The River

The Star of Knoxville is annually inspected by the United States Coast Guard, and is certified for 325 passengers, including her crew. She is authentically styled after the riverboats of the steamboat era. The Star is actually driven by the two paddles you see in the rear-there are no propellers. These paddles are powered by twin Sinstrand Hydraulic pumps, which are powered in turn by twin 8.2 Detroit diesel engines. The Star of Knoxville is 125 feet in length, 30 feet wide and weighs 86 tons and she is capable of going 5 to 7 knots. A knot equals 1.175 miles and hour.

The Star of Knoxville Riverboat now calls the Tennessee River its home. The river is 652 miles long and is born just 4.2 miles upstream of the Star Landing where the waters of Holston and French Broad Rivers come together at “The Forks of the River”. The Tennessee River (which takes its name from the Cherokee Indian Village Tenasi) is the largest river system in the Southeast. From Knoxville, the river flows south to the Muscle Shoals in Alabama, makes a big turn, historically called “the bent” and starts flowing northward just touching the very corner of Mississippi, back up through Tennessee and through all of Kentucky before finally emptying into the Ohio River at Paducah, Kentucky.

The Holston River heads in Southwest Virginia and flows almost 200 miles before joining the French Broad to form the Tennessee. The Holston is named for Stephen Holston who made a hunting and exploring trip down the river in 1748. The Cherokee Indians called the river Hogohegee.

The French Broad, called Agiqua by the Cherokee starts in southwestern North Carolina. It got its name because in the first land of the 1700’s the land west of the Appalachian Mountains was claimed by the French and it was the largest river flowing west into French territory instead of flowing eastward into the Atlantic Ocean like most rivers in North Carolina.

There is one other major river in this area that flows into the Tennessee. That is Clinch River. It was named for General Duncan Clinch. The Cherokee called the river “Pellissippi” and it joins the Tennessee about 40 miles downstream in Kingston.

Today it is possible to go anywhere in the world by going down the Tennessee River. Just keep going downstream until you reach Paducah. Take a left when you run into the Ohio, follow it to Cairo and take another let on the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico and the waters of the world await your fancy.

Knoxville is a place where the past, present and the future come together…