| Summary: | (5:08) Mr. Steen explains the process of going through different locks along the river and the potential dangers between the barges and pleasure crafts.Florence- Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Robert Steen
April 14, 2008
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Ken Johnson
Clip 7
Ken Johnson: Robert, when I first came to this area, they still, I believe were using the small lock here and were working on the other one, the big one, but had not completed it yet. Now, what happened to the Lock number 1 you mentioned that was further down, close to O’Neal Bridge?
Robert Steen: At the same time that they, and by the way it was 1959, while I was on the riverboats that they opened up the big, big lock.
KJ: Then I’m wrong, because it was open at least seven years before I got here.
RS: Yeah, ’ 59. And it, ah, when they opened it up, they changed the canal somewhat that is below the lock. If you’ll notice as you’re going across the river, or across the dam and you look down, there’s a lot of rocks down there and so over to the side they had dug this canal and it came down close to the bank. Why they did not dig that deep enough to have enough depth there to bring the boat up without having to dam it up down here and lock up but for some reason they did not, so they had to lift that up ten, twelve feet in order to get it up into this other canal. But, now when they built the new lock, they, they dug that one down deep enough and they kindly re- routed, you know it’s between Patton Island and, and the main, main shore. So they made it deep enough then that you’re actually on the water level of the Pickwick Lake, backed up by the Pickwick Dam. So it was only so high, but the problem was the depth of the channel and so they just dug that down deeper. Now the old, the old lock is still down there, I mean as far as the banks of it and so on; I’ve never been down to see it, but I was talking with Jim Lowe, at the Port Authority, who’s head of the Port Authority, about it. I think they even maybe tie some barges off to it. But, now they built that one in ’ 59. That was followed by, well I don’t know which one went next, but what they did, they went all the way up the river with those big locks; 600 feet by 110 feet.
KJ: Right.
RS: Now, that will hold nine jumbo barges and you can probably get nine of them through there in probably an hour. And it let— it raises it the entire depth which is officially they say on the average is 93 ½ feet lift from the bottom to the top. Now at the time, that was the high single lock lift in the world. But, man, after having spent all those hours going through that double lift thing, and then to come through there and you could put nine barges through and probably no boat coming through there now would have any more than seventeen barges, now seventeen barges and then a place for the boat, so in two lifts at the most and you’re talking about two or three hours and, and you get on through there. But, they ma—, ah, did the Wilson first and then, then they have, currently, all of those dams all the way from Paducah, Kentucky, you’ve got up the river, you’ve got at mile twenty- two, you’ve got the Kentucky Dam and lock. And then you come on up to Pickwick, and then Whe— ah, Wilson, then Wheeler, then Guntersville and then you go up beyond that, you go to Nickajack; Nickajack is a new one which is just south of, of Chattanooga. But all those now are the big locks.
KJ: Right.
RS: All the way up to Chattanooga. Now, there are three locks on up the river from Chattanooga and those are still the old small, small locks. But by the time you get to Chattanooga, you’ve dropped most all your tows, so what else is to be going up the river is not that much tow.
KJ: I know you’ve read recently about a accident between a barge and a pleasure craft out here. Was that a, did that seem to be a problem or a danger when you were working on the river? Did pleasure crafts and other kinds of boats, such as that, give any special problems that you had to be aware of?
RS: Definitely so. Them taking chances coming across the front of the boat, front of the tow, a lot of them that would want to come alongside the boat because I mean you’re only travelling 5 ½ or 6 miles an hour and they think, ‘ Well, oh boy,’ you know, come up. But the undercurrent of that, under those barges, especially those empty barges could pull you under. So, you’d see a lot of them that— I’ve been in the pilot house and I would see them be so close that you could not see up over an empty barge they’d come so close and then there was also a lot of them who wanted to ski right behind those things, the waves that it was making, going back and forth across.
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