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Fiddlinsue
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  • Register:11/11/2008 8:17 AM

Date Posted:02/18/2009 1:24 AMCopy HTML

 
 
 
 
 
Adventure Galley II
 
This picture of the flatboat replica, ADVENTURE GALLEY II,  recently surfaced when someone sent it attached to an email and wondering what sort of strange craft it was that had a grass roof.
In 1984, this replica of the 1792 flatboat that brought early
pioneers to Marietta, Ohio started its own adventure down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.  After a voyage of nearly 2000 miles, the flatboat became a display at the New Orleans World's Fair where hunters tried to buy the strange craft for a duck blind, but owner, Vaughn Wendland, brought the boat back to Cincinnati on a large boat trailer, instead.
The AG2 was built by students of the Inland Waterways
Occupational School in Cincinnati as a four-year class project under the direction of their instructor, Captain Jim Commer.  Wendland solicited Cincinnati businesses and assorted individuals for contributions and loans to pay for the materials to build the boat. Under its wooden veneer, the little vessel had a U.S. Coast Guard certified steel hull, and atop the fortress-like superstructure, the flatboat sported a turf roof. Several times a day, two student-deckhands took turns keeping the roof well-watered, especially under the scorching Southern sun on the Mississippi River below Cairo, Illinois. 
The cool grass roof was especially kind to the pilot's eyes as he sat on a high stool on the after end of the boat and steered two outboard engines concealed in the stern.
The Coast Guard required at least one licensed Master or Pilot on board whenever the boat was underway or had visitors aboard. 
Over 75,000 persons were thought to have visited the ADVENTURE GALLEY II during frequent stops made along the way to the Louisiana fair. This photo was taken from Silver Street in Natchez, Mississippi, and the two people on the stern deck are Vaughn on the left and Captain Don Sanders, the Pilot, who lived aboard for twenty-eight days from Helena, Arkansas to New Orleans.
A year or so after this picture was taken, Vaughn was killed by a drunken driver on Interstate-75, North of Cincinnati after he ran out of gasoline on a bitter-cold night and had walked to a distant gas station where he traded his watch for a can of fuel.  As he was pouring it into his car, he was hit. Vaughn lingered for several days before he died.  His last year had been spent trying to pay off the debts he owed to those who lent him money to build the flatboat. What, today, remains of the ADVENTURE GALLEY II lies moldering in the front yard of the Behringer-Crawford Museum in Covington, Kentucky. 
Vaughn Wendling is mostly forgotten except to those who knew him, but his adventuring spirit created a strange craft that had a long and exciting journey down the length of two great rivers and brought excitement into the lives of thousands of people who briefly shared his unusual dream. Unknowingly, Vaughn revived an interest in flatboat replica voyages, and that spirit thrives mainly in one Captain Bela Berty who will soon begin his third flatboat adventure.
Thanks to Captain Donald Sanders
for the above information.
 

 
 
 
Photo courtesy & Property of:
Bela Berty
and is used with permission.
The information was also supplied
by Bela Berty.
This set is NOT public domain and
is NOT to leave this site at all. It is for
my own personal use only.
Thanks.....Fiddlinsue
Pages last update was:
February 23, 2003
 
 
 
Fiddlinsue Share to: Facebook Twitter MSN linkedin google yahoo #1
  • Rank:none
  • Score:220
  • Posts:220
  • From:USA
  • Register:11/11/2008 8:17 AM

Re:Flatboat Adventure Galley II

Date Posted:11/16/2010 12:51 AMCopy HTML

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