Live from the Louisville Levee

An interesting sidelight: The USCG engaged a towboat to lead river traffic around the sunken barges. On at least six occasions the USCG radioed the boat THEY engaged to get out of the area, saying it didn't belong there! It makes one wonder, doesn't it?

Salvage

There ought to be a plaque honoring the talents of Mr. Oakie Moore, St. Louis Dive and Salvage Master. No one else could have raised and saved the BELLE OF LOUISVILLE like he did-- not even the illustrious Captain John Beatty. He is one unsung hero that every friend of the BELLE's should be eternally grateful that he was around in the BoL's time of need. Think he will be called upon again, or does Ingram have their own salvage team?

Alan: As I crossed the bridge this morning, I saw a big towboat treading water near the buoys marking the sunken barges. A tow was upbound out of the canal and I figured the other towboat was there to "mark the spot" and keep the submerged barges from being "run over" yet again!

And you can watch the salvage action (which begins tomorrow) from the Galt House web cam:

I think Jim Zubik's River Salvage team is doing the work. At least I have seen their
equipment southbound past my landing this morning.

Steve,

So far there is no equipment at Louisville (as of 9pm today). Here are some shots I took at the 4th Street Wharf this evening at about 7:30pm pf the divers and the buoys marking the sunken barges. The large Ingram boat I could not identify (I didn't bring my binoculars with me...I know what kind of riverman am I???).

The pictures of the BELLE OF LOUISVILLE show her at the United States Army Corps Of Engineers landing in the Surge basin imediately above the Mc Alpine Lock and Dam. She appears laid up sitting there at the Corps dock. These pictures were taken from Lannan Park in West Louisville about 8pm today.

~Travis~

Here are the BELLE OF LOUISVILLE shots....

I just downbloaded a video my company sent out on this. It was the m/v JERRY TINKEY, and coming out of the upper end of the canal, they simply shoved the barges under, once they came out of the slack water at the head of the canal and hit the swift current.

Travis,

They are probably holding up above the salvage site. the m/v James Garrett (Zubik/River Salvage) was southbound (light-boat) here yesterday morning. C.R. Neale said their A-frame lifting rig was on its way south past their landing on the upper Ohio a couple days ago. The salvage work is supposed to start today, but that can change.

I heard on the radio this morning on the way to work that the BELLE would be allowed by the Coast Guard to go back to her 4th Street Wharf dock so that she could resume her schedule.

I was kinda surprised since the work will be done VERY near where she ties up. Wonder why they didn't have her tie up at Cox's Park and load and unload there? Free parking there. Ah, yes then city couldn't collect the parking fee!!

UPDATE: The BELLE is back at her usual landing and work is well underway on the sunken barges, with one barge already raised. They now say the recovery project will be completed in much less time than originally anticipated.

I went to the webcam this afternoon and it looks like they got the other
barge raised.

The webcam also happened to catch the Belle Of Louisville near her landing
before the storms hit!

OK, I guess I'm kinda curious. It was said that the barges that sank were iron ore barges...I assume they were open top, then. So how do they do the salvage and I guess what are the dynamics of a barge sinking? Do the barges sink typically "jelly side up" so to speak, and if yes, when they raise them do they try to raise them with the cargo? And if no, is there a separate salvage for the cargo, now at the bottom of the river?

It was mentioned that the barge was in tow when it was shoved into weather, did I get that right? Does that mean the waves were higher than the freeboard of the loaded barge, causing the loaded barge to swamp? Do the companies that load barges load them short weight if "weather" is predicted?

And if the lead barge does swamp do the deck hands scamble to do an emergency, extremely fast cutting of the lines to prevent the whole tow from doing the submarine thing?

As always, thanks in advance...

Bruno, I tried to post a WAV file to this that shows the whole thing, but I am a dummy when it comes to computers.

Here is the link, but I don't know if it will embed for clicking on:

LvlJerrytinkeybargesink0606008.wmv

Here's what happened: The tow was coming up river, out of the slack water of the Louisville & Portaland Canal, into the swift waters of the Ohio River just above McAlpine Dam. The tow had a good bit of headway in the slack water, and when the head of the tow gets to the current the stern is still in slack water and making good time. It is a relative motion effect -- you are going 7 mph in slack water, but the head hits a 4 or 5 mph current; until the whole thing slows down, for a while the relative speed of water on the lead barges is now 11 or 12 mph instead of the 7 it was just a few seconds before. Those coal barges are open hopper barges, and have no covers. In addition, they have a rather bluff rake that does not cut through the water very well. If they are loaded heavy (less freeboard), there's not much room to play with before the barge will shove under. That's what happened.

The weather normally has nothing to do with it. The companies WILL load barges heavier if they know the water is up -- more cargo is more profit, and if the extra water will accomodate the extra draft, yeah, they load 'em down. As far as the crew scrambling to cut a barge loose in that situation, by the time anyone realizes what's happening, it is too late to do anything. The crew could never get there fast enough, and would be putting themselves in danger if they did. In fact, if there happened to be crew members close by on the tow, they should run the other way! The rest of the tow (or some of it) COULD run over the sinking/sunken barge and be holed and sink also, but one advantage of multiple barge tows is that each one is a separate vessel. You might sink one or two barges, but I've never heard of an entire tow sinking.

Bob, thanks a lot. I understand the current thing now, perfect sense, especially when you consider they are pushing a slab sided box through the water.

What I don't get is if one barge starts to go down, starts to sink, what happens to the rest of the tow? I just assumed that one barge was so rigidly tied to all the other barges that the tow became one big monolithic barge so to speak. And I have this vision of the whole tow sorta accordianing itself and going under, if the lead barge goes under and is not disconnected quickly. Obviously not? Do lines between barges get too much in tension as the barge starts to go down and snap by them selves?

Ok, bear with me, we got engineer parlour talking coming up ===> is it a case of the lines between barges being rigid/very tight in the horizontal plane but if the lines go slightly vertical (i.e. the lines are dropping because the barge is sinking) the lines start to go slack and/or self destruct?

Somehow I would think that the sinking barge would HAVE to be disconnected from the remaining portions of the still floating tow, sooner or later...especially since it takes a bazillion feet to stop a moving tow, right, and that tow is still pushing?

Here are the main images from the slide show. I got a copy of this shortly after the incident from Jeff Yates or Dan Owen. Apparently the images were shot by Justin Cozart.

This is the first 3 images of 8. Image 1 shows the m/v Jerry Tinkey leaving
the Portland Canal northbound, and entering the strong current that existed
from recent heavy rains.

Here are images 4, 5, and 6 (of 8).

Here are the last 2 images.

Okay, Bruno, Steve has now posted the images (Thanks Steve!!!)

Yes, the barges are made up into a tight composite unit. The whole things steers like one big vessel. The barges are put together with a series of cables from 3/4 to 1" in diameter, 35 ft. long. We call them "35's" and also call them "wires", not cables. SOME barges have winches in them that have more wire than that, but 35's are put on with a short length of wire in a hoop (called a "hula hoop") with 6 or 7 big chain links attached. They're put on and tightened with a big ratcheted turnbuckle between the hula hoop and the 35. This makes the wires rigid tight, so the whole thing steers without any slack. They will hold a coupling, but they'll only hold so much; to break a wire is not an everyday occurence, but does happen from time to time. Even a hard steer can break a wire, bumping a lock wall hard, rubbing bottom, etc. A 15 barge tow requires 35 or more complete sets of the aforementioned rigging. The boat is faced up to the barges using wires of about 1 1/8" diameter on power winches on the boat, about 6 parts.

When that barge started to go down, those wires popped like a rubber band. You could not lay enough rigging out there to keep that barge from breaking loose under the circumstances, nor would you really want to. It is sort of a safety valve, I guess, though this is really the first time I have thought of it as such.

Steve and Bob, between the slides and the description, I got it now...Thanks!

And Bruno, I never addressed your question as to the cargo. They will have to take the cargo out of the barge (with a clamshell on a crane). Whether, or how much, can be salvaged is up to the owner of the cargo and the insurance company. The barge will then be raised more or less by itself. If there is cargo that was spilled in the sinking process, whether it, too, will be removed from the bottom of the river is also up to the Corps of Engineers. If the cargo dumps and creates a lump that is a hazard to navigation or impinges on the project channel, the COE might require that it be removed as well.

I'm no salvage master, so please don't ask me how THAT works, but they have several ways of raising a sunken barge or vessel. The method(s) they use will depend on whether they are going to try to save the barge or just scrap it.

Bruno, what usually happens is either the cables/chains/ratchets break or the deck fittings are torn off the decks. In any event, the barges are separated. Both barges are now up and delivered to Jeffboat for repairs.

These barges went down level (more or less) and stayed right side up. In fact, in sinkings, everything nature, hydraulics and gravity react in differing ways to do unusual things. The tow came out of the slack water of the canal and hit the current. The bow wave simply climbed over the deck and coaming to fill the barge hopper. There probably were no deck hands out there. If there were they would certainly not try to uncouple the barges - an excellent way to get killed when wires and chains get to flying around at high velocities.
An experienced pilot told me that if the pilot had reduced power it may not have happened.

In an unrelated accident some years ago a tow of two loaded sand barges was made up side-by-side. The pilot made a grandstand turn with the rudders hard down. The barges folded like a book with one flopped upside-down on top of the other. Neither sank!

Fred Way wrote that the Sprague got into trouble making Mosquito Creek Bend on the Ohio. The pilot was obliged to come ahead on a double-gong, and shoved the forward eighteen coalboats under water, but the rest of the tow was saved!

Sam, I watched Oakie at work when he raised the Belle of Louisville. The first and most important step was to drive everybody but his crew ashore. A gang of about forty "experts" was thus dispensed with from the beginning.