Duck tours (or, more formally, amphibious tours), are tours that take place on purpose-built amphibious tour buses and (modified) surplus amphibious military vehicles, like DUKWs ("Ducks") and LARC-Vs. They are often offered as tourist attractions in harbor, river and lake cities. [1]
The first "duck tour" company was started in 1946 by Mel Flath and Bob Unger in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin. Flath's company has changed ownership since, but it is still in operation under the name Original Wisconsin Ducks. His family continues to operate a duck company called the Dells Army Ducks in the Wisconsin Dells Area. [2]
DUKWs operated by Boston Duck Tours have been used thirteen times since 2002 for "rolling rallies" to celebrate sports championships by New England–based local pro sports teams. [3] There have been six for the New England Patriots (2002, 2004, 2005, 2015, 2017, 2019), [4] four for the Boston Red Sox (2004, 2007, 2013, 2018), [5] two for the Boston Celtics (2008, 2024), [6] and one for the Boston Bruins (2011). [7]
The Duck Boats were first planned to be used for the New England Patriots in 1997 however they did not win Super Bowl XXXI. [8] While much of the parade routes over the years consisted of the DUKWs staying on land, some featured the DUKWs traversing both the land and across the Charles River.
The Seafair Pirates in Seattle use a DUKW "Moby Duck" modified to look like a Spanish Galleon as their primary means of amphibious transport.
Almost all have since been repainted and given modern diesel engines, and some have enclosed tops, making them more resemble conventional buses. Others are warm-weather only, open-air vehicles, with an optional canopy. Most require a bus-type Public Service Vehicle license and a passenger-use boat license.[ citation needed ]
In Australia at the Rainforestation Nature Park at Kuranda in Queensland a fleet of DUKWs are used to take visitors through a typical rain forest environment. The DUKWs travel along a tight twisty track through the forest before entering a small lake where their amphibious capabilities are demonstrated. [9]
A heavily modified DUKW called "Normandie" has been in use at the Koksijde seaside (Belgium) for a number of decades, as a tourist sea excursion vehicle.
In Singapore, Singapore DUCKtours has been operating amphibious tours using modified LARC-Vs around the Civic District and the Marina Bay since 2002. [10]
San Francisco's 'Bay Quackers' operated from 2004 until 2011, splashing into San Francisco Bay near AT&T Park in modified DUKWs. They were targeted in a lawsuit by 'Ride the Ducks' for use of the quacker kazoos in a sound mark infringement case, however the lawsuit was later dropped. [11]
Liverpool's 'Yellow Duckmarine' tours (a wordplay on the Beatles song Yellow Submarine) had 4 DUKWs in 2014, one of which saw service in the D-day landings. The service carried over two million passengers in its 13-year life and was ridden by Queen Elizabeth II during her Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 2012. [12] [13] These are no longer operating due to the liquidation of the company following two separate sinkings in 2013. [14]
London's "London Duck Tours limited" owned 13 vessels prior to 2017, of which some saw action in D-day. They were operating DUKWs in the UK but closed on 18 September 2017.
Duck boats based on the old WWII DUKW have a poor safety record and a large number of fatal incidents for the amount of vehicles in service.[ citation needed ] This has resulted in calls to better regulate the vehicles, or in some cases, ban them altogether.[ citation needed ]
The vehicles exist in a regulatory gray area, with different regulators for use on land and for use on water. On the water, the Coast Guard is the primary regulator in the United States, while on land, they are regulated by various state and local agencies. The National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates accidents, can recommend regulations but has no authority to implement them. [15]
The DUKW vehicles were never intended to be used on public roadways, resulting in numerous blind spot where drivers are unable to see traffic hazards. [15] On water, the boats have low freeboard, which makes them vulnerable to rapid sinking in poor weather, and the canopies often trap passengers on board as the boats sink. [16] In addition, the duck boat vehicles are very old, replacement parts are difficult to find, and the vehicles are often poorly maintained.[ citation needed ]
Some measures have been passed to improve safety conditions. The City of Boston requires blind spot cameras and requires a second person on board to serve as a tour guide so that the driver is not distracted. However, the NTSB's safety recommendations after a 1999 fatal sinking in Hot Springs, Arkansas, have mostly been ignored. [15] [16]
New build vehicles such as the Seahorse MKIII are purpose built amphibious passenger vehicles. These new vehicles adhere to the latest safety standards for both road and water regulation and have not faced the poor safety record seen on the 1940s DUKW "Ducks".
On May 1, 1999, a DUKW called the Miss Majestic sank on Lake Hamilton and Lake Catherine in Hot Springs, Arkansas, killing 13 of the 20 people on board. The NTSB listed the cause of the accident as a loose rubber seal near the drive shaft. [17] [18]
On June 23, 2002, the Lady Duck, a custom-built vehicle converted from a Ford F-350 pickup truck, sank while on a cruise on the Ottawa River in Ontario, Canada. Six passengers, the driver, and the tour guide escaped, but four passengers were trapped under the sunken vehicle's canopy and drowned. [19] A review found problems with regulating such vehicles and defects in the makeshift design and the emergency procedures.[ citation needed ]
On July 7, 2010, a regulated and modern Ride the Ducks amphibious bus (based on the original DUKW design and using an original DUKW chassis), was disabled by an engine fire and later run over by a barge, being towed by a tugboat on the Delaware River in Philadelphia. The operator of the tug pushing the barge was on his personal cell phone. Before the accident the Ride The Ducks captain made numerous calls to the tug to get the tug to change course. Those calls were heard and rebroadcast by other vessels, but there was no response from the operator of the tug. [20] Thirty-three passengers and two crew members were quickly recovered, but two passengers, a 20-year-old man and a 16-year-old girl, both part of a tour group from Hungary, were killed. The NTSB determined that the probable cause of the accident was the tugboat mate's (responsible for driving the tug at the time) inattention to his duties. The tugboat mate was sentenced to 366 days in federal prison.
On May 8, 2015, a modern Ride the Ducks boat with an original DUKW chassis struck and killed a woman crossing the street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania's Chinatown section. Witnesses at the scene say that the woman was distracted by her handheld tablet device and walked into the street against the red light and was struck while in the boat's front center blind spot. [21] Although the police determined the driver was not at fault, [22] the victim's husband sued the company and the city, saying that the blind spots of the vehicle and the placement of the traffic light contributed to her death. The lawsuit was settled in 2017 for an undisclosed amount. [23] [24]
On September 24, 2015, a modern Ride the Ducks vehicle with an original DUKW chassis in Seattle, Washington crashed into a charter bus on the Aurora Bridge, killing five passengers on the bus, critically injuring eight, and seriously injuring eight more. [25] The cause of the accident was poor maintenance, that led to an axle breaking at high speed. The lack of a median barrier on the bridge made the accident more severe. The city and state settled their lawsuits surrounding the safety of the bridge for $4.4 million. [26] [27]
On July 19, 2018, near Branson, Missouri, 17 people died and 7 were wounded after a DUKW capsized during a severe thunderstorm on Table Rock Lake. 29 passengers and two crew members were on the boat. [28]
On March 30, 2013, a duck boat of The Yellow Duckmarine in Liverpool sank in the city's Salthouse Dock during a tour. All passengers were safely transferred to a pontoon before the vehicle began to sink. [29] In June 2013 another duck boat, operated by the same company, sank in the Albert Dock as it came to the end of a tour of Liverpool. Passengers were forced to jump into the water as the vehicle rapidly took on water. Some were rescued by vessels while others swam to the side of the dock. Out of the 31 people on board, 27 were treated in hospital for minor injuries. [30] [31] The incident resulted in the Maritime and Coastguard Agency withdrawing all safety certificates for the craft owned by Pearlwild and their entering administration. Pearlwild are also under investigation by the North West Traffic Commissioner over the operation of the Duckmarines during 2012. [32]
On September 29, 2013, a duck boat on the River Thames in London caught fire. Thirty people were rescued, a number of them after having jumped into the river to escape the fire. [33] An investigation by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch determined that the fire had been caused by ignition of additional buoyancy foam added to the DUKW following the Liverpool incident, due to obstruction of airflow within the mechanical compartments and friction between the foam and moving parts. [34]
The phrase "duck tour" and the duck cartoon have been deemed generic and not trademark-able by the First Circuit Court of Appeals in the United States. [35]
Trans World Airlines Flight 800 (TWA800) was a Boeing 747-100 that exploded and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near East Moriches, New York, on July 17, 1996, at approximately 8:31 p.m. EDT, 12 minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport, on a scheduled international passenger flight to Rome with a stopover in Paris.
American Airlines Flight 587 was a regularly scheduled international passenger flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York City to Las Américas International Airport, Santo Domingo. On November 12, 2001, the Airbus A300B4-605R flying the route crashed into the neighborhood of Belle Harbor on the Rockaway Peninsula of Queens, New York City, shortly after takeoff. All 260 people aboard the plane were killed, as well as five people on the ground. It is the second-deadliest aviation accident in U.S. history, behind the crash of American Airlines Flight 191 in 1979, and the second-deadliest aviation incident involving an Airbus A300, after Iran Air Flight 655.
An amphibious vehicle is a vehicle that works both on land and on or under water. Amphibious vehicles include amphibious bicycles, ATVs, cars, buses, trucks, railway vehicles, combat vehicles, and hovercraft.
A school bus is any type of bus owned, leased, contracted to, or operated by a school or school district. It is regularly used to transport students to and from school or school-related activities, but not including a charter bus or transit bus. Various configurations of school buses are used worldwide; the most iconic examples are the yellow school buses of the United States which are also found in other parts of the world.
The Aurora Bridge is a cantilever and truss bridge in Seattle, Washington, United States. It carries State Route 99 over the west end of Seattle's Lake Union and connects Queen Anne and Fremont. The bridge is located just east of the Fremont Cut, which itself is spanned by the Fremont Bridge.
Salthouse Dock is a dock on the River Mersey, England, and part of the Port of Liverpool. It is situated in the southern dock system, connected to Canning Dock to the north, Wapping Dock via Wapping Basin to the south and Albert Dock to the west.
The DUKW is a six-wheel-drive amphibious modification of the 2+1⁄2-ton CCKW trucks used by the U.S. military during World War II and the Korean War.
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Cool Amphibious Manufacturers International (CAMI) is an amphibious vehicle manufacturer based in Bluffton, South Carolina, in the United States. They have many different types of amphibious vehicles, including the Hydra Terra, an amphibious bus filled with foam. CAMI claims that the bus is "unsinkable and safer" than the DUKW (World War II amphibious assault vehicles), LARCs (Vietnam War era assault vehicles), and the British FV620 Stalwart amphibious load carrier. The Hydra Terra vehicle is currently used by major cities around the world in what are termed Splash, or Duck Tours. Some of the international cities offering these tours include Boston, Dublin and Belfast.
Big Bus Tours, is the largest operator of open top bus sightseeing tours founded in May 2011 after "Les Cars Rouges" and the "Big Bus Company" merged. The company operates in 23 cities of 11 countries with more than 150 buses around the world. The United States is the country with the largest number of cities with Big Bus Tours service. Typically, Big Bus Tours use open top double-decker buses in burgundy and cream-coloured livery.
Ride the Ducks was a national duck tour operator and eponymous tourist attraction in some parts of the United States and Guam. It made use of amphibious vehicles, nicknamed "ducks", to provide tours of cities by boat and by land.
A tour boat is a boat used, and frequently purpose-built or adapted, for boat tours, a type of tourism frequently offered in much visited towns and cities of historic interest, that have canals or a river running through it, or that lie on a coast or a lake.
Boston Duck Tours is a privately owned company that operates historical tours of the city of Boston using replica World War II amphibious DUKW vehicles. Boston Duck Tours first started running tours in Boston, Massachusetts on October 5, 1994. The company has three departure locations throughout the city of Boston: the Prudential Center, the Museum of Science and the New England Aquarium.
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On the evening of February 3, 2015, a commuter train on Metro-North Railroad's Harlem Line struck a passenger car at a grade crossing near Valhalla, New York, United States, between the Valhalla and Mount Pleasant stations, killing six people and injuring 15 others, seven very seriously. The crash is the deadliest in Metro-North's history, and at the time the deadliest rail accident in the United States since the June 2009 Washington Metro train collision, which killed nine passengers and injured 80.
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On the evening of July 19, 2018, a duck boat operated by Ride the Ducks sank on Table Rock Lake in the Ozarks near Branson, Missouri, in the United States. The amphibious vehicle sank with 31 people on board, leaving 17 dead, during high winds associated with nearby severe thunderstorms as part of a significant derecho and tornado outbreak.
The sinking of MV Conception occurred on September 2, 2019, when the 75-foot (23 m) dive boat caught fire and eventually sank off the coast of Santa Cruz Island, California, United States. The boat was anchored overnight at Platts Harbor, a small undeveloped bay on the island's north shore, with 33 passengers and 1 crew member asleep below decks when a fire broke out shortly after 3 a.m. Five crew members, whose sleeping quarters were on the top deck, survived while everyone else on board died. The crew members were forced by the fire to jump overboard but not before placing an initial mayday call to the Coast Guard and attempting to alert the passengers. The crew retrieved the Conception's skiff and motored to a nearby boat where a second radio dispatch was made. The rescue and recovery operations were coordinated by the United States Coast Guard.
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