Word: towboat
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Like Author Bissell, Bill Joyce had some fancy schooling and a well-to-do father. When he reported for work on the towboat Inland Coal after being turned down by the Navy in 1942, he went aboard sardonically quoting from Moby Dick ("Call me Ishmael") at the tow-boat's second mate. But after he had finished his first year Joyce had river fever bad, had his sights set on a mate's job and even put river life above his girl. Of course he got the girl, wound up a pilot...
...over nine watertight bureaus: Patents, Census, Foreign & Domestic Commerce, Coast & Geodetic Survey, Weather, Civil Aeronautics Administration, Public Roads, Standards, and Inland Waterways, which runs the world's biggest barge line (the Federal Barge Lines on the Mississippi and its tributaries) and whose pride and joy is the new towboat, Harry Truman...
...hull," he says stoutly, "we could take her anywhere." But there are some obstacles: the hull actually rests on a barge which keeps the Goldenrod from sinking; the pilothouse teeters over the deck like a tilted crackerbox ("Haven't been up there in ten years"), and the towboat Wenonah has been steam-less so long that rivermen doubt whether she has more than one good whistle left...
...Attorney Carl ¶ Stephens downed a swig on the spot. He suffered no ill effects, but (as a possible carrier of hog cholera) was urged to stay away from hogs for at least 19 days. ¶ Shoving an 1,000-ton barge, the Federal Barge Lines' diesel towboat Harry Truman chuffed valiantly from New Orleans to St. Louis, failed by one hour and 17 minutes to match the 79-year-old record (three days 18 hrs. 14 min.) set by the steamboat Robert...
...Disaster struck the soo-ft. Mississippi towboat Natchez, namesake of the steamboat which raced the Robert E. Lee. The swollen river's current smashed the vessel into a bridge pier near Greenville, Miss. She rolled over and sank in 30 seconds. Thirteen of her crew were saved; another 13 drowned...