I just gotta share this with you guys. I just got it from my Uncle Waunk.

http://www.red-viper-gts.net/towboat/towboat.html

-- Laura (Ladybugwrangler@hotmail.com), March 17, 2002

Answers

Laura /that is unreal!!!!

-- Sonda in Ks. (sgbruce@birch.net), March 17, 2002.

Someone had posted this link at the Backwoods Home site a week or so ago. Is that incredable or what? It's hard to believe.

-- John in S. IN (jdoofus@hotmail.com), March 17, 2002.

Look real close at the pictures - at the top of the bridge and the tree line. Could these possibly have been taken from opposite sides of the river and not both by the same photographer and just put together to look like the boat had gone under and come back up? Just my suspicious nature I guess.

-- Barb in Ky. (bjconthefarm@yahoo.com), March 18, 2002.

Barb, the boat in the first picture is NOT the boat that went under the bridge, just look at the pattern of windows. Otherwise all pictures appear to be taken from the same place but I was a little confused by the picture showing the two guys on the back of the barge until I realised that the barge had already passed under the bridge.

-- john hill (john@cnd.co.nz), March 18, 2002.

Very observant, John; I would never have tried to compare them, as the first picture is rather fuzzy, and small. Good job!

I'm not sure why that picture is included in this series; it seems strange, doesn't it?

On the other hand, all these other pictures seem to have been taken by someone who was "down watching the flooding river", and seem reasonable.

I'd have hated to be the skipper of this tug---it looks like a pretty scary ride under the bridge. I also don't understand why he didn't have the power to keep his boat from going under the bridge, unless he was having engine trouble. The water going under the bridge appears to be flowing at no more than 10-12 feet per second (7-8 mph, more or less). I used to measure rivers discharge (including velocity) for a living, and can estimate this with a fair degree of accuracy. To confirm this, look how far the barge did NOT drift downstream during the tug's adventure.

By the way, that little building, just downstream of the bridge, and visible in four or five of the pictures, is a USGS stream gauge. It is there to maintain a continuous record of the river's water level. I used to maintain these gauges. It is pretty obvious that the river is higher than the USGS expected it to get, or they'd have built the gauge higher. It's only a wee bit higher than the water level; this is most unusual!

-- joj (jump@off.c), March 18, 2002.

OK Joe, I guess that first picture was just to show you what the rig looked like at the beginning.

Maybe it did not all happen in just a few minutes as in the last picture you can see a helicopter, maybe it was just passing by or perhaps its the news crew hot on the job.

-- john hill (john@cnd.co.nz), March 18, 2002.

Here's a link to a site w/ an explanation about the incident from a Captain who had just gone thru the bridge before the "Posiden". It may answer some of the questions. Interesting anyway.

http://www.snopes2.com/spoons/photos/towboat.htm

-- John in S. IN (jdoofus@hotmail.com), March 18, 2002.

Thanks for the link, John. What fun!

-- joj (jump@off.c), March 18, 2002.

I wonder what was going thru that guys mind when all that went on? Maybe a minnow!

-- John in S. IN (jdoofus@hotmail.com), March 19, 2002.