NAPLES – As the Songo River Queen pulled away from its dock on the Naples Causeway for its final passage through Brandy Pond, Songo River and the Songo Lock Sept. 17, spectators were lined up wanting to be a part of history.
They were on the boat, on the sidewalk, peering out on the whole spectacle from their vehicles on Route 302, and one woman was even watching from the Midwest – Springfield, Ill., to be precise.
“I just got off the phone with my friend Alice Biggs,” said Kay Hurley, a Naples summer resident who was seated in her car while waiting for the Queen to make its way to the Songo Lock. “She’s our neighbor in Florida but she lives in Springfield in the summer and she loves that webcam they have at Rick’s Cafe?. Alice said she could watch the whole thing, see everything. She said the traffic was bumper-to-bumper watching it leave.
“But she said she only had 2 minutes to watch at a time, because the website was getting mobbed. I guess a lot of people were watching that webcam.”
While the view from Alice’s computer screen was probably wonderful, it was no match for those who got to see the Queen in person, as she casually glided along smooth waters from the causeway to the Songo Lock.
The two-hour cruise from the causeway to the lock and back was the last ever for the Songo River Queen II. No longer will Brandy Pond or Songo River homeowners see the Queen pass or hear its horn. No longer will the red-and-white Mississippi riverboat replica offer riders a narrow river cruise and a bird’s-eye view of the last manually operated lock in the country. From now on, the boat – built and owned by Naples’ own Frank Gerrish until he sold it last year to Kent Uicker – will operate tours on Long Lake instead.
Saturday’s sight of the Queen inside the historic Songo Lock was one of the two highlights of the trip, the other being the final passage through the Naples Causeway. The 200 passengers, from Naples and elsewhere, drank champagne as the water rose to meet the level of the Songo River, while dozens lined the lock to wave to those on the boat and catch a last glimpse of the genuine paddlewheeler.
“It was a historical trip, people were unhappy about (the reason for) it, but it was a great day and went well,” Gerrish said.
It went well for Gerrish, too, since he spent much of the trip reminiscing with passengers about the 42 years the Queen has been around, becoming almost synonymous with Naples. Folks even came up to Gerrish and asked him to sign their ticket stubs, which flattered the 84-year-old.
The reason for Saturday’s last run was a trade-off brokered between town leaders and the state Department of Transportation to cut costs on replacement of the aging bridge, which was known to pose some mechanical challenges and once refused to shut on a busy Fourth of July weekend.
Since the bridge will no longer swing to let large boats like the Queen pass, there’s also no longer a need for the crew that operated the bridge from a flat-roofed and cramped hut on the Long Lake side of the structure. Longtime bridge operators and maintainers, including Don Alexander, who spent 51 seasons manning the bridge, and Donna Bernat, who did the same for 26 seasons, were among the throngs of Queen watchers at the bridge to witness the boat’s last passage at about 4 p.m. Saturday.
And just as Ron Terciak was the last to captain the Queen on its last Songo Lock-bound voyage, the last person to operate the bridge was the lucky Casco resident Helen Fifield, who despite being hired two months ago, was given the honor by her fellow crew members.
Ken Strum, Pat Bucchino, Wanda Rutkowski and Cathy Strum and
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