American Pride

American Pride is the paddlewheeler American Cruise Lines moved west. She was built at Chesapeake Shipbuilding in Salisbury, Maryland and entered service in August 2012 under the name Queen of the Mississippi, working the river that name implies, St. Louis, Memphis, Louisiana. In 2016 the line renamed her American Pride and sent her to the Columbia and the Snake, and she has been there ever since.

That makes her the odd one of the three Salisbury-built paddlewheelers. American Heritage and American Splendor work the inland rivers, the Tennessee and the Mississippi; she was the one sent west. The only other paddlewheel boat out there is American West, and that hull came from a different yard on Whidbey Island in 1995 and was designed as a working sternwheeler from the start. Note also that when the line redecorated and renamed its paddlewheel group (Queen of the Mississippi becoming American Heritage, Queen of the West becoming American West, America becoming American Splendor) she kept her name, because she had already had hers changed once. Trip reports from before 2016 will call her Queen of the Mississippi; it is the same hull.

The wheel, and what turns her

Be clear about this before booking, because the silhouette is the reason most people choose these boats over the flat-fronted modern riverboats in the same fleet. She is a diesel riverboat with a red stern wheel. She is not a steamboat, she is not driven the way a nineteenth-century sternwheeler was, and the propulsion that actually moves her is modern and mounted under the hull. The period look is the product. If what you want is a wheel doing real work, American West on the same river has the strongest claim to it in the fleet.

Her interior was redone as part of the line’s paddlewheel refresh and the sources disagree about the year, which is why there is no refurbishment date in the box above. The decor is themed on the region (Lewis and Clark, the Native peoples of the Columbia basin) over a restrained palette rather than the Victorian red plush people expect from a paddlewheeler.

The ship herself

Seventy-eight staterooms for 150 guests across five passenger decks, with an elevator to each. Most rooms have a private balcony but not all of them do, Riverview categories have windows, and that is the single most common surprise on a booking here, because on the line’s modern riverboats a balcony is standard on every cabin. Check the category. The Veranda Suite on the third and fourth decks runs 360 square feet with floor-to-ceiling sliding doors.

Public rooms are the Paddlewheel Lounge aft over the wheel, the River Lounge for the daily cocktail hour and the evening musician, a Midship Lounge, a Sky Lounge high and aft, the Study for reading and cards, a glass-enclosed restaurant with a single open seating, a fitness center and a guest laundry. No casino, no pool, no theater, no second seating.

Where she actually sails

The Columbia and the Snake, out of Portland, Oregon, and nowhere else on earth. Every voyage on her calendar begins at Portland. She has no second river, no alternate coast and no repositioning season, which among American Cruise Lines hulls is unusually single-minded.

The main event is the eight-night Columbia & Snake Rivers cruise, one way and upstream: Astoria near the mouth of the river, then Kalama, The Dalles, Richland, Pendleton and Lewiston, ending at Clarkston, Washington under the entrance to Hells Canyon. Clarkston is where you get off, not where you get on; the run goes in that direction, sailing after sailing. It is the Lewis and Clark route with the Gorge at one end and the wheat country at the other, and a good part of the mileage is spent in lock chambers rather than open water.

What actually distinguishes her is the short one. She carries the Columbia River Gorge cruise, five and six nights round trip from Portland with a call at Hood River, and she runs more of it than any other ship in this fleet; the other Columbia boats keep a handful on the books; she runs it as a real second program. If you want this river without giving up nine days, she is the most likely hull to be able to sell it to you.

She keeps no share of the fortnight-long National Parks and Legendary Rivers package that her modern-riverboat neighbors on this water lean on, the one that abandons the boat halfway through for Yellowstone and Jackson. Everything she sells is a river cruise from end to end. Her season runs from early spring to the beginning of November, then she lays up for the winter.

Who she suits

People who came for the look of the thing on a river that suits it: the Columbia Gorge from a lounge chair on the sun deck, the locking-through as the day’s event, small towns rather than cities, and a hundred and fifty people who all eat in one room. Fares cover drinks with meals, the shore excursions and the gratuities, and the crew is American, which changes the tone of the service in a way that is hard to describe and easy to notice.

She does not suit anyone who assumes a balcony comes with the cabin. She does not suit anyone who wants a modern ship; she is one of the older hulls in the fleet, and the newest riverboats on the same river have rooms half again the size and a wall of glass where she has a window. She does not suit families or anyone wanting a night that runs past the lounge pianist. And she does not suit anyone who wants variety out of one booking: most of the hulls on this river will also sell you a national-parks land tour on the back of it. She sells the Columbia, and that is the whole offer.