Throng

Tuesday 14th July 8.00pm

The titanic transportation series concludes. In the final instalment, disused paddle steamer the SS President is in deep trouble. Entrepreneur Sereta Barnes has an ambitious plan to turn the ship into a luxury hotel – but will the neglected vessel survive the 130km journey?

The SS President was once the flagship of the JS Line – a steamship company that operated luxury tours up and down the rivers of the American Midwest. Launched in 1924, she was in use for three quarters of a century, propelling musicians such as Louis Armstrong to fame on her voyages. However, the boat is now in serious trouble. After years of neglect, the damaged hull may not survive another winter freeze.

Some 130km inland, florist Sereta Barnes wants to change the fortunes of the abandoned pleasure boat. Her plan is to move the President from St Louis to her hometown of St Elmo and turn it into a lavish hotel. Sereta is heir to an oil fortune and is hoping that there is enough black gold left in the town to finance the £3million project. “We’re going to take the boat and give it a whole new life in Elmo,” she says, enthusiastically. “It’s going to improve the whole esteem of our community.”

The President is gigantic. As long as a football field and encompassing a cavernous ballroom, it weighs in at 4,000 tons. As St Elmo is landlocked, simply sailing the President to its new home is not a possibility. The mammoth task of moving the boat is entrusted to the head of Patterson Structural Movers, Jeremy Patterson. Jeremy discounts the possibility of moving the ship by rail, which could take years. The vessel is also too heavy to travel by road. Instead, Jeremy decides to use tugboats to move the President to a dry dock for dismantling, before moving it piece by piece to St Elmo.

With just ten weeks to dismantle and reassemble the President, Jeremy has to work fast. The first task is to use two tugboats to drag the ship to a dock in Alton. “I’m on top of the world!” Jeremy shouts to the well-wishers lining the riverbank. His good humour is short lived, however. To reach the dock the team must cross dangerously shallow water. Deckhand Tom Chrismer soon spots jumping fish, a sign the boat is running out of depth. Sure enough, the President grinds to a halt in the Mississippi mud, painfully close to the dock.

All attempts to move the President seem doomed to failure. Jeremy attempts to use a crane to move the boat, but the cables snap under the strain. “We’re so close, but so far away,” Jeremy sighs. His original plan was to haul the boat into the dock, drain it and use a crane to lift whole decks. With the craft still water-bound, the only way to dismantle it is to use a mobile crane to lift smaller pieces. Mooring fees of £500 per day mean it will be a much more expensive task to complete.

Jeremy removes a number of walls inside the ship to reveal the steel skeleton, in order to work out which beams he can cut. After a crash course in crane operation, Jeremy gets to work, first lifting a piece half the size of a tennis court. Sereta has arrived to watch the dismantling of the President. “Any project is going to be worth it in the end,” she says.

All goes well until the team reaches the Captain’s pilot house, which causes the crane to buckle. Jeremy decides to drop the house onto the deck below. He then sets up steel beams and slides the house towards the dock using his favourite lubricant – bananas. “We’re hoping the bananas will come through for us!” he announces. Luckily the pilot house is successfully moved on to dry land, and the team begins shipping the loads to Elmo.

However, Jeremy has a bigger challenge to face – the thick, steel walls of the 2,000-ton hull. Can he pull the hull out of the water? Or could this be the death of the President?