Sprague

History
United States
Name	Sprague
Builder	Peter Sprague
In service	1902
Out of service	1948
Nickname(s)	Big Mama
Fate	Destroyed by fire, 15 April 1974
General characteristics
Type	Towboat
Length	276 ft (84 m)
Beam	61 ft (19 m)
Draft	7.4 ft (2.3 m)
Installed power	2,079 hp (1,550 kW)
Propulsion	coal-fired steam

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

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]