Word: towboats
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Folks down here don't consider her-the biggest vessel on the river and bigger than many ocean-going cargo steamers-a "tugboat." She is a "towboat." An old lady of such poise, size and age should not be tagged with "tugboat...
...steam-driven towboat Kokoda, running nearly 160 miles ahead of the diesel-driven Helena in a 1,100-mile race up the Mississippi from New Orleans to St. Louis, got stuck in the ice ten miles above Cairo, Ill., barely managed to get up enough headway to keep its lead...
...Laugh That Failed. Last week, folks along the Minnesota were too busy to laugh. Into the Minnesota at new Port Cargill they triumphantly plopped a 180-ft. Army towboat, the Bataan (cost $1,000,000), moored it snugly alongside three 300-ft. ocean tankers they have launched in the last four months, are now fitting out. Without wasting a moment, they jumped to work on the first of a new batch of Navy tankers Cargill contracted to build fortnight...
Just above Dubuque, the Coast Guard's Del Commune ran into real trouble last week. The Mississippi's Dam No. 11 was frozen tight; the little towboat had to stand by for five hours while men thawed out the valves with hot water, cut away 20-inch slabs of ice from behind the gates, finally nursed them open. Then the Del Commune moved upstream through the locks-into an icefield that stretched from bank to bank as far as the eye could...
First Night Out. Engines pounded. Grizzled old Pilot Joe Lloyd, who has spent nearly half a century on the river, pointed the Del Commune straight ahead. The ice growled, snapped, cracked. Two ducks beat a hasty retreat to the brown Wisconsin shore, Slowly, laboriously, the towboat crunched forward. A snowstorm blew up; night came early; Captain Joe turned on the two big searchlights...