Towboat Photography

Virtually an unseen industry to many Americans, even those who live close to a navigable waterway, the U.S. Inland Waterway System moves millions of tons of cargo in the American Heartland every year. Coal, steel, grain, iron ore, road salt, petroleum products, livestock feed, scrap metal -- and large amounts of it -- are moved by water on almost a daily basis. From places like St. Paul, Minnesota, St. Louis, Mo., Memphis, Tenn., Nashville, Tenn, Pittsburgh, Penn., and Tulsa, Okla, to anywhere to which you can push a barge.  Its a huge interstate transportation system right under our noses, but on water.

Some folks may think of the river exiting as it did during the time Mark Twain wrote about in the Life of the Mississippi. Some traditions from that era are probably seen on the rivers (but I can't think of any offhand), but they're still there. It Mark Twain's time the steam paddlewheeler was the king of the river, hauling cargo and passengers from places they were to places they needed to be.

Today the king of the river is the sleek, modern towboat with diesel engines capable of producing upwards of 10,000 horsepower needed to push 15 to 25 barges laded with hundreds of thousands of tons of goods. Towboats are home away from home from the people who work on them. Each towboat includes a captain, watch pilots, deckhands, engineers and cooks who live where they work for about a month at a time.  The work may be hard but the people doing it get attached to the river and their big boats.

Like some people enjoy collecting and taking pictures of diesel locomotives there is a hale and hearty group out there -- and out there is not easily defined in this case -- who collects towboat photos.  They are the ones who work on the boats and take pictures of passing towboats. Or it is the retired towboater who spends his or her time on the riverbank, taking pictures of boats and being reminded of their days working hard on the river. And there are people like me, who used to work in an allied river industry, got too close to a boat bug and caught towboating picture disease, as I like to call it.

Dan Owen of Maryville, Illinois, curator of the Boat Photo Museum is really into collecting boat photographs. In his youth Dan worked as a deckhand on Ohio River towboats. He was an early "boat spy" for Capt. Fred Way, editor of the Inland River Record.  The Record as it is simply known among river people is a book that lists the name of each towboat operating on the river; the name of the boat, year built, engine and gear specifications and owner. In the late 1960s Dan moved his family to the St. Louis area to take over editing duties of the Record when it was bought by The Waterways Journal.

Dan relied (and still relies upon) on a network of what he called his "boat spies," individuals who worked and or lived on the river and reported to him when they spotted a newly-built boat, or one that was sporting a new name, paint job and company logo. Every year Dan sends boat surveys to get official updates on a towing company's boat fleet, but he still heavily relies on his collection of eyes and ears on the river for some of his information.

Through the years Dan has added to the towboat photo collection by taking his own pictures and soliciting contributions to the Museum's collection. The boat photo museum is, by the way, house in the basement of Dan's house. About eight years ago he had 30,000 boat photos in the collection and it is probably grown a lot by then.

Dan already has photos of many of the boats I photograph. Once in a great while, and it doesn't happen often, I'll catch a photo of a boat that Dan doesn't have. That always gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. And I'm always glad to deposit at copy in the boat photo museum. Such was the case with the MV. Shirley P. Settoon, shown here. I posted it in the towboat flickr group and it wasn't long before I got an email from Dan asking me to send a copy to the boat photo museum

MV Shirley P. Settoon. Ed Rahe Photo

In addition to photographing each boat I've started shooting 20 to 30 seconds of video of the boat underway. Just because. Like most photo and video shot today, it may become more interesting and valuable in 20 to 30 years.