Diary of a Riverboat CaptainTime with Captain Colglazier aboard a Missouri River boat gives new Story by Bobbi Olson Photographs by Steve and Bobbi Olson |
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SHERMAN COLGLAZIER had been in the pilothouse of the towboat, the Omaha, since midnight. It was Memorial Day weekend last year – a late start to the barge season on the Missouri River. Heavy spring rains had been dousing the Great Plains for weeks. The Missouri River that had carved its way 3,000 miles through the center of the country eons ago was catching flood water from smaller rivers and streams along the way. The river was well above its normal level. There was little to see on the surface of the swiftly flowing water, and that wasn’t good.
Colglazier felt the impact in the pilothouse at Missouri River mile marker 12 between St. Charles and St. Louis, Mo. Something – probably a submerged tree – connected with the hull of the boat. The collision wasn’t even enough to disrupt the sleeping crew in quarters below, but before long the engineer advised Colglazier that the engine room was taking on water, and fast.
Colglazier cranked the Omaha toward the shore – the last thing he wanted was a crew abandoning ship mid-river in the middle of the night. The Omaha’s engines faltered, then died. The boat was still too far out, but somehow the engines sputtered to life again. Colglazier slammed the throttle down. The vessel lurched to a limestone riprap river bank, and the crew quickly tied off the boat to cottonwood trees on the shore. This heroic act saved the boat (and possibly the crew) from being lost in the current.
By 4 a.m. a Coast Guard rescue boat arrived to take the crew to safety and begin assessing the damage. They summoned divers to address the leaking fuel as soon as there was enough daylight to see. By early morning, a helicopter circled overhead. News reporters stood on the riverbank talking to TV cameras as they rolled footage for the evening news. The partially submerged Omaha lay listing heavily to its stern, adding one more to the hundreds of steamships and vessels that the treacherous Missouri has claimed.
Barges are a frequent sight on larger, broader rivers further east like the Mississippi, the Ohio and the Tennessee. Their wider, deeper expanses easily accommodate large towboats pushing a dozen barges, three or four wide. Weekly barge trips between Nebraska City and Sioux City had been common from the 1960s until a few years ago. In 2004, barge traffic stopped for one season this far north. Now, despite dwindling water levels due to drought and environmental laws, Colglazier is among the most seasoned – and one of the last – captains piloting this challenging river along Nebraska’s eastern border.
After months of talks with the companies that run towboats and barges on this stretch of the Missouri River and then after watching the news footage of the Omaha sinking in the river further south, Nebraska Life Magazine boarded a towboat at Blair and spent a night with Colglazier running the Missouri River.