In the end, Pittsburgh is all about the rivers.

Without the wide ribbons of water that caress it, there is no history of the city, no future, no past, no art, no architecture, no folklore, no industry, not so much, at the risk of being overly dramatic, as a beery "Here we go, Steelers, here we go."

So until you actually, physically get on the water by some means, some essential element of Pittsburgh's spirit might easily escape you.

The grandest way to put yourself on the water, and certainly the most comforting way for that measurable percentage of hydrophobes who can't comfortably take a shower without a life jacket, is to take a ride on the Gateway Clipper.

These revered large and larger party boats barely even sway as they navigate the three rivers, facilitating an elegance in the river experience that goes way beyond the simple pleasure of torturing a carp from the sooty reef of the former Mon Parking Wharf.

"This is the Gateway Clipper lot, right?" said the older gentleman in the dinner jacket and bow tie just before a recent cruise.

We were just about to enter the ramp area from the parking lot, and this fellow was all the reassurance anyone would need that we were in the right spot. He was here with the orchestra, a pivotal component of the Captain's Dinner Dance Cruise.

There's one of these soirees every night beginning in the spring, much as there has been since 1958, and there are few better ways to see the city's exquisite skyline, at least from the waterline. For too much of its history, no one even imagined that Pittsburgh could be experienced this way. In the age when these rivers were regarded as little more than a plumbing and transportation system for the throbbing ambitions of heavy industry, there was little point in putting on a dinner jacket to get on a boat that would as likely bump into a floating horse carcass as sail onward to enchantment, or Millvale.

The credit for seeing the rivers as something else entirely generally accrues to John E. Connelly, who as treasurer of the county agency charged with remaking their image in the mid '50s, bought the first boat -- a fishing vessel docked near Erie -- christened it the Gateway Clipper, and launched a new vision.

Today, decades into that brainstorm's refinement, you'll push off from the Station Square dock around 7 after the customary boarding and lubrication hour, and float ever so gently into the current while the Clipper's chefs prepare a sumptuous buffet. In midstream, then, note the ageless dignity of the Monongahela.

Perhaps no river in the world has such a revered place in the very history of humanity. For nearly 8,000 years, this water has been the highway of pharaohs and empresses, the inspiration for the literature of Flaubert, the site of the ancient temples Esna, Kom Ombo, and --wait, that's the Nile.

We often confuse 'em.

That's why we have the Smithfield Street Bridge, which is probably only half the age of some of Cleopatra's underthings. Whether you're actually aware of it or you're busily scooping traditional rice pilaf, Italian ziti salad, and/or green beans forestiere, the Smithfield Street Bridge is the first of the spans you'll pass beneath on this three-hour tour, a factoid here inserted to ensure that no one who reads this will be able to get the "Gilligan's Island" theme out of his head for the next three days.

The Smithfield Street Bridge is the oldest of Allegheny County's staggering total of 1,500 bridges, or a somewhat less staggering 750 bridges if you're going by one of those revisionist history texts.

Before you plow into the baked ham with pineapples, you might want to step portside to view the still relatively new Allegheny County Jail, which is being pointed out mostly because you can never help but wonder on this cruise if the inmates are looking down at us with our assorted cakes and fruit cups and such. For many, that Dinner and Dancing with Felons Cruise can't get here soon enough.

There's much more to the Gateway Clipper's mission than just the dinner jacket and bow tie gig. All kinds of themes are beautifully executed aboard this fleet. There are jazz cruises, blues cruises, private charters, sightseeing cruises and an extensive menu of "holiday sailabrations" (ain't that clever?), including firecracker cruises on July 4, cruises with Santa, Mother's Day cruises, Halloween monster party cruises, and even a Return of Chiller Theater Dance Cruise in late October, a concept that's so deliciously goofy it can't really be explained if you're an out-of-towner.

You join Chilly Billy Cardille and the whole Chiller gang. Cardille is the former host of "Chiller Theater" on local TV. He and several ghoulish characters appeared in the commercial breaks. They haunt the Clipper to this day.

Make sure that you and your dance partner pry yourselves apart before our vessel makes it back down the Mon to the Point. The Point is more than just the confluence of the three rivers. In the Industrial Age, it was pretty much just a big nose on Pittsburgh's work-worn face, but the city's Renaissance brought the Point an effective rhinoplasty, and the huge and beauteous fountain, well, that doesn't really fit into this metaphor at all, does it?

As the Clipper arcs round the Point, we find ourselves on a new river, a river so exotic, diverse, and expansive that its 3,900-mile track actually starts in the far-off snowcapped mountains of Peru. Defined principally by a continent-sprawling tropical rain forest, it -- wait, that's the Amazon.

They shouldn't put it so close to Allegheny in the atlas.

The Allegheny starts clear up in Potter County though, and Peru probably doesn't even have a Potter County. The newest notable structure as we glide up the Allegheny is the right-field boundary of the beautiful home of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Farther up the Allegheny, we encounter Herrs Island, which has been renamed Washington's Landing, which you can never reach on this tour without wondering what George Washington wouldn't have given that day in 1753 to be on the Captain's Dinner and Dance Cruise instead of following Christopher Gist through the weeds back toward Virginia.

Washington fell into the Allegheny right about here while trying to push some ice from his raft with an oar. He was hauled out by Gist with what history records as a "great effort" and eventually became, well, George Washington. Had Gist not been successful, it's quite mind-boggling to imagine what would have happened to a nation that was not yet a nation. Needless to say, had this place been named Washington's Drowning, it would have affected more than the traditional rice pilaf.

When our cruise finally slides down the Ohio River toward the West End Bridge, the historical importance of a second island, Neville Island, virtually commands notice. To overstate it only mildly, this little three-mile landform in the Ohio is where World War II was won. Yes, technically, there was no fighting, but dozens of the industries that helped Pittsburgh produce an unfathomable $19 billion worth of munitions between 1941 and 1945 (that's about $180 billion in today's dollars) were situated right here.

More trivially, actually far more trivially, it is also true that Sports Illustrated, for its infamous annual swimsuit issue, never chose to shoot leggy supermodels on the forbidden beaches of Neville Island, which is just a shame.

As we float back past the confluence at the end of this cruise, reassured that it is indeed possible to eat for three straight hours without much affecting the ship's displacement, we leave the Ohio, which meanders on to Cairo, Ill., where it is larger than the Mississippi where they intersect.

For the Allegheny, this is the end of a journey that snakes into New York out of Potter County and then wanders 325 miles through Western Pennsylvania. The Monongahela here finishes its 128-mile northward penetration from Marion County, W.Va.

Those are merely the specs on a fortuitous geological blessing, but all of Pittsburgh is wrapped up in them, what it is, where it's been, and where it's going.

Still, for an even greater understanding, you'll need to return for that Chilly Billy thing.

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