How the Diamond Lady Ended Up in the Rough (Pt. 3)
Though her decks are ease somewhat intact and her call ease visible on the hull, the Diamond Lady is a sad skeleton in the closet of what she was when she launched in 1991. In our indorse follow-up story near the foremost effectual gaming boat in the US since the 19th century, Casino.org can finally reveal exactly how the once-mighty riverboat gambling casino ended upwardly partially sunk and stuck inwards clay inward a backwater marina off the Magnolia State River in Memphis.
All too predictably, it’s a story mired inward greed and effectual muck.
Iowa’s Boat Comes in
Bernie Goldstein, the scrap-metal magnate who became known as the “father of riverboat gambling,” built the Diamond Lady and her sis boat, the Emerald Lady, inward 1990. They were replicas of the 1880s paddlewheelers that one time ran the Mississippi River River, and their interiors brimmed with all the slot machines and tabularise games allowed below Mississippi River regulations.
The Diamond peeress made history because it launched first, on April 1, 1991. Three K people lined the sour grass inward Bettendorf, Ia. to look on game-show hostess Vanna Elwyn Brooks White christen the boat, and and so to jockey for place on quaternion excursions she took that day. Sir Thomas More than a half a trillion boarded the riverboat during its first of all twelvemonth of operation.
But Goldstein claimed that strict gaming regulations be him millions inward his firstly yr of operation. So, on July 5, 1992, he moved both the Diamond Lady and Emerald peeress – which had been docked inwards Burlington, Ia. – due south on the river to Biloxi, Miss. Here, they were tied together, and to a dock, comme il faut Mississippi’s foremost dockside casino. The Isle of Capri – the number 1 gaming establishment to swop on the NASDAQ – began Biloxi’s shift from a sleepy former seafood majuscule to a major southern gaming destination.
Only a yr later, though, Goldstein relocated both boats yet again, docking them 200 miles northwest of Biloxi on the MS to take shape a 2d Isle of Capri in Vicksburg, Miss.
Finally, a twelvemonth after that, inwards 1994, the Diamond Lady and Emerald Lady were both offered for sale. They had been replaced past a two-level, $18 million barge that ended up beingness ruined in 2005 past Hurricane Katrina, after which the cassino moved privileged the Isle of Capri Vicksburg’s hotel.
Last Boat Leaving
When no more takers came frontwards for the duplicate riverboats, Goldstein placed them inward storage, to save up on dear(p) docking fees. In either 2002 or 2003, they ended upwardly at McKellar Lake’s Cummings devil dog facility, owned by George III Cummings.
In October 2005, Mustafa Kilic, proprietor of the New Jersey-based Cornucopia Cruise Line, learned that the Diamond Lady was for sales agreement and came by to boot the tires. Kilic claimed that the exterior was ill-gotten and the interior required refurbishing, but that her two cat 3412 diesel engines were in first-class shape. (The Emerald Lady, which was inward even best condition, had already been sold and ease provides rubber-necking cruises and dinner tours on the Buckeye State River as BB shot Riverboats’ Belle of Cincinnati.)
Kilic purchased the Diamond Lady from Goldstein for $300K, assuming statute title and put on the line of loss on Jan. 13, 2006, and signing a lease with Cummings that began quaternary days later. (Goldstein died deuce-ace years later, at eld 80.)
We cognize all this because of a causa filed by Cornucopia on Aug. 12, 2011 inwards the US District Court for the horse opera District of Tennessee. Cornucopia sued Cummings due to equipment casualty the Diamond Lady sustained due to what it claimed was the marina’s negligence.
Legal Waves
Because McKellar Lake is fed past the MS River, its water tear down rises and falls with the river. Wires, connected to anchors 200 feet cancelled shore, were used to make a motion boats finisher to or farther from shore, depending on the H2O level. These wires required tightening when it was low, slackening when it was high. Two shore wires were committed to the Diamond Lady’s porthole and starboard bows, a 3rd to her eye bow.
If the wires were too loose when the water stratum fell, the vessels could go grounded on the cant of the lake. If a grounded vessel was not moved before the water dismantle rosiness again, it could go submerged. This is exactly what happened to the Diamond peeress inwards Jan 2006, flooding and ruining her engines. So claimed Cornucopia’s lawsuit, which maintained that Cummings was obligated to supervise the come up and downfall of the river and to adapt the shoring wires accordingly.
Cummings contended that the flooding occurred before Cornucopia’s rental went into effect, so it dullard no responsibility for the damage. Cummings also claimed that the Diamond peeress wasn’t decently winterized and, by the time Cornucopia purchased her, couldn’t yet displace below her possess powerfulness anymore.
Regardless of how the suit resolved – and we don’t experience because neither Kilic nor Cummings returned multiple voicemails and e-mails left hand by Casino.org – the Diamond noblewoman was in dire straits by the time it was towed to a nearby McKellar Lake marina called Riverside Park, owned by Larry Stanley, inward 2008.
The Diamond peeress sank at Riverside Park Marina during a immobilise inward 2021. Historically low Magnolia State River water levels open her ravaged hull last-place fall, when several stories – including ours – for the first time appeared.
Former Crew Members React
“I’m pissed turned that the Lady was neglected and betrayed and wasn’t looked o'er and kept afloat,” Don River Sanders – the former chief mate who helped sail the Diamond Lady from Bettendorf to Biloxi – told Casino.org. “I’m pissed that the selfish, greedy —holes who owned her allowed her to pass and make full with muddy river water. I’m pissed because neither I, nor anyone else, can or will do anything to play the Diamond peeress plump for – just now to get her afloat, cleaned up, and feel a unexampled venture for her.”
Captain Saint John the Apostle Vize, a deckhand on the Diamond noblewoman during its first of all year, told Casino.org he went cut down to reckon her inwards mortal recently.
“It made me sick,” he said. “I loved that boat. i held Vanna White’s helping hand when she got turned the boat. Somebody’s got to be responsible for this. There’s still fire on the boat. They can’t simply pull up stakes it there. Somebody has to pick that up.”
Riverside Park Marina also did non take multiple e-mails and voicemails left wing by Casino.org.
This content is brought to you by the most popular Live22 Download in Malaysia.