At City Front Thursday, Sam E. Angel remembered spending many nights aboard the MV Mississippi IV in his 15 years on the retired river workboat — dubbed “Big Shaky” for the way its twin engines moved it up and down waterways in its heyday.

“The thing just shook all the time,” said Angel, senior civilian member of the Mississippi River Commission, who attended the groundbreaking for the new Corps of Engineers interpretive center for which the 1,450-ton vessel is to be the centerpiece.

Angel remembered how the clang of glasses chimed him to bed on many occasions as he slept in quarters located near the dining room at the rear of the 1,450-ton vessel. “One time at Cape Girardeau in the ’80s, one of the engines blew up,” Angel said, “but they had them back up the next day. That’s what kind of engineers we had.”

Angel also expressed pride that the boat will be prominent again when its doors will be opened to tourists as part of the complex.

“It’s back where it was, and that’s where it should be,” Angel said.

To open in 2011, the center on Jackson and Washington streets will feature the boat — the first diesel-powered vessel to serve as flagship of the MRC — as its main attraction, housing interactive exhibits and other memorabilia on Corps efforts to improve navigation and limit flooding on the river’s tributaries. A museum to be built next door will have features to focus on life surrounding the lower Mississippi River. A walkway and observation deck will be fashioned out of the old Fairground Street bridge, which will be disassembled and rebuilt anew just south of the two larger structures. Renovations continue inside the boat to house exhibits.

In October, the Corps announced Pascagoula-based S&M and Associates won a $7.9 million contract to build the museum. Planning and construction costs, including exterior alterations and the boat’s relocation to Washington Street two years ago, have been funded by Congress intermittently since the City of Vicksburg, during the administration of former Mayor Joe Loviza, purchased the boat from the Memphis District in the mid-1990s for $1 with a tourism site in mind. The title was transferred back to the Corps in 2005. Costs will total about $16 million by the center’s planned opening.

Already part of a City Front landscape revitalized in the past decade or so with the floodwall murals and recreation space, the museum figures to aid the downtown economy, local officials said.

“It will add to economic development, education, quality of life,” Mayor Paul Winfield said, adding it will persuade more people to spend more money downtown.

“Our community was created by virtue of the Mississippi River,” Warren County Board of Supervisors President Richard George said. “It stands as a testimony to diligent work put in by many.”

The MV Mississippi IV was decommissioned in 1993 and replaced by the fifth in a line of vessels dating to the 1880s that have aided levee reinforcement along the Mississippi River. Use of retired workboats isn’t new, as the third MV Mississippi, retired in 1961, was opened as a restaurant and dinner theater in Missouri and Ohio in later years. Using a restored MV Mississippi IV to house a museum is an educational opportunity that could go beyond just learning about the river, Vicksburg District commander Col. Michael Wehr said.

“I dont think it’s overstating it,” Wehr said. “It’s just another step to an educated democracy.”

Levee Street between Jackson and Washington streets will be closed once construction begins in earnest, with some exceptions for large trucks, city officials have said. Total estimated construction time is 440 days.

The Corps of Engineers has been a major presence in Vicksburg, starting before the Flood of 1927 and growing since. Entities here include the Mississippi Valley Division and the Mississippi River Commission, which manage the nation’s largest river system for navigation and flood control from the headwaters to the Gulf of Mexico, the Vicksburg District, which reports to the MVD, and the Engineering Research and Development Center on Halls Ferry Road, which supports Army military and civil projects.

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Contact Danny Barrett Jr. at dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com