Abandoned towboat unwelcome fixture on Henderson riverfront
Evansville Press April 24, 1995
It has been 17 years since the 125- by 33-foot Virgie Mae tipped over in the receding Ohio River and became lodged on a bank near the Henderson riverfront. Since then, the rusted vessel has become part of the landscape, having been called everything from an infamous landmark to an eyesore. It likely will stay that way for the foreseeable future.
The towboat has changed hands at least three times since the wreck, at prices rang: ing from $1,500 to several thousand dollars. With each sale came grandiose plans for removal or restoration, all of which were abandoned. At the same time, the Virgie Mae has become a sort of hot potato bouncing from one governmental agency to another.
“It looks pretty bad. At this point, it’s an eyesore more than anything else,” said Bobby Gish, head of Henderson’s Water and Sewer Department. Two years ago, Henderson officials tried to have the wreck removed because of fears that leftover fuel would leak into a water intake valve a quarter mile upstream and contaminate the city water supply.
However, investigators found no fuel on board and the plan was dropped.
At one time, the Virgie Mae used her 1,200-horsepower engines to push barge traffic along a series of inland waterways between Kansas City, Mo., and Point Pleasant, W.Va. But the tale of the Virgie Mae is confusing mostly because of aged or incomplete records and cloudy human recollections. Even her ownership remains a mystery, since all record of the boat has disappeared from the Inland River Record, the U.S. Coast Guard publication that supposedly documents every vessel licensed to sail on an American waterway. Unless abandoned vessels pose a navigational hazard, there apparently are no federal or state regulations that apply.
“I would assume that as long as it’s been in the river, it’s obviously not been determined to be a hazard to naviga. tion or else its remains would have been removed long ago,” said Chuck Parrish, district historian for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers office in Louisville. Commercial watereraft, pleasure boats and towboats are rarely abandoned because they are expensive to replace and often contain valuable scrap steel, said Ken Smith, chief warrant officer for the Coast Guard office in Louisville.
The boat rusted away on the river front until November of 2001, when it was cut up and hauled away.
