Viking operates the most extensive fleet of river cruise ships in the world – with dozens of vessels plying the rivers of Europe, Egypt and Asia.
For now, it has only one riverboat in the United States: the purpose-built 386-passenger Viking Mississippi.
I was aboard for a weeklong cruise from New Orleans to Memphis. Most of my fellow passengers were Americans who, like me, didn’t know how much we didn’t know about this storied patch in our own backyard – about its complex history, rich culture and the genuine southern hospitality of its locals.
From New Orleans, our ship visited Darrow and St. Francisville in Louisiana; Natchez, Vicksburg and Greenville in Mississippi. We disembarked in Memphis, Tennessee.
From day one, our experiences aboard ship reflected our location on Ol’ Man River.
In New Orleans, we dined on French and Creole specialties. After dinner, we gathered in the ship’s comfy main deck Living Room where Wendell Brunious, leader of the Big Easy’s Preservation Hall Jazz Band for almost half a century, mesmerized us with the sweet, seductive sounds of his glorious trumpet.
As we cruised north, we sampled Cajun gumbos and the foot-stompin’ musical gumbo that is zydeco. Fiddler Gina Forsyth and accordion master Bruce Daigrepont played their Cajun hearts out. (Viking drafted the pair from Tipitina’s in NOLA.) Dancing just happened.
As we approached the Mississippi Delta, passengers got a taste of regional specialties such as fried chicken, catfish, okra, even fried pickles – and cornbread, of course. At night, bluesman Benton Parker reigned in the Living Room with sultry, soulful Delta Blues.
By the time we neared Memphis, the sweet-tangy scent of barbecue wafted from the ship’s big custom-designed grill – and honky-tonk, juke-joint rhythms took over the Living Room. Memphis Jones (who performs weekends at B.B. King’s Blues Club on Beale Street in Memphis) had passengers rockin’ to the hits of Aretha and Elvis. (Jones other gig: Pastor at Memphis’ Cornerstone Church.)
All Ashore
Viking cruises include at least one free excursion in each port. Additional optional excursions are available at various price points. I sampled both – and on some days managed to fit in a freebie and an optional excursion too.
Included excursions ranged from guided walking tours of antebellum mansions – to a 3-hour guided driving tour through Vicksburg National Military Park. At the Houmas House, just steps from where our flat-bottomed riverboat berthed in Darrow, La., we got a taste of what life was like for sugar barons in the pre-Civil War south. At Vicksburg we viewed battle sites and many of the 1,400 monuments that salute the Americans who died there. During the 47-day siege of Vicksburg in 1863, there were 5,000 Union casualties and nearly 32,000 Confederate soldiers killed, wounded, missing or captured.
My favorite excursion, a freebie, happened in the hard-luck Delta town of Greenville, Miss..
Greenville’s population of 28,000 is half what it was 60 years ago; nearly a third of current residents battle poverty. It’s why Viking Mississippi’s visits – 34 times a year – mean so much to locals.
A welcoming gaggle of neighbors, bearing trays of sweet tea and bloody marys, turned out on a chilly mid-day to greet 350 of us riverboat passengers. They led us into their former high school auditorium, where we sat on folding chairs at long tables to feast on home-made hot tamales, catfish and fritters, plus barbecued brisket and banana puddin’. They joined us in an after-meal moonshine toast.
On the auditorium stage, Steve Azar and his band put on a sizzling performance of country, rock and Delta Blues. (In 2017, then-governor Phil Bryant named Azar Music and Cultural Ambassador of Mississippi; his song, “One Mississippi” is the official state song.)
After the show, locals staged a classy little arts exhibit/sale in a former classroom – and invited cruisers to ride the town’s newly renovated 126-year-old carousel, a pristine relic from more prosperous times, now housed in what used to be the school’s gym.
Cruisers loved it all. Our takeaway: a heartfelt understanding of southern warmth, hospitality, pride and ingenuity.
Optional Treats
My favorite optional shore excursion was a $99, 3.5-hour visit to Sugarfield Spirits, a craft distillery in Gonzales, La., (a 20-minute bus ride from our berth in Darrow. ) It’s where neonatal physician Thomas Soltau used his passion for chemistry and his tantalizing creativity to officially birth the distillery in 2020. These days he works about 35 hours a week at a hospital in Baton Rouge – and countless more hours nursing his heady hobby-turned-business.
The distillery produces an array of booze: mead, hard ciders, rum, vodka, a variety of liqueurs and several types of whiskeys, including a very smooth bourbon. It’s all made with locally sourced products such as sugar cane and corn, plus honey from hives and fruit from trees in Soltau’s backyard.
During our visit, Soltau talked a little science, shared a few boozy recipes and did a lot of heavy-handed pouring. I stopped counting after 11 intoxicating tastes. Then came the cocktail-making class: daiquiris and old fashioneds and…
A more sobering adventure was unplanned. It happened the morning I hopped a free shuttle from the ship into Vicksburg. During a solo stroll of the small town’s main street, I happened upon the Civil War Museum. Inside, I met Charles Pendleton.
“I started this museum because I’m Black, and in the South, and nobody Black talks about the war – even though it ended slavery,” the 57-year-old Vicksburg native told me.
“There were 186,000 Black men who served in the Union Army – another 20,000 in the U.S. Navy,” Pendleton said. “There were 74,000 Blacks who died in the Civil War – and they weren’t even citizens of this country. The 14th Amendment wasn’t ratified until 1868.” (That amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the U.S., including former slaves.)
Pendleton’s museum is filled with thousands of Civil War relics – everything from uniforms and guns to amputation saws. It includes copies of the letters of secession from all 11 Confederate states. The Mississippi document, from January 1861, is typical: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portion of the commerce of the earth.”
Human Chattel
Viking boasts that its cruises are for “the thinking person.” Its Mississippi River cruise is no exception.
“For me, the best part of this cruise is how I’ve been educated,” said Jim Wilson, a passenger from Berlin, Maryland, on his third Viking cruise. “My eyes are opening to parts of the country I’ve never seen before.”
We passengers learned to distinguish between the 7,000-square-mile Mississippi Delta, a fertile flood plain that stretches from just south of Memphis to Vicksburg in Mississippi (and includes portions of Louisiana and Arkansas) and the state’s southernmost Mississippi River Delta – the one that flows into the Gulf of Mexico. Two separate Deltas – separate histories, cuisines, cultures and music.
“I’m a civil engineer, and I should know this,” said Wilson. “Until now, I didn’t.”
Daily “enrichment programs” were set for 6 p.m. in the riverboat’s Explorer’s Lounge, all featuring “destination specialists” who provided deep insights into the places we visited. Questions were welcomed. Sessions were streamed on TVs in passengers’ staterooms – available to watch live or later.
We learned that the Mississippi Delta became one of the most fertile spots on Earth – with topsoil up to 15 feet deep in some places. The land – and its imported slaves – produced almost 2 billion pounds of cotton per year, enough to supply the entire world. By 1860, the labor of enslaved southerners accounted for more than 60 percent of the nation’s agricultural wealth.
In Natchez, we visited Forks of the Road, where the second largest slave market in the U.S. (only New Orleans was busier) once offered men, women and children for sale like livestock: They could be bought, sold, leased, inherited, used as collateral for loans. The market operated for 30 years, until Union troops occupied Natchez in 1863.
Today the site is marked by an easy-to-miss swath of lawn anchored by a small patch of concrete imbedded with shackles and chains. It’s overseen by the National Park Service.
“I’d been driving by that place forever, and never knew it was there,” said one Viking passenger. “It signifies the missing link between the general knowledge that most Americans have about slavery – and the specific horror and injustice that it was.”
The evening’s enrichment talk provided more linkage:
In 1860, the U.S. census counted nearly 4 million enslaved people living in the country – the vast majority in the South. Slaves accounted for roughly 45 percent of the South’s population. In the state of Mississippi, 57 percent of the population was enslaved; in the city of Natchez, 72 percent was. In Concordia Parish, across the Mississippi River from Natchez, in the heart of the fertile Delta, 92 percent of the population was enslaved.
“Yet, three quarters of white southern households didn’t own anybody,” we learned. “Slave ownership was concentrated among the wealthy. It’s been that way in all slave societies …It widens the wealth gap.
“It’s one reason Abraham Lincoln’s family moved from Kentucky to Indiana (in 1816) and then Illinois (1830). Abe’s father was uncomfortable with slavery, but felt he couldn’t compete economically with farmers who had slave labor, so he moved the family to a free state with better opportunities for small farmers.”
“Who knew?” said Wilson, about the evening’s talk. “If you listen around here, you get smarter. Ask questions and you learn. To me, travel is about learning. It’s been the big takeaway from this cruise.”
IF YOU GO: The Viking Mississippi sails year round – with varying itineraries. Its New Orleans/Memphis cruise operates January through June and September through December. The riverboat cruises between Memphis and Nashville in October and November. Find it up north, cruising between St. Louis and St. Paul in summer. Weeklong cruises start at about $4,300 per person. Learn more at www.vikingrivercruises.com.
