Toby Harnden was the Daily Telegraph's US Editor, based in Washington DC, from 2006 to 2011. Click here for Toby's website . Follow him on Twitter here @tobyharnden and on Facebook here . He is the author of the bestselling book Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards and the Defining Story Britain's War in Afghanistan. There can be few more pitiful scenes along the Mississippi than that of the once magnificent Mississippi Queen steamboat tied up at the Perry Street Wharf in New Orleans, where it is disintegrating and falling prey to looters. My news story on the sad fate of the Mississippi steamboats is here . When we went to see it yesterday, we bumped into Clyde Ory, a 65-year-old New Orleans native who has spent his life working on Mississippi boats and first serviced the engines and pumps of the Mississippi Queen when it was commissioned in 1976, the year of the United States bicentennial. For Ory, the demise of the vessel symbolised the end of the river as a way of life for so many. "The river made your living," he said. "My whole family worked on the river. Everybody I know, just about, worked on this river. "That's where you made your money. On the river, you could make $30, $40 an hour. "Now that's gone. All the shipping's gone. We ain't got no more work. It's all gone. You see how dead it is? I remember one time you got ships lining up along this