Riverboat

A riverboat is a watercraft designed for inland navigation on lakes, rivers, and artificial waterways. They are generally equipped and outfitted as work boats in one of the carrying trades, for freight or people transport, including luxury units constructed for entertainment enterprises, such as lake or harbour tour boats. As larger water craft, virtually all riverboats are especially designed and constructed, or alternatively, constructed with special-purpose features that optimizes them as riverine or lake service craft, for instance, dredgers, survey boats, fisheries management craft, fireboats and law enforcement patrol craft.

Design differences

These vessels are usually less sturdy than ships built for the open seas, with limited navigational and rescue equipment, as they do not have to survive the high winds or large waves characteristic to large lakes, seas or oceans. They can thus be built from light composite materials. They are limited in size by width and depth of the river as well as the height of bridges spanning the river. They can be designed with shallow drafts, as were the paddle wheel steamers on the Mississippi River that could operate in water under two metres deep.

Riverboat (TV series)

Riverboat is an American western television series produced by Revue Studios and was broadcast on the NBC television network from September 13, 1959 to January 2, 1961. It starred Darren McGavin and Burt Reynolds.

Plot

In the series, Captain Grey Holden and his crew navigate the vessel called the Enterprise principally, along the Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio rivers. Some episodes are set in the eastern end of the American West or in the Midwest. Holden and his men encounter interest characters along the way, including U.S. President Zachary Taylor, General Winfield Scott and a pre-presidential Abraham Lincoln. One episode focuses indirectly on the Texan Revolution of 1836. Unlike most westerns, which are set after the American Civil War, the story's time frame of precedes the sectional conflict, the 1830s and the 1840s. The series ended on the NBC mid-season schedule in January 1961 by a drama about the sectional conflict, The Americans.

Cast

Darren McGavin starred in 42 episodes, before being temporarily replaced by Dan Duryea as Captain Brad Turner in two first season episodes. Burt Reynolds in his television debut role played Ben Frazer in twenty episodes, but he left the series after reported disputes with McGavin and was replaced by Noah Beery, Jr., as Bill Blake.