The OVEC Was Another Vessel In The Greenup Parade

The past two Old Boat Columns looked at one of the two boats that led the towboat parade for the Greenup Lock dedication in 1962: the 3,200 hp. Valvoline of Ashland Oil & Refining Company. The Valvoline was built by St, Louis Ship in 1949 as the Sohio Cleveland and acquired by Ashland in 1950. The other lead vessel in the Greenup parade, the OVEC, was also a product of St. Louis Ship. The OVEC was owned by The Ohio River Company of Cincinnati.

The Ohio River Company (also known as Orco) has been referenced many times in this column. Orco’s origins go back to 1915, when A.C. Ingersoll Sr. was delivering coal by horse and wagon in the Cincinnati area. The operation grew into the Philadelphia and Cleveland Coal Company, which chartered towboats and barges before purchasing a towboat in 1923. After gaining new investors, The Ohio River Company was incorporated in West Virginia as a wholly owned subsidiary of West Virginia Coal and Coke Company on April 17, 1925. In 1937, Orco secured some large contracts with Commonwealth Edison to supply coal to power plants in the Chicago area.

Orco assembled an impressive fleet of steam sternwheel towboats and became a prime mover of coal throughout the Ohio and Illinois rivers. In 1938, Orco purchased the diesel-powered North Star (see the June 5, 2023, edition of The Waterways Journal) for its Illinois River operations, marking a departure from steam power. Orco consistently added diesel towboats to its fleet over the years, but the company was among the last to operate steam sternwheel boats, with the Omar and ORCO (originally the Charles T. Campbell) finally retired in 1961. Dravo built both of those vessels in 1936.

As Orco began building diesel boats, the company increasingly turned to St. Louis Shipbuilding & Steel Company to provide those vessels. St. Louis Ship began building a series of 2,160 hp., twin-screw towboats for Orco in 1954. This continued the following year, along with some single-screw vessels for the Illinois River. Also in 1955, St. Louis Ship began crafting a series of larger, triple-screw towboats for Orco. Those boats, like the twin-screw boats that preceded them, had a distinctive superstructure design that was, for the most part, exclusive to the Orco vessels.

The OVEC was the third of four triple-screw vessels for Orco, entering service in 1956. The shapely St. Louis-designed hull measured 164 by 44 feet, and the vessel was fitted with kort nozzles. The three main engines were Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton Model 606-SC six-cylinder, supercharged, four-cycle diesels. Each was rated at 1,050 hp. at 238 rpm and turned four-blade, cast steel propellers through Falk Model 12 MB gears. The Inland River Record reported the total horsepower to be 3,240 hp.

The OVEC was named for the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation, organized in 1952 to build and operate electric power plants in the Ohio Valley. Orco secured a substantial multi-year contract to deliver coal to those plants. The OVEC, which had the radio call sign WH 4836, was painted in Orco’s traditional white with dark green trim and had white stacks sporting the Orco logo. It would tow coal, along with other commodities, for the next quarter century. In the late 1970s or early 1980s, the kort nozzles were removed from the OVEC and the other three of the series.

In 1981, the OVEC was sold to Rushing Marine Corporation, Cape Girardeau, Mo., and renamed Evelyn Rushing. Under that ownership, the boat was painted in an attractive color scheme of bright white with a high gray band below the handrail of the lower deck. The stacks were black with a white “R” on the outboard sides. In 1989, the boat was repowered with GM 16-645E2 engines that gave it 4,500 hp.

The Evelyn Rushing was leased in 1991 and sold in 1993 to Marine Equipment Towing Corporation, also of Cape Girardeau. In 1996, it was sold to Newcorp Marine Inc. of St. Louis. It then was sold in February 2002 to AEP-MEMCO LLC, Chesterfield, Mo. That entity immediately leased the boat to Tug Cynthia Inc., Mandeville, La., which purchased it in January 2003 and renamed it the Rusty Zeller. Under the ownership of Tug Cynthia, the boat was operated by Florida Marine Transporters Inc., also of Mandeville.

In June 2007, the Rusty Zeller was sold to Blackburn Marine International LLC, loaded onto a semi-submersible ship and taken to South America. In 2010, Horizon Shipbuilding in Bayou La Batre, Ala., built a 6,000 hp. boat that was christened the Rusty Zeller. Florida Marine operated that vessel until very recently, when it was seen with Kirby markings.

Featured image caption: The OVEC northbound at Ohio River Mile 128 in June 1968. (Photo by Jeff L. Yates)