Capt. Steven Nicoulin, Steamboat Natchez

The Steamboat Natchez is a fixture of the New Orleans riverfront. The steam-driven passenger vessel was built just downriver in Braithwaite, La., and has been plying the Mississippi River around the Crescent City for 51 years.

And for that entire time, the crew has included someone named Steven Nicoulin.

“I actually grew up into it,” said Steven Nicoulin, captain aboard the Natchez. “My father was an original crew member of this boat. I think his employee number was 14 or so.”

Nicoulin’s father was 19 and working on the Belle of Louisville in the early 1970s under Capt. Clarke Campbell “Doc” Hawley.

“When Capt. Hawley got the job down here, he took a lot of the Louisville guys with him—pretty much stole the whole crew,” Nicoulin said. “That’s how my dad became a resident down here. He stuck with it, and I just grew up around the boat.”

Nicoulin’s father started out as a deckhand on the Natchez and worked his way up to captain. When Nicoulin himself graduated high school, though, he took a slightly different path than his father aboard the Natchez.

“I started off in the engineroom, just to get my foot in the door,” he said. “I was trying to do something opposite of him because he had a pretty big shadow.”

When there was an opening on deck, Nicoulin made the switch, working his way from deckhand to mate, pilot and, now, captain.

“It’s been special, you know, being a father-son team, working with him over the years,” Nicoulin said. “He’s on the verge of retirement, so I’m enjoying the time I’ve got left with him. He only works a couple days a week now, and he’s actually my pilot. It’s kind of funny how he went from being my boss to now I’m his boss.”

Nicoulin said training under his dad was hard at times, in a good way.

“Everybody thinks you get special privileges because your dad’s the captain, but it’s the complete opposite,” he said. “Your dad’s kind of hard on you and expects you to do the right thing. I’m grateful for it because it made me a better person and a better captain.”

Nicoulin said, besides enjoying working closely with his dad, he sees it as a way of passing on the legacy of the Natchez and of steam-driven passenger vessels.

“My dad learned from the best, which was Capt. Hawley, and he’s passing his old traditions down the pipes to me and Capt. CJ Larnder,” Nicoulin said. “Then, we’ve got a couple of younger guys coming up.

“We’re just trying to keep the old-school tradition alive,” he added. “Old-school sternwheel handling is kind of a lost art. Nobody really does it anymore, so I think it’s pretty special.”

When asked how a pilot familiar with a conventional, rudder-driven, diesel-powered vessel would fare on a steam-powered sternwheel vessel like the Natchez, Nicoulin was matter of fact.

“They’d be lost,” he said. “They’d be completely lost on here. It’s a completely different monster.”

Unlike conventionally driven towboats, which have a set of rudders in front of and behind the propellers, the Natchez has only flanking rudders forward of the paddlewheel.

“So when the boat just starts coming ahead, you really have no steering until you start getting some headway,” Nicoulin said. “When you back, that water goes right through them, and it gives you instant control.”

Another factor to consider when piloting the Natchez, Nicoulin said, is the effect of wind.

“People don’t realize all the weight is on the back,” he said. “That’s where your machinery is and the wheel. On a good windy day, it’ll be fun because it’s like a big sail. It’s flat bottomed and only draws about 6 feet, and you’ve got 68 feet of superstructure above the water line. You have to learn how to maneuver with the wind. That’s the old-school techniques of how to get these boats turned around.”

The Natchez does have a bow thruster, Nicoulin said, but most of the time pilots prefer to use the wind or the current in the river to their advantage.

Besides his father, Nicoulin credited captains Troy Delaney and Don Houghton, saying they were both instrumental in teaching him the craft of piloting the Natchez, including learning how to read currents and steer with eddies in the New Orleans area.

Nicoulin also praised the New Orleans Steamboat Company, which owns and operates the Natchez and its sister vessel, the City of New Orleans.

“It’s a mom-and-pop operation,” Nicoulin said. “Miss Patricia Dow recently took over the company after Mr. Bill Dow passed away not too long ago.”

Matt Dow, Bill and Patricia Dow’s son, oversees operations in New Orleans.

“They’re some of the best people to work for,” Nicoulin said. “It’s not about the money with them. It’s more about keeping the old-school tradition. Mr. Dow had a dream of running the company a certain way. He brought a lot of old-school guys in, and I’ve been blessed that they’re keeping things exactly the same. The way they’re doing it is keeping a lot of people here. My dad’s been here for 50 years, and there’s probably six or seven people that have been here 50 years, and a handful of people who’ve been here 30 or 40 years.”

That’s also reflected in the family connections on the Natchez. Besides Nicoulin and his father, Capt. Larnder’s dad used to be the chief engineer. Next up is Nicoulin’s own son.

“He’s got three more years of high school, but he’s champing at the bit to come work for us,” Nicoulin said. “Then, I’ve got my nephew, who is captain on the City of New Orleans. Just like that, there are three generations of Nicoulins at this company.”

Nicoulin said he’ll never forget seeing in his logbook that on the same day his father was pilot, he was master, and his nephew was the mate.

“I took a picture of it because how often do you see something like that, with three generations?” he said.

Nicoulin said a recent highlight on the Natchez was steaming up to Cincinnati for the River Roots festival in October. It took just over seven days steaming 24/7 to go from New Orleans to Cincinnati, and once the festival began, the Natchez did four or five harbor cruises per day and welcomed between 14,000 and 15,000 passengers on board in that time frame.

“We were the biggest boat up there, so a lot of people were attracted to that,” Nicoulin said. “And we’re from New Orleans, so we know how to do it.”

The Natchez also notched a win against the Celebration Belle during River Roots.

When Nicoulin sat down for an interview with The Waterways Journal, the Natchez was docked along the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal, receiving a new boiler. The company expects the Natchez to be back offering up to three harbor cruises per day by the beginning of March.

Featured image caption: The Steamboat Natchez heads upriver toward Cincinnati in October for the River Roots Festival. (Photo courtesy of the New Orleans Steamboat Company)