Continuing my periodic look back at maritime accidents since the catastrophic ship allision this year between the 984'x157' container ship Dali and the Francis Scott Key bridge on March 26 in Baltimore Harbor, I offer the case of the 160'x40' towboat Anne Holly and the Eads Bridge over the Mississippi River at St. Louis in 1998.
The towboat was pushing a barge tow northbound on the river about 10 p.m. The tow consisted of the boat and 11 200'x35' barges and three 195'x35' bottoms.
Capt. John O. Johnson used full power going under the bridge, making about 3 mph against a stiff current. About 800' of the tow cleared the bridge before the tow abruptly stopped. The Anne Holly’s engines continued at full power, but the tow stalled, the current pushing the tow into the center span of the bridge on the Missouri side.
Eight of the tow’s dry cargo barges broke away and were taken southbound by the current. Three headed for the permanently moored casino boat Admiral, slamming into it and severing all but one of its 10 mooring lines. Johnson disengaged the towboat from the rest of the tow and sped (if a towboat can speed) toward the drifting casino boat. Placing the towboat’s bow against the Admiral’s bow, he was able to hold the casino boat against the shore.
Within an hour, all the barges had been rounded up and deposited to fleeting areas. No major injuries or deaths were reported.
The Eads Bridge allision reinforced the tug and barge industry’s move toward implementation of an industrywide safety management system (SMS), which is now part of Subchapter M.
After the accident, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recommended that an SMS be a part of every company’s operating profile.
When I first revisited this story in 2013, Jennifer Carpenter, who at the time was the American Waterways Operators’ senior vice president (currently, she’s the organization’s president and CEO) told me that the inland industry needed to be more proactive when it comes to safety and not just reactive once an accident occurs.
“After the accident there was a new wave of tying industry and government together to increase safety,” Carpenter said. “In addition to that, industry said, ‘Let’s take a look at ourselves and try to put into place a real safety culture.’ What we need now is to have the wheels of government move a little bit faster.”
Ken Hocke has been the senior editor of WorkBoat since 1999. He was the associate editor of WorkBoat from 1997 to 1999. Prior to that, he was the editor of the Daily Shipping Guide, a transportation daily in New Orleans. He has written for other publications including The Times-Picayune. He graduated from Louisiana State University with an arts and sciences degree, with a concentration in English, in 1978.
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