Moving The SS President Steamship: America's Largest Steamboat | Huge Moves | Spark

an epic battle to rescue an immense mississippi paddle steamer it's a massive 4100 ton structure and i hope it don't bite us in the can ass team move it 130 kilometers across land and water and transform it into a hotel it don't take much for anything to go wrong around here they must overcome high winds and freezing temperatures you know the ice is 12 inches thick this will test man and machine to their absolute limits one super-sized steamship one team with a mission to move it [Applause] a titanic task that will test the nerves of the people who dare to do monster moves [Music] st louis usa gateway to the west meeting point of the mighty missouri and mississippi rivers during the boom years of the last century hundreds of paddle steamers plied these waterways but today very few of these iconic boats remain one survivor is renowned across america the ss president one of the biggest ever built [Music] launched in 1924 she was the flagship of the js line a fleet of riverboats that cruised the rivers of the midwest from new orleans to minneapolis for three quarters of a century these js line pleasure boats help propel musicians like louis armstrong to international stardom there's even an apocryphal story that the word jazz comes from the initials js [Music] but beneath the boat's faded grandeur she's in trouble she's been stood idle for a decade a decaying hull may not survive another winter freeze however salvation might lie 130 kilometers inland in the small rural town of saint elmo local florist sarita barnes is arranging an audacious rescue plan she wants to move the ss president to a field on the edge of town convert it to a hotel and puts an elmo firmly on the map am i mad yes i know absolutely crazy yes it doesn't even make sense it is strictly a dream it's just the ultimate in recycling we're going to take this riverboat and we're going to just give it a whole new life in st elmo the project will cost four and a half million dollars so how can a small town florist fund such an ambitious move the answer oil saint elmo struck rich in the oil rush and sarita's family still pumps the last of the black gold she's gambling there's enough left in her wells to fund moving the boat and rekindling the town's dwindling prospects oh i'm more and more convinced that this is what's meant to be every time you get on board you think of the impact it's going to have in our community and our whole area an influx of not only money but jobs and it's going to improve just our whole esteem of our community i know it is she has little idea of the epic adventure she's about to embark on the president is gargantuan as long as a football field and its hull and frame are made entirely from steel these support a cavernous ballroom inside five stories high the boat weighs in at over four thousand tons [Music] at the moment the president is moored near saint louis but sailing hurts and elmo is impossible the town is completely landlocked so who exactly do you call to move a boat across land [Music] this challenge demands a giant of the moving world and they don't come much bigger than jeremy patterson but even for him this will be a voyage into the unknown everybody you know thinks we fell off the looney bin you know hey jeremy you didn't think this out right you can't do it you know and then were the jobs that we love so much that people say you can't and you can just prove them wrong it's a massive 4100 ton structure and hope it don't bite us in the ass before jeremy can enter the movers hall of fame he has to decide how to haul this mississippi monster across the midwest there's three ways to move this behemoth of a structure option one would be to move it by rails and skate it over and leapfrogged the beams until we got the same elbow this may seem like locomotive lunacy but moving boats by rail is not without precedence in 1955 the ss ticonderoga seemed destined for the scrappy but a local museum decided to undertake an arduous rescue mission the team used lengths of rail to winter across frozen swamps and meadows but progress was painfully slow it took over two months to move the ship just three kilometers to its new home the president needs to move 130 kilometers inland so this method would take years option two to move this structure is to move in one piece put our grid of steel beams under it hydraulic dollies and take it down the road [Music] a fleet of wheels might just be able to move the president in one piece luxury yachts are often moved this way but the president is much larger and heavier and could destroy the bridges and roads on the route to saint elmore so the option i choose to do to move this structure is to cut it into pieces load it onto our semis haul it over to saint elmo re-erect it like a giant jigsaw puzzle but few jigsaw puzzles are this large and complicated in its day this baby was a beauty and it will be again can this grand old mississippi dame survive one last trip upriver his first task is to use two tugs to tow the vessel up the mississippi to a dry dock in alton where dismantling can begin are we ready to go no what do we got to do get your life checked oh safety first i like the way he thinks i can swim real well like a fish man i got to wear that whole time oh man okay it don't fit oh all kinds of room now well wishes line the riverbank to see her off on her final voyage here we go [Music] from the gateway to [Music] i'm on top of the world up and down [Music] one kilometer upstream their first obstacle a lock we gotta watch out how much clearance we got on our sides how much clearance off the wall we have any contact with the walls could damage the boat man we're inches away it's real tight it's real tight man that's not good on our old boat it's like driving your car on ice is what it is basically everything you do you just slide where you want to go holy man that was scary we kind of come in here just a little bit too fast you know this is extremely dangerous here um it's out of my element um you know i can't control anything here they clear the lock safely but danger is never far away on the mississippi to reach the dock they must cross dangerously shallow water if they strike objects buried on the riverbed it could rupture the hull you always run the risk of bumping into somebody or driftwood poking holes in the bottom anything can happen it don't take much for anything to go wrong around here as they approach the dock captain brian spots a bad one all right i'm jumping fish there that's the sign you know it's getting real shallow they are running out of depth [Music] just a few meters from the dock the president grinds to a halt [Music] we're out of depth we're in the mud the boat's raising out of the water it's about eight inches too shallow right now and we're gonna see if we can't push and slide it on the mud we gotta push because if we leave it sit overnight it's like glue it'll stick to itself and we won't never get it moving we gotta give it up there we got a choice they use both tugs to push as hard as they can to shift the boat off the mud look at the mother stirring up so much power in the back of the boat here but it won't budge i think we might have problems can't push it no more i think we're done oh man that ain't a good sign jeremy's not going to be defeated by mississippi mud he calls in reinforcements you go tell the trackhoe guy we need him to come around to this side so he can hook to us and help us pull it in we're stuck in the mud to attach the cables from the bulldozers to the boat someone is going to have to get wet any volunteers so far jeremy's the only one volunteering wow the love of god it's cold [Music] the cables take the strain of the 4 000 ton boat it's moving [Music] but just as it seems the president will glide right into the dock [Music] to break a cable that size unbelievable you know what that means we're gonna swim it again take two with more winch cables the president defiantly refuses to budge she is well and truly stuck we failed again we broke all the cables again no i've never been beat before you know and just uh it's just a setback you know i mean it's it sucks you know we're so close so far away [Music] jeremy's original idea was to hold the boat right into the dock he would then dam the inlet and pump out the water to create a dry dock around this he direct a giant gantry crane that could lift off entire decks but with the boat stuck where it is he needs a new plan the only way to dismantle it now is to use a smaller mobile crane this is much less stable than the gantry crane he will have to lift much smaller pieces a process that will take much longer and with mooring fees costing seven hundred and fifty dollars a day it will be much more expensive [Music] oh [Music] for jeremy moving the president has become a mission if he has to move it in smaller pieces so be it but he's still going to have fun doing it the patterson way just for the reactor this seems like a good idea [Music] here we go we take a little bit of chances most people don't take that's why we're moving a riverboat most people wouldn't move [Music] removing the unwanted walls reveals the boat's original steel frame it's kind of exciting to see what the bones of the structure are you can actually see what the good old bones are now you know how the structure is built you know we get to see all that with the walls removed jeremy has revealed the boat's steel skeleton now he must work out which beams and supports he can cut [Music] some are decorative and carry no load others carry the full weight of the decks if he accidentally cuts through these the entire boat could collapse [Music] jeremy has worked out there's a critical support pole every 5 meters cutting either side of these will maintain the boat's structural integrity and will provide small enough sections to lift safely you want me to cut those babies eh all right i will welder lynn and jeremy's dad john break out the oxy acetylene this is a beast [Music] burning at over 3000 degrees celsius this gas ax slices through steel like a hot knife through butter [Music] they work their way backwards along the president's top deck to create a series of five meter wide sections [Music] meanwhile jeremy has a new dream toy it's a 60 meter crane he's bought just for this job the cast a cool half a million dollars i'm the king of the crane [Music] [Music] jeremy's taken a crash course in crane operating but will the ss president bring the king to his knees we're a million dollars invested in it now just some equipment we bought to do the job now at stake is not just the steamship but his entire business [Music] on board they make the final cuts for the critical first lift we're cutting these holes so we can reach underneath and get the i-beam with our cables so we can pick up the whole section sarita arrives with her mother-in-law mae bell to see how their investments shaping up i'm so glad we came today we get to see the very first pieces coming off lynn makes the final cut transferring the full weight of the deck to the crane we got it are we free all together yeah it should be free [Music] if this section is too heavy it will cause the crane to tip [Applause] oh my goodness you got it a piece the size of half a tennis court takes to the air we got ten thousand eight hundred pounds on the hook right now momentarily jeremy loses control [Music] he struggles to steer the five-ton load to the ground whenever you get the pieces down on ground and you see how large they are it's just boggles the mind really does it's just like any project is it's it's going to be worth it in the end and that's what we need to look for and focus on one down 200 more to go [Music] together [Music] up and down the river oh the deck stripping goes well until they reach the captain's pilot house now comes the behemoth we're getting ready to pick the big one now so uh the excitement's gonna happen it's just as big as most people's houses so you know and here we are booming up 200 feet in the air to grab the thing they extend the boom to its absolute limit but jeremy is gambling he can lift the pilot house and deck together the crane's warning system alerts him to the danger [Music] i'm 4 000 pounds over capacity right now that ain't good [Music] if jeremy tries to lift the pilot house the crane will tip over he needs to lose weight quickly can we drop the wings on each side torch the floor off of it on each side just cut the center then come over on this side and go out that side just cut it let it drop removing the deck either side of the pilot house will greatly reduce the weight [Music] and better come this time got too much weight i overrode the computer twice now [Music] i can't pick it down i can't pick it the pilot house now hangs free but it is still too heavy to lift with darkness closing in jeremy has to prop it up for the night [Music] he will have to rethink his plans jeremy must fully extend the crane's arm to reach the pilot house but if he attempts to lift it the crane will tip over jeremy's solution is to drop the pilot house down to the deck below then slide it closer to the edge of the boat on a set of steel beams by shortening the crane's arm you can lift the pilot house to the ground without fear of toppling come on baby love me here we go everybody's okay jeremy uses powerful hydraulics to gently lower the pilot house he's going now ain't he we're lowering the president house okay [Music] once the steel beams are in place he calls in his favorite lubricant bring the bananas i think we gotta crack it open and give it a little okay all the way down the thing that's the key i don't know if it'll work or not we're hoping the bananas come through for us yeah well sliding smoothly on bananas the pilot house inches closer to the crane [Music] [Applause] off we go let's let's separate the boys from the men right here [Applause] it's scary as hell [Music] stress is getting the better part of me i feel like i'm having a heart attack right now it's scary as hell something goes wrong someone's get killed no i'm still real good we'll get this baby on the ground real good [Applause] [Music] it's a big over here yeah i'm just relieved because i want to get the rest of it off here because we're running out of time emboldened by the size of objects they can lift they carry on dismantling [Music] [Music] there's a method behind the mail [Music] the crew has removed two decks [Music] but now jeremy has to call a halt to the cutting [Music] it's so hard to torch in the wind because the flame doesn't want to keep going it's gusting here baby maximum wind speed 29.4 mile an hour so far they said this morning we may get gusts up to 40 mile an hour so that's just unheard of the gusts also make it highly risky to use the crane in winter a bitter north wind sweeps straight down the mississippi the lifting site is totally exposed with strong gusts of wind to catch a deck section it could swing violently out of control the project is hemorrhaging money but if he pushes on the consequences could be catastrophic yesterday when crane the one section off in the wind uh we was gaining almost two times away to the piece because the wind was pushing force against it so it's a dangerous dangerous deal jeremy loses ten days to the wind the setback costs him seven and a half thousand dollars in extra mooring fees jeremy's team go into overdrive when dismantling finally resumes but it's not long before they face a new problem they're running out of space on the keysight they have to start shipping loads to saint elmo first to go is the pilot house i like it it looks good to me i'm not driving it or welding it back together [Music] if we go over the edge here into the mississippi just stay inside we'll get a little wet we'll let her settle down and then we'll swim to the surface [Music] no it's here [Music] on the mississippi jeremy knows his biggest challenge has yet to come somehow he must dismantle the thick steel walls of the 2 000 tonne hull jeremy knows that if he attempts to cut it in the river it will flood with water he decides his best option is to pull the bow onto dry land and slice off the front section he can then repeat the process until piece by piece the entire hull sits on the riverbank but at the moment the boat is still stuck in the mud if he removes the heavy steam engines there's a chance the boat might float free today's the day to pick the big steam engines our biggest fear is is them being so old they don't hold together and they just snap in pieces they use steel beams to slide the engine closer to the crane so it can lift without top length [Music] you can see all the snow we have here behind us the sub zero here um bananas just ain't gonna work for us because we got a bunch of the frozen solid already we gotta go to a different routine we're gonna go to ivory soap soap works almost as well as bananas and he's able to lift the engine ashore and now for the moment of truth can he shift the boat here we go baby the mississippi mud finally releases the president now jeremy is ready to pull the hull out of the water but over the weekend the temperatures plummet the mississippi has frozen over trapping the boat in ice we're already behind our scheduled time frame you know we spend 750 a day at doc fees alone you know um the city of st elmo and the investors wanted over there so today's the day we have no other time to give [Music] before he can devise a plan to free the hull he needs to know how thick the ice is yeah baby we got an ice cube [Music] the tough line here is the ice is so thick it's like pulling through concrete so you know we got to break up the edges and try getting this concrete to split for us jeremy decides that he needs something a little larger than a chainsaw you know the ice is 10 12 inches thick it's just unbelievable yeah baby you know you want to come home [Music] it's a little tougher in the machine than i like to abuse the machine but i think i'm winning but in his enthusiasm jeremy forgets that not all ice is 10 inches thick oh i got in water water damn it it's something my feet are freezing son of a okay we gotta get in the truck before we get hypothermia jeremy slips on plastic bag socks whilst the rest of the team attached the toe cables to the hull here with a sudden jerk the boat lurches forward keep going got 10 more feet wow four months after the president began her final voyage her bows are finally beached on dry land but there's no time to celebrate we're about ready to back our 250 000 pound crane over that muddy mayhem we wanted to put enough plates down but we got enough time so we're just gonna go for it john cuts the front of the hull free the first piece is ready to roll much to the excitement of jeremy's son greg [Music] [Music] after 85 years the bow of the president is free of the mississippi [Music] you know it's a big achievement you know everybody said it couldn't be done here we are sitting with the first piece from solid ground so uh that's a big feat and it's been a long battle and just had the first piece sitting here where everybody said it couldn't be done it's a huge deal after four months breaking up the ss president jeremy is now transporting the pieces inland to their new home in st elmo you know the good thing is we're on the home stretch now we're starting to get a rhythm everybody's starting to click together and you know we like that so uh i think we're on our way we got our crane set up you know dozers are here we're gonna start rock and roll now [Music] but mother nature has one last surprise in store for jeremy the waters of the mississippi rise alarmingly as the ice and snow melt and there's a nasty surprise behind these bulk head doors [Music] whoa this one is way steep in here let's just hope it don't come up to my chest the inside of the boat is a wash with muddy waters cutting is impossible just not our day chalk one up for the president huh jeremy calls in more equipment siphoning pipes and a heavy-duty [Music] that's pump thousands of gallons of water flood out of the president's hull [Music] now the team can resume cutting finally after all his struggles jeremy lifts the last pieces onto dry land this is our last piece coming out getting ready loaded in trucks we're all excited we're finally done with this old mississippi river [Music] after five months of cutting and lifting jeremy holds the final piece of the steamboat jigsaw down the highway soon the president will be reborn in the landlocked town of saint elmore [Music] are you excited you can actually tell what we're starting to put together i think that's wonderful and i think people will get really excited about it [Music] that's a boat looks like a boat this is going to be an awesome thing for staying out mom [Music] over the next six months jeremy and his father must turn this field full of scrap metal into a luxurious hotel putting this gigantic jigsaw back together will challenge even the patterson family they'll begin with the bow gradually welding on sections to complete the hull then they'll build up the decks one layer at a time eventually these 200 pieces of metal will transform into that mightiest of mississippi paddle steamers the ss president you know we still have a long battle ahead of us putting this thing back together you know but it's imagination and what you can do to dream to make reality happens [Music] [Music] oh [Music] in [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] um

Channel: Spark

Views: 156,200

Rating: 4.7178788 out of 5

Keywords: Spark, Science, Technology, Engineering, education, documentary, factual, mind blown, construction, full documentary, space documentary, bbc documentary, Science documentary, huge moves, monster moves, moving a building, building move, renovation old house, moving big buildings, technology 2021, construction management, engineering design process, full documentary channel, science experiments, engineering documentary, national geographic, Building Relocation

Id: -BCIA2p-WqA

Length: 43min 50sec (2630 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 24 2021