati bridge pier with severe loss of life. Captain Wilbur C. Chapman is master of the Omar with G. Ed Young and Coleman Lucas, pilots; Frank Dormick, clerk and steersman; William H. Fuller, chief engineer; Everett Hamlin, second engineer; and Joe Plummer and Robert Lockhart, mates. The Ohio River Company operates six boats, namely : Omar, McBride, Kenna, North Star, W. W. Marting and Omega.
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