Dravo

The last column detailed the early years of the steam sternwheel towboat W.P. Snyder Jr., built in 1918 on the bank of the Allegheny River in Pittsburgh by James Rees… Read More

Last week this column began looking at the Sohio Cleveland, built in 1949 by St. Louis Ship for the Sohio Petroleum Corporation of St. Louis. The boat, which measured 150… Read More

While attending and participating in the very enjoyable 2025 IMX in Nashville, I was talking with Zac Metcalf, the associate publisher of The Waterways Journal. We were standing outside the… Read More

William “John” Kristen III, a native of Topeka, Kansas, and longtime resident of both St. Louis and Nashville, Tenn., died December 27 at the age of 69 with his wife… Read More

While Dravo had its innovative new diesel prop boats—such as the Wm. Penn and Ductillite—on the drawing boards, the Inland Waterways Corporation (IWC) was engaged in having three prop towboats… Read More

In late 1939, a brief announcement was made in The Waterways Journal and other publications that Dravo Contracting Company was working on designs for a towboat that would be much… Read More

The last column looked at the John W. Hubbard (Way’s T1444), a steam sternwheel towboat built by Dravo in 1936 for Campbell Transportation of Pittsburgh. It was the… Read More

In a recent visit with a good friend of nearly 50 years—Capt. William F. “Bill” Judd, a retired marine surveyor from the Cincinnati area—the fact that he had, as… Read More

It can only be supposed that the attention generated by the success of the early Ward-built, prop-driven towboats commanded a lot of attention throughout the inland rivers. The Dravo… Read More

The Western Rivers towing industry was seeing much change in the year 1935. The Inland Waterways Corporation, the government-owned towing concern nicknamed the Federal Barge Line by rivermen, had… Read More