Working The Mighty Mississippi with Captain Doicus Langley Jr.
This episode is sponsored by Culligan Water
“Both engines died instantly, the hit was so hard. I immediately just kind of lay down on my bed because I knew how bad the impact was going to be. It threw my bed all the way across the room, dresser laid over, refrigerators downstairs on the floor - it was a hard impact.”
Captain Doicus Langley Jr. joins Sandy and Sandra on the podcast today to share details of this perilous moment and so much more as he recounts his journey from a water-loving childhood to becoming a seasoned push boat Captain on the Mississippi River. Along the way, he discusses the contrasting experiences of working on rivers versus open water and the unique challenges of river navigation. Reflecting on the evolving technology in tugboat operations, Captain Langley describes the logistics of moving cargo from Minnesota to New Orleans as well as the immense horsepower required for steering and speed. After highlighting the competitive nature of the maritime industry and the collaborative spirit among river captains, this very special guest draws the episode to a conclusion with some valuable advice for aspiring captains, underscoring the dedication needed for a successful career in river navigation.
Episode Highlights:
Captain Langley Jr.’s upbringing and early love of being on the water
His perspective on working on rivers vs. open water
Becoming a Captain
The evolution of tug operation over the years
Tugs and barges
The competitive side of the industry
Moving a load from Minnesota to New Orleans
A tug’s horsepower, steering, and speed
Navigating the Mississippi’s hazards
Running aground
The Captain’s worst incident
His crew and its work dynamic
His relationship with other Captains
Advice for aspiring tug or push boat Captains
Key Takeaways:
"Not only does a good cook cook good food, they can be the person who kind of holds everything together because they're down there in the center of the whole boat."
"Typically, people that start in the river industry stay there.”
"Within a five year period, you can be sitting in the wheelhouse running a boat, maybe not as a captain, but as a pilot."
"The southbound vessel proposes the place and manner of passing, while the northbound vessel has more control."
"You have to, at some point in your career, be able to dedicate yourself to the boat while you're on the boat."
“It can be great. I mean, it really is like a family away from home. It can also be as bad as you can imagine like a squabbling family at home, you know, like, you're having issues. So it can go both directions.”
“There's definitely a huge need for people out on the river for merchant mariners in general.”
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Transcript
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: The line boats are generally the only ones that have cooks. Not only does a good cook cook good food, they can be the person who kind of holds everything together because they're down there in the center of the whole boat.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: The Mississippi River has a long and complex history. From Native American use of the river and Mark Twain's colorful tales to major engineering marvels and idyllic, impressive travelogs, the river has captured the hearts and minds of many.
Sandy Winnefeld: The 2300 miles long river serves as a vital artery for the American transportation system, moving grain, coal, lumber, and petroleum products and a host of other cargo.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: As a matter of fact, 92% of United States agriculture exports and 78% of grain fed to livestock travel via the Mississippi River.
Sandy Winnefeld: The cargo is transported in large barges, and shepherding these platforms up and down the river has its hazards. The captains operating the tugs or push boats moving these barges have to be real experts in order to manage these risks.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: And we've always wanted to talk to a tugboat captain, or in this case, a push boat captain, and we luckily managed to connect with Captain Doicus Langley, who drives the boats for Marquette Marine.
Sandy Winnefeld: Speaking of water, many thanks to our sponsor for this season of The Adrenaline Zone, Culligan. With Culligan's drinking water systems, you can get the ultra filtered water you need to fuel your high performance lifestyle right on tap. Learn more culligan.com.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: And we caught up with Captain Langley while he was off watch during a trip moving empty barges back up the Mississippi. Well, welcome to The Adrenaline Zone. And we've always wanted to have a riverboat tug driver on the show, so thanks for being with us.
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: Thank you for having me. Super excited. It's a pleasure.
Sandy Winnefeld: So, captain, everybody starts somewhere. We all have a story, and we'd like to know, have our listeners be able to hear from you. I mean, where'd you grow up and kind of what got you interested in being out on the water?
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: My upbringing, where I grew up, really, as boring as it sounds, it had nothing to do with the water on the Mississippi River. But as a kid, I was very immersed in water. We were always on the river or lake. My dad was an avid boater from a very early age. Probably one of the first things I had as a vehicle would have been a skill of some time that I would have probably, at age eight, been taking out on the river by myself. So it was a fun time and really taught me an appreciation for the water and just, you know, that I got to give that to my dad. So my grandfather was also in the marine industry, but I really didn't know a whole lot about that growing up. It was kind of I would hear his stories later. As I'm getting into my teen years, I really became more aware of what he was as a captain, what he did, and more impressed by that as I got a little older.
Sandy Winnefeld: And you ended up as a deckhand.
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: Ended up as a deckhand. I started for a company out of Sabine Pass, and that was OMS, Offshore Marine Specialties, and I worked as a deckhand for them for a little over a year doing laddering jobs. We would go out off southwest pass off of Houston, sometimes up to about 200 miles out. We had some ships that couldn't come within US waters, and we would go out and put out the big Yokohama fenders. They were 30 something feet long, 20 some odd feet high, and we would keep four of them on the back of a 200 foot supply vessel, and then we would let them off into the water. They're chained all together with a cable, and we would put them alongside the super tankers, and then the regular small tankers that you see coming into Houston and New Orleans, and then all of our forts along the coast, they would come alongside, and that was what they use to keep the ships from crashing together. So a very interesting job as a deckhand.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: There's a certain romantic element to being on the river, but I think you're showing us that there's perhaps also a hard work, grueling aspect of it. Do you enjoy the river piece more? Mississippi, of course, is a major river, and I'm sure that it 's really entertaining to go up and down it. Or do you enjoy the open water stuff?
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: Back when I was on the open water, and it was a very small portion of my career, probably five years total, on and off. When I was on the open water, I loved it. I really didn't know much about the inland river system. That just came later in my career. I had no idea this is where I would end up. But it is a very fast, large industry, and there's a lot of opportunity, and when you start into it– I wouldn't say people start in and go into the river industry and move on to other things much. Typically, people that start in the river industry stay there, but it definitely happens frequently in the opposite direction. The river industry, the lifestyle we live here is much better than what we had offshore back when I worked out there.
Sandy Winnefeld: You eventually became captain working for Marquette Marine on the river. Tell us how long it took to do that. What you had to do in order to do it, and what kind of licensing and certification you've got to have as somebody running big barges on the river.
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: I started, my grandfather was a captain, so that early on, when I was working as a deckhand, I had a wife at home, a son at home, one on the way. I wanted to move up. I knew I didn't want to stay on deck, so that was kind of in my radar and following in the footsteps of my grandfather. And then I had a brother, an older brother, that was four years older than me, and he had just recently moved up from deckhand to captain, working for Kali Towing, which is the company I would eventually get my captain's license with years ago, in 1996. So, yeah, that's just watching him move up, that's kind of what really led me in that direction and kept me motivated.
Sandy Winnefeld: And you've got a certification process, I'm sure they don't just go, “Hey, congratulations. Today you're here.”
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: Well, that's a funny story. So I listened to my grandfather's stories from years before. He was a World War II veteran in the Navy, got out of the Navy and started working on the inland waterway. There was, from what he said, in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, there were just a handful of boats that worked tow lines on the inland waterway. And his first job as a deckhand, he rode one trip, came back for the next hitch, goes on, comes back, the captain doesn't show up, and he's hired as the captain. And tha's how he started his captain's career, and he was a captain from then on. We could do a whole podcast on his career alone. It's very colorful. A lot of those stories I could not tell. They get very, very colorful.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: But that’s probably not how it happened for you.
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: No. So we have progressed, and I think in a good way, with what I had to go through as a deckhand, an AV, a tankerman, and then on to get my captain's license. That process is a lot. It's more straightforward now. It's more laid out so more people can take advantage of it, and that's a clearer path. But the way that looks as you come out and within a five-year period, I tell guys coming onto the boat, one of the great things about this industry is if you apply yourself, within a five-year period, you can be sitting in the wheelhouse running a boat, maybe not as a captain, but as a pilot. There's not a lot of industries where you can do that. And those steps after a year on deck as a deckhand, most guys serve more than a year and a half, two years, and then they can go to the coast guard, apply and set. You don't have to go to school. You can study on your own. Most people go to one of the maritime schools. They'll go to a maritime school for normally about four weeks, and then they set for their apprentice mate license, which is a training license that allows you to steer in the wheelhouse with a designated examiner captain. So that's how the first phase of that starts.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So after only four weeks, you can start driving under a watch.
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: You get your learner's permission, and that's why I have no air. Iam that supervisor a lot of the time. I would say the first three months of having someone in the wheelhouse steering is the most hectic for the wheelman that's doing the training, because they typically don't know how to. And I'm looking left to right because I'm looking at my– On a conventional boat, they would be called sticks, but I'm looking at my steering. They don't have any idea of the basics. So as you're steering up the river and you're teaching them, you're teaching him the basic fundamentals so it's a little tougher. Once they have that down, then they can follow just simple commands that you give them to keep them out of trouble.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So that kind of ties in, though, to the fact that you're on a state of the art tug and how you steer a ship or pilot a ship has a lot to do with the technology of the tug or the type of tug. And there's probably a lot of specialized instruments and technology on board. So can you talk a little bit about the ships and maybe how they've changed a little bit over the years to make it easier or harder to operate.
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: When I first started, we had really nothing but a radar. Some of the vessels I worked on were the old style radar, where you would actually look into the cups and you had to sweep. By the way, those are some of the best working radars we ever had. I know a lot of ways things have gotten better, but those were great. But we had a radar and we had a good compass, and that was it. A lot of navigating, it was just different back then. And then we've progressed up to the point where we had some type of navigation system, some type of charting, electronic charting, that really advanced things quite a bit. And it made it so we could run in inclement weather. We still will do what we need to do to make sure we have a safe watch, but it doesn't put us in really bad positions when we have that bad weather where we're just blind. So the charting system, we have a state of the art. It shows our tow size, the tow configuration. It shows the speed at which I'm moving. And not only does it show my speed, but it shows a predictor that shows me or predicts. It's not always perfect where it predicts where my vessel and tow is going to be in two minutes. And you can adjust that. You can adjust that 3 minutes to 1 minute. Everybody has their own preference, but yeah, technology has come a long way. We use a rose point system. I know offshore you get into like an axis more of a regulated system for offshore. I know a lot of the ships, I would assume the navy ships have probably wanted more than the direction of like Furuno based ECDIS charting.
Sandy Winnefeld: And for our listeners, an ECDIS is an electronic chart display information system that feeds the radar onto the chart. So you literally see a contact on the chart where the vessel is you're trying to avoid or whatever. Pretty cool system.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Quick question, though. Do you still train the apprentice pilots on how to use the radar and the compass in case all the fancy electronic stuff fails?
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: Absolutely. That is an ongoing training from the time– Typically they're in the wheelhouse for a year, year and a half training to be turned loose. That's after they get their apprentice mate license. They have that for one year, and then they can apply to have that upgraded to a full pilot's license or a captain's license. It's a pilot's license. They do a pilot for one year and then their captain. That doesn't necessarily have to follow their apprenticeship time on the vessel steering. Sometimes they're possibly ready to go early and they're waiting on the captain's license to mature and to step up to a pilot before they can be turned loose and steer the boat by themselves. And then sometimes that takes a little longer and they may have their full pilot's license. The last guy that I just steer has his full pilot's license, but he's still steering in the steering program for Marquette, so he hasn't been turned with the ship.
Sandy Winnefeld: You're moving big, heavy stuff on the river. So talk to us about the barges, how big they are, how many you can connect to at a time, what they're carrying. And by the way, we've used the word tug, but you're actually pushing them, right?
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: Most people in this industry, we all call them push boats. I think technically, they're considered a tugboat through the Coast Guard. If you look at harbor tugs, and I did that, that was part of my career as well, when I worked at college. So we did ship assist docking where we docked ships that would be. Most people in the marine industry and inland industry would call those harbor tugs. So you have harbor tugs, you have push boats, which is what I'm on, which is just any boat with a square bow instead of a mono bow. A harbor tug would have a square bow and it's made to face up on barges and push those.
Sandy Winnefeld: So tell us about the barges.
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: So each barge, they have changed over the years, too. When I first got into the industry, we would occasionally push these small barges called LASH barges, which were just a pain. They were no good because they didn't really match up with the other barges that we had. And then we had a regulation hopper barge that was 195 ft. So, 195 ft long, 35 ft wide. And then they started building 200 ft hopper barges. The locks did not like that at all because the locks are only 600 ft long. So if you have 3200 ft hopper barges, it doesn't give a lot of room. You're talking inches as far as how you're fitting inside the lock chamber, and they're very particular about that because of damage being done to their gates. So, now the standard is 200 ft. So 15, 20 years ago, a lock would not let you even lock through with a 600 foot cut. Now, that's just standard. That's just what we lock through. They're just used to it, and we've kind of did some things to mitigate those dangers and make it safe.
Sandy Winnefeld: Does Marquette own the barges as well as the push boats? Or are the barges somebody else?
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: Marquette has, don't hold me to this number, but approximately 800 barges that they own and operate. So, yeah, that's one big benefit of Marquette. Industry wise, makes them very, I guess, for a customer that's looking at Marquette, it makes it a package deal, makes everything flow a little smoother. You're getting barges, point A to point B, getting mainly product, moving product.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Is it then a pretty competitive business? It sounds like there are tug companies or push boat companies, appropriately, that don't have barges. You guys have a barge, but overall, it probably is a pretty small community, even if it's competitive, right?
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: Our companies, most of them all have their own barge fleets. I know it's competitive on the sales side, so we don't get involved in that too much out here, other than we like to kind of know what's going on just because it's Marquette. I like to just consider it as a family company. It's a large company now. It was a lot smaller than what I hired on, but it really has a family feeling to it. So the captain's out on the boats, and the crews like to have little knowledge of that. But the competitive side of it mainly is in the sales, and just like any companies would compete to move products. As far as we go out here, there's some competitiveness, but it's very small. I think everybody works together as an industry to keep things moving. That's one really amazing thing about what we do is you have all these different companies, but we're all colleagues, and we all feel that way. We're all merchant mariners, so we work together.
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Sandy Winnefeld: So let's say, Captain, I am a grain of wheat, and I get loaded into a barge and Minnesota near the Twin Cities, and I'm going to come down the river to New Orleans. Talk us through how that happens.There's probably three 200 ft barges lashed together. You're locked in there right behind them. And if I'm not mistaken, it's not one tug that takes it all the way down the river, right? There's a different setup going through the locks. Northern half, southern half. Talk us through that, if you could.
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: There definitely can be multiple tugs that would do that. Right now, the way the river system is, it has changed over the years. We used to be able to take 12 loads, even 15, out of the Twin Cities. Now, that doesn't happen. The river system just isn't– Particularly above lock 3, it's just not in good enough shape. The size of it doesn't support coming out with 12 loads. So they would do six loads, three wide and two long, then maybe stack some empties on top of that if they needed some empties shifted south. Those barges would be put together by a fleet tub up in St. Paul. The harbor is right there, downtown St. Paul. And those barges would be shifted down and starting through the lock system all the way down to St. Louis. As we're moving down the river, you may stop at Red Wing. That's a place that we stop a lot, to pick up a few more barges than that. And at Red Wing, you're far enough down the river where you don't have those restrictions, you can go ahead and start doing what we call it, filling out. So you start picking up barges at different ports all the way down till you get to St. Louis. And by the time well before you get to St. Louis, typically you have a 15 barge tow. So you're five long, three wide. You're talking 1800 tons per barge on average, and 1000 ft long with the boat, you're an easy 1150 ft long.
Sandy Winnefeld: That's an aircraft carrier right there.
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: And then once we get to St. Louis, two of those tows will be combined. They'll combine two of those tows. Tugs will help with that again. Marquette does that a little differently. Sometimes they will bypass the St. Louis harbor, go just below St. Louis harbor, and they'll let two of their boats come off upper, combine 30 barges together, and then one of our lower boats, like the boat I work on, will turn those boats. So when we get turn orders, we will have an empty tow coming northbound. Sometimes we have loads within that tow. Certain commodities go northbound. Salt is a good example. Almost all the salt to spread all over the midwest is brought up by barges out of Louisiana. So those 230 barge tows will be combined together. We will swap tows where the lower boat will give the upper boat our tow, and then we'll take that lower tow, 30 barges combined, and we'll continue south. And then we may, just depending on the river conditions, we could possibly fill out to as many as 42 on this boat. Doesn't happen very often, but a lot of times we'll fill out to 35 or 36. The 36 typically were six wide by six long. And then we continue all the way down. And from the time you clear St. Louis, there's no locks. There's really not a whole lot southbound other than incidents and things that would stop the whole river system. There's not a whole lot of things that would slow you down. It's about a three-day trip from St. Louis down to New Orleans.
Sandy Winnefeld: You must have an immense amount of horsepower.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: I was thinking the same thing.
Sandy Winnefeld: In order to just push the thing, much less make it turn, it's incredible.
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: Typically, with a 35 to 35, 36 barge tow, you're going to have 7200 and up in horsepower. The boat I'm on has 6600, but it is a Z-drive boat, so it's one of the newer technologies out. It has a lot of steering capability, so it has pods underneath it. And some of our shipping industry uses the same technology where you'll have a valve thruster that comes down out of the front of the ship, and that bow thruster can turn 360 degrees. It doesn't have a forward. And first, the propeller doesn't turn direction. It spins forward all the time, and the whole pod turns to adjust the rough drafts. We have three of those on the back of this vessel. We have three 2200 HP pods, and that's what we use for propulsion.
Sandy Winnefeld: And you got, a joystick for each one of those things, or I guess–
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: We do. It's about yay size. It has a throttle on top, and the whole joystick spins 360 degrees. So it's very easy to operate from up here. Operating with the tow in front of you is very straightforward. It's really similar to a conventional size style boat, where you really get the benefit on these boats. And the reason we're able, the coast guard is even categorized us so that you have these horsepower regulations when you have high water situations. You have to have a certain amount of horsepower per barge that you carry, and it actually kind of equates out to per ton that you have. So for the tonnage that you carry, you have a horsepower rating that you have to. We, on the Z-drives, they have lowered that regulation to allow us to be able to carry larger tows because we have so much control, but it allows us. We do something called flanking when you're transiting down the lower Mississippi River, and they use it on the upper as well, where we will slow down to at or below current speed and we let the Mississippi River current take us around a turn. So that has been the standard back all the way back when you had paddle wheel boats pushing tows. That was how they would navigate very sharp, hard turns in the river system.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah, because it really zips, zigs and zags down past St. Louis quite a lot.
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: Yes, it does. I say sometimes that's a necessity that we have to back up and flank to keep things safe.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: What's your average speed that you're going, typically, down the river?
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: Well, for us, anything over 10 miles an hour southbound is fast. You get up to 12 and 13, and we're really doing something. So I know to most people that aren't immersed in the marine industry, that doesn't sound very fast, but it is. A really funny, quick story about that is when I first started out here and I first had the capability of videoing, making a bridge. Which for us, it's just like tense. And especially early in your career, it seems like it moves so fast. You're doing 10 miles an hour southbound. You're coming around a turn. You're looking at a bridge. And you're making that bridge and go and continue south. But it's very stressful. It's like white knuckle. You feel like you're in an indy car. But when you video it and you show it to somebody at home, it's like crickets. It's like about a minute and a half. Your kids are like, “Dad, when's something going to happen? This is, like, super boring.”
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Are we there yet?
Sandy Winnefeld: I got my heart in my throat right now, but it's going really slow.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Oh, that's so funny. So, I grew up in the St. Louis area. And, of course, the Mississippi was a big part of our lives. And we were constantly warned away from hanging out on the riverside because of the shifting sandbars, and you're not quite sure if you're going to fall into the river. So I know there are a lot of hazards on the river. Not only the shifting sandbars and things, but the currents, we were warned about that. There were always barges going up and down, so there's a lot of traffic density. So how did you deal with all these different hazards on the river and navigate through them or manage them?
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: I think for most people, the river can be most of what they see about the river is on the news, somebody drowns. Unfortunately, that is the publicity that gets put out there. So that, to me, gives the river a really bad name. There are people on the river that use it for recreation. We see it all the time. Not as much as you would think like lakes up in Minnesota or the Gulf. I mean, it's definitely not that level of pleasure boat traffic. But it's safe as long as you're careful and as long as you can respect the barge traffic. That's where it becomes dangerous is when people in pleasure boats have no idea what we're doing and what restrictions we have. So as far as us mitigating the sandbars, I mean, the corps of engineers tries to do the best job they can. They do as good a job as they can, and what they do gets us down the river safely. They place buoys up and down the river to give us a channel that we can navigate in. That is a tough job because, as you can imagine, as the river goes up and down, it is constantly shifting. And the sandbars, as you said, constantly shift and form differently every time the river comes up and goes back down. A lot of times southbound, if the river has been stable, we kind of know what to expect. If the river is rising or falling, especially falling, we're kind of leery of trusting where the buoys are or where they were. Are the virtual buoys on our charts? We have a thing called a virtual buoy, and that is regulated and put in by the corps of engineers as well.
Sandy Winnefeld: Hopefully, the river changes slowly enough that they can keep up, but you still have to be pretty careful, particularly when you're passing another heavily laden push boat that has a lot of barges and you're in a narrow area, right?
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: On the Mississippi River system, on the lower, there's a lot of different areas. And normally, the northbound traffic, one of the things that you learn as a steersman is where you can meet people, where you can't meet people. So the way the inland river system works is the southbound vessel proposes the place and manner of passing. So if I'm southbound, I'll call up a northbound vessel and say, “Hey, I would like to see you on the one whistle at this light or this mile marker,” or however you want to phrase it. But you want to be able to give that information to the northbound vessel so he knows where to stop.
Sandy Winnefeld: And I'm assuming that's because you have more control if you're northbound, because of the–
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: Definitely. Yeah, the northbound vessel has more control, and they're able to stop and get back underway much easier than the southbound vessel.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So I'm sure at some point in the history of barge traffic on the Mississippi, somebody's run aground. Does that kind of block the whole river for everybody else? How do you deal with that? That's a lot of mass to move if you're stranded on a sandbank somewhere.
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: Normally on the lower, unless it's really low water, there are times where somebody running the ground will shut down the whole river in that area, and the coast guard will put a pon pond out. They'll shut the river down from miles so and so, down to miles so and so. Nobody can transit until we get that mess cleaned up. So it happens on a monthly basis and we try our best when we're navigating down the river. But at the end of the day, the way we're navigating, it's not the same as offshore. Even before we had all this technology that we have now, you could steer a compass route, you could steer a compass heading, and most of the time you have nothing in your way. You're maybe checking for drift every once in a while, and it's kind of straightforward on the river. It's not like that at all. Minute by minute, you're assessing what's happening and you're reassessing, and every time you're making an educated guess, I mean, you are guessing. I'm going to give this input into my steering, this input into my throttles, and I think that it's going to get me where I want to be. And then a minute or two later, if that doesn't happen, you readjust again. If that doesn't happen, you readjust. And that is not always good enough, especially when you're not sure what is underneath you. You're not sure how the sandbar is out in front of you. So certain stages of the river, it definitely gets kind of treacherous and accidents are going to happen. It's just a part of the industry.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So do you have any particularly hairy stories you want to share?
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: So, yes, I definitely–
Dr. Sandra Magnus: That sounds nerve wracking.
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: It is. It can be very nerve wracking, especially early in your career. The later you get in your career, it's not as bad. It's not that I won't treat it with respect, but I'm definitely more relaxed now. I had, as far as the river industry goes, the worst incident I've ever been involved with. I wasn't up on watch for. We did watch change about an hour before this incident happened. And we're in Cape Girardeau, so we're southbound Cape. It's actually really similar river conditions right now. You have a five foot difference in between the Cape river gauge and the Cairo. And when those two are separated, that section of river is very swift. You have sometimes a six, seven mile an hour current, and it makes transiting that a little more difficult. We were coming southbound with 30 loads. We crew changed or watch changed. So I was getting off watch. The pilot was coming on watch at 11:00 at night. We were coming down on. On a point called Grays Point. Grays Point is just a notorious, dangerous point. There's lots of rock. That point does not want you to transit south for whatever reason. It just doesn't. So most people back up and flank there to make it safe if you have any sizable tow. And the gentleman that took over for me that night just made a bad judgment and over flanked. Well, when he over-flanked, he thought that he would be able to correct it by driving ahead, and eventually he would be able to correct that. Well, you come down around Grays Point, and I'm trying to draw a visual picture here, I'm not the greatest at this, to come down around Grays Point. And then you're looking down the river at Thebes Bridge, and it's a railroad bridge in a turn that has. The piers are just scarred up to no end. I mean, it's been hit so many times over the years, and it's commonly hit. So he over-flanks, which puts him out of shape for that bridge. As he's driving down, he never does get in shape, and we end up– I don't know any of this is happening. I'm getting ready to get in bed. So I'm sitting on the side of my bed in my stateroom. And the newer boats have built in furniture. Everything's built in kind of like an offshore ship, some type of ship would have. The older boats had just regular home furniture, just dressers and everything. If you got into an accident, I think we’re going all over the place.
So I hear the general alarm go on. I look out my starboard window of my stateroom. I jump up, I look out the window, and I see this bridge pier coming at us, and it's coming at the stern star barge. So we've got 30 barges in front of us, and the stern of the starboard side is going at this bridge pier. It hits it so hard that it breaks the whole boat out of tow. The tows are held into the barges with cables, and on this boat, we do 32 parts of cables. On the boat we were on that night, we probably had 26 parts out. It broke every one of them. Instantly killed and both engines died instantly. The hit was so hard. I immediately just kind of laid down on my bed because I knew how bad the impact was going to be. And it threw my bed all the way across the room. Dresser laid over, the refrigerator downstairs on the floor. It was a hard impact. The worst I've ever been involved in. I ran up to the wheelhouse, and part of the job as a captain on a boat when you have an incident like that, you come straight to the wheelhouse. The pilot would do the same thing, but the captain is obligated to take over if he deems that necessary. So, when I got to the wheelhouse, I immediately took over. We're just floating down the river at this point. We get the engines cranked back up. Within five minutes of all this happening, five barges have sank to the bottom right there. They're just gone. It took us three days to clean that up.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Wow.
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: It was a big mess, and that was one of them that definitely shut the river down for a while. That was 20 years ago. That's been a while. That was in 2003. So a little over 20 years.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: But the bridge survived.
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: The bridge survived. It has been hit just like that.
Sandy Winnefeld: Well, it just goes to show that this is a business where you really got to pay attention to what's going on, and experience really counts. That's amazing. What a story. So, you're on the push boat, and you've got a small crew. You've got some deckhands, you got a mate. What's the dynamic like working closely with a small crew for extended periods on your boat?
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: It can be great. I mean, it really is like a family away from home. It can also be as bad as you can imagine like a squabbling family at home, you're having issues. So it can go both directions.
Sandy Winnefeld: Especially if the food's bad, right?
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: It can be. It can go both directions. But all in all, I've always enjoyed my time on the boat. I would say that one thing that has kept me out here is just the dynamic of the crews. And Marquette, along with other companies, definitely does a lot to help promote that part of our training that we go through helps us deal with crew issues as they come along. The workforce that we're working with now, it's constantly changing. So you're constantly having to learn how to mitigate that. And not just mitigate it, but roll with it, make it work well.
Sandy Winnefeld: Every generation is different. Before I forget, I got to ask, do you have a cook?
Dr. Sandra Magnus: I was going there. I was totally going there.
Sandy Winnefeld: Or is it like a firehouse where somebody gets it?
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: No, we definitely have a cook, and that is a pivotal part on a line boat. So I haven't referred to these boats as line boats. So in the industry, anything that pushes 15 barges or more are generally referred to as line boats. And unfortunately, for all the other boats in the industry, and I was a part of that for a long time, I came up off of small boats. The line boats are generally the only ones that have cooks, and it is wonderful to have a cook. I would never go back to working without one. Not only does a good cook cook good food, but that dynamic you were talking about, they can be like a mom on the boat. And when I say that, I use that very broadly. I don't care if your family has two dads or if it has two moms. It's the same. It's just, it doesn't matter who it is. They can be the person who kind of holds everything together and creates that cohesiveness with the whole crew. And that's because they're down there in the center of the whole boat. I mean, everybody's always kind of moving around the boat, and it's centered around the gala. So, yeah, it's a really special position, I feel like.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: That's so funny, because on the space station, it's all about the food and eating together at meals. We don't have a cook. Our food's not as good. But there's something about food that brings people together socially, and it's just the glue that's really interesting. You have the same dynamic on the boat. So the question, a little bit broader, family. You talked earlier about everybody on the river is kind of an extended family. Do you know most of the other captains on the river? As you guys pass, you kind of wave at each other and stuff. Or is it big enough that you don't know all the other captains on the river?
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: We know each other by voice, not so much by name, but we do recognize voices a lot. It's kind of funny. As you move up and down the river, typically, you know when there's a new voice that you haven't heard and you're a little wary where they're going to be for you if you decide to meet them in a spot where it may be a little close. So a lot of where you're going to meet somebody depends on whether you recognize their voice.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Oh, how interesting.
Captain Doicus R Langley Jr.: Now, you really know very few. You tend to, even if you've been with one company for a long time, most captains settle on one boat, maybe they move around to several, and you meet a dozen captains over a five-year period that, you know by sight. But mainly it's just talking over the radio. It's not like a personal friendship type thing.
Sandy Winnefeld: We're just about out of time, Captain. Curious, though, what advice would you give to somebody who's interested in being a tugboat captain or a push boat captain on the river? Is it something you'd recommend? Or what's the best thing for somebody to do who's thinking about taking that on?
Captain Doicus R. Langley Jr.: There's definitely a huge need for people out on the river for merchant mariners in general. It doesn't have to be the river. It can be anywhere in the US. There's definitely a– If you come out here and you commit yourself to this job and I tell guys on the boat, when they reach a certain point as a deckhand, I will talk to guys and let them know. The biggest piece of advice I can give you is you have your home life, maybe they've got kids at home, a wife at home, and then you have your boat life. You've got to, at some point in your career, be able to dedicate yourself to the boat while you're on the boat. Dedicate yourself. That's your home. You're going to do everything possible to take care of it and put that as your highest priority. Now, you have emergencies at home. Something comes up. I understand that that's your first priority in life, but when you're on the boat, this is your job, just like any other job.
That's kind of a hard thing with newer guys coming on, is they struggle with being able to let go of that home life, especially with the technology we have, where they can be constantly immersed into being on a phone conversation or even on video phone with loved ones at home. So you have to learn how to let that go. Other than that, the jobs are here. I mean, all you have to do is apply yourself, go through the steps. The path is there, it's clear, and there's nothing else that I know of where you can be from an entry level position into a captain's position, really within three and a half, four years. But five years for sure, you could be doing that for almost any company you chose to start with.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Wow, that's impressive. Well, I think we're going to have to call it a day because we're running out of time. But I have really enjoyed this conversation, especially having seen barges travel up and down the Mississippi my whole life to get some insight into, peek behind the curtain, as it were. How that all works has been really fascinating. So thank you very much, Captain Langley, for being with us. I'm sure our listeners are going to be fascinated with this information.
Sandy Winnefeld: Yeah, it's been terrific. Really enjoyed it. I learned so much. I've always been curious, and you helped me satisfy that curiosity. So thank you.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: That was Mississippi push boat Captain Doicus Langley. I'm Sandra Magnus.
Sandy Winnefeld: And I'm Sandy Winnefeld. Thanks again to Culligan for sponsoring this episode. Get exceptional water for exceptional performance. Learn more culligan.com.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Please pass our podcast around to your friends, and we'll see you next week with another fun episode of The Adrenaline Zone.
