The Severed Cortex

Link: http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/F0826D7EC2006ED5862572C200031910?OpenDocument

Like I said, every day I cross the Mississippi River via the Chain of Rocks bridge(s). About six months ago, someone docked the old Belle of the Night excursion boat just above the I-270 bridge (not the Canal bridge). This interested me in two ways. The first was the obvious 'I wonder who bought that rusting tub and what do they think they can do with it'. The second one was, Why in the world would the Corps of Engineers grant a mooring permit at that very spot'. Most everyone has seen a towboat head down the Chain of Rocks canal. What most people don't know is why there is a canal to begin with. If you look just to the south of the old Chain of Rocks Bridge at normal water levels, you'll notice a rock dike that stretches all the way across the river. This rock dike is obviously not conducive to river traffic. Actually, at certain water levels and with the right kind of towboat (it can't be over a certain height or it won't make it under the bridges), one can run that part of the river with commercial traffic. No one has had the balls to do it since way back before I was born and with the litigious society that we have today there will never be anyone who will ever try it.

But, back to the Belle of the Night. She's been tied up there a couple of hundred feet above the bridge on the Missouri side (right descending bank for you towboaters) for some time. This always struck me as odd because if she broke loose from her moorings she'd be wedged under the bridge until the water pressure flipped it. After that she'd be whisked onto the rock dike where in a matter of hours she would be decimated by the river current. In my last post, I commented on the enormous amount of drift coming down the river. The bridge and the drift factor here. When I crossed the river about an hour ago I noticed immediately that she wasn't sitting in the water right. I could tell this from across the river. When I got over to the Missouri side I could see the problem. The drift has built up so much underneath her that it has started raising it out of the water. The walkway from the boat to the bank has been ripped off and is laying on both the drift pile and in the river.

The new owner has bigger problems than his criminal record now. It probably won't take long for the moorings to break and when that happens the boat will most likely be cast downriver; unleashing the enormous drift pile at the same time. If by some measure of luck the moorings hold ... and I doubt they will with the river still rising ... the fall of the river will more than likely wedge that drift pile even more. I'm thinking the weight of the boat will eventually put too much pressure on the drift and cause it to snap under its own weight. There's no way to get a tug in there now to get it out; there's too much drift. No tug is going to get below that big drift pile when it breaks loose. No tug is going to be able to face up downstream in this kind of current and besides, the drift volume is still running at biblical proportions. It's going to take a big boat to get in there to have the horsepower to pull it off the drift pile and still hold it from going under the bridge. Getting a big boat in there brings it's own set of problems because the larger wheelwash may shake the drift pile loose. A sudden movement of the boat will no doubt break the moorings. Plus, everyone who crosses that bridge in the summer knows there's a really shallow hump about 100 yards towards the channel. There's probably enough water in there right now to keep a boat from running aground, but if you're a pilot you know it has to be in the back of your mind.

For all practical purposes I'd say the Belle of the Night is a goner. I wish I had a video camera to be out there when it happens, but with the rains we've had you'd have to trek through a lot of mud to get out there. That's if the owners would even let you out there. As you can imagine, I find this to be extremely fascinating. The power of mother nature is unbelievable. Anyone who has worked on the river knows this in ways that most people don't.