The Ribbon - Part Twelve

June 9, 1988
On June 9th I had slept in since it was so cloudy and cold. About 8:30 a.m. I wandered up to the wheelhouse and was told that we had reached Shawneetown but there were no barges ready for us. Shawneetown is the oldest settlement in Illinois. The pilot said we had passed on some barges during the night that weren't ready for us. We had been in a spot between Evansville and Paducah which was not in a strong radar path and the marine operator couldn’t pick us up.
Having no barges to load, we just sat waiting for further orders. The boat slowly wandered up the river and passed Peabody Mine. The Peabody has a seven mile long conveyor, the longest in the world, which loads coal from the mines, down to the barges.

At 4:00 p.m. we had finally received word regarding our barges and headed for Harrisonville to pick them up. We were headed for Uniontown Lock.

Dave called his wife and she said all was fine at home. She reported that the car was sounding bad and will need some work when he got back. Problems on land seem a million miles away when you're sitting out on the river. There was nothing that could be done so there was nothing to worry about. Car problems are a perfect example of why the families back home need support from the company so the crew doesn’t have to worry.

About 8:30 p.m. a harbor tug named Spirit brought over the first of the coal barges. The deck hands were hooking it up and I watched every detail of what went on. After one of the barges was measured, it was too deep, 9'3" and with the low river they couldn't take that one.

In the evening after dinner I sat with the Captain and watched the sun set parallel to the river. The water was a pale baby blue and the sky near the horizon pale pink with light mauve clouds. The tree line at this stretch of river was very even and was forest green. The sky above the pink turned faint blue and increased in color toward the east. The view was too panoramic to capture on film so we just sat and enjoyed the serenity of nature as we listened to the calls and commands of the crew. The beauty faded fast as the noisy little tug brought over more barges.

We headed toward the Uniontown Lock at 11:30 p.m. I stayed up to watch as we entered the lock. It looked like it might be a little perilous because the river below us was windy due to the islands sitting out in the water. The pilot and the lock master talked by radio and the lock master sent a tug to meet us and take five of our coal barges through the lock. He went in first and as the water rose, we watched for his wheelhouse to appear.

Our turn to enter the lock and the mate was out on the barges, shouting distances to the pilot. “300 feet to the gate” would mean the head of the tow was entering the long chamber with that much distance to the far gate. A normal long haul tow has fifteen barges and measures about 1,000 feet or about a ¼ of a mile in length. A lock chamber is normally 1,200 feet long. A shout of “2 Feet” would mean the tow was entering with two feet on the mate’ side between the barges and the lock wall. When a towboat is in a lock chamber, there is minimal space between the lock wall and the boat. Huge bumpers are thrown into the water to keep the boat from physically touching the wall thus preventing sparks if the metal hit concrete. The interchange between the pilot and the mate was the only conversation allowed in the wheelhouse when locking through. Every few seconds the mate would call another distance reading and the pilot would maneuver the boat at just the right speed, advancing or reversing engines to get her in. Once she was in the pilot would cut her engines and sit still in the chamber.

Large ropes, called lines, were attached to the elevators which rise at the same level as the water, holding the boat in place. It is pure magic when a pilot can perfectly manage the engines to hold a boat in place, no matter how fast the current.

We made it through the lock at 2:00 a.m. and I went off to try to sleep to the sound of the barges being reconnected from the little tug. Breakfast came early and I enjoyed eating with the crew.