Showing posts with label John Beatty's Navy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Beatty's Navy. Show all posts
John Beatty's Navy update
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barge,
bgem,
John Beatty's Navy,
naquillity,
sunken ship,
update
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John Beatty's Navy wreckage (2009)by Naquillity
I recently stumbled across your photos of Beatty’s wreckage. I spent time on that boat as a kid and with Captain Beatty. I was living on the West Coast when Beatty passed away and when the sinking of his towboat happened.
And the other...
Interestingly enough this isn’t the first time the Clare E. Beatty towboat has sunk. It sunk back in the late 1970s when Captain Beatty was trying to rescue some barges that cut loose down in Warsaw, KY (at the Markland Dam and Locks). The Clare E. Beatty towboat sunk when the Ohio River was almost frozen solid in ice. Beatty of course raised the boat because after all, that is what he did best.
Personally, I knew Captain Beatty back between 1986-1990. I was 9 years old when I first met him. Not a very long time but during that time I spent a lot of time at his house down in Warsaw KY and on overnight trips up and down the Ohio River. One trip was even during a salvage operation back in 1989 when a barge broke loose and hit the L & N Bridge in Cincinnati. The bridge was right next to Riverfront Stadium. It was a 3 week salvage operation, and all of Beatty’s equipment was anchored to one of the bridge piers. I remember sitting in the pilot house of the Clare E. Beatty late into the night and being able to see the beautiful lights from the city buildings glistening on the river. Captain Beatty’s wife, Clare, was in her early 70s at the time and battling some form of cancer. I think it was lung cancer because she was a daily smoker. Despite her illness, she too came along on the overnight trips. She would be the head cook and the galley (kitchen) of the boat was her domain. She made sure she fed everyone great home cooked meals during the trips. She’d cook for like a crew of 10 to 15 people on the boat. I remember she baked a delicious coconut cake and whenever I came to their house in Warsaw she’d always have one ready for me to eat! My most favorite summer trips on that boat was always to Augusta KY where they would hold an annual sternwheel boat regatta. It would take place at Augusta’s landing and about 15 to 20 sternwheelers would beach up at the shore. It would last 4 to 5 days and there would be music, craft makers, a corn roast, fireworks, etc. When I moved back to Cincinnati in 2004 I remember checking the calendar to see if they were still having the regatta but they discontinued them a couple years before. I was very disappointed but it probably wouldn’t be the same without Captain Beatty and Clare anyway. So yes, the Clare E. Beatty boat holds some very special memories for me and I can tell you that when it becomes feasible in the future, I might try to salvage and restore the boat myself.
The Kenton County Library just recently posted 8 pages of photos of Captain Beatty, his wife Clare, and the boat. Click here: http://www.kentonlibrary.org/genphotos/photoList.cfm Just type in the word “beatty” in the photo search.
John Beatty's Navy, oil paintingby Tom Lohre
Corey also provided a link to a book titled Beatty's Navy: The Life and Times of John L. and Claire E. Beatty at Amazon but it is currently unavailable.
Thank you so much Corey for sharing your memories of John, Claire and Beatty's Navy with us here at Naquillity. It is greatly appreciated.
Update: Being the interesting story this was I decided to change the blog name to my current blog and share this post here. Hope you enjoyed the story...
John Beatty's Navy
Labels:
barge,
bgem,
crane,
hercules,
John Beatty's Navy,
minesweepers,
naquillity,
navy,
river graveyard,
ship,
sunken ship,
towboat
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Curiosity finds my outturned feet spitting across creosoted railroad tracks with my daughter close behind. We come to a spot of flatlined green searching for a safe way down to the Ohio river from our side of the banks. We pull our bodies into shade while our eyes are drawn to a listing, half-sunken ship called John Beatty's Navy.
Story goes... an unnamed barge sank in 1992 just off Maysville's shore. In 1994 city of Maysville hired John Beatty, a riverboat captain, from Warsaw to raise the barge. He used two old Navy minesweepers that were hooked together by beam, cradling a crane. His efforts were lost to river mud. The towboat Clare Beatty damaged her engines pulling the minesweepers free. One minesweeper now rests belly up like a beached whale.
The Hercules barge and crane succeeded in pulling original barge free only to have its crane break as the barge broke surface. Hercules now partially pins the barge it was meant to save.
The western shore of Maysville is now known as the Bermuda Triangle of the Ohio River. To some this may be a river junkyard but on this sunny, Sunday afternoon it's a chance for mother and daughter to scavenge the shoreline while taking in a bit of history.
Credit:
"Proud armada rusts in river's graveyard" Monica Dias, Cincinnati Post, 9/16/98
Researching John Beatty's Navy I found that the Clare E. Beatty tugboat was originally called Semet-Solvay (1940) and renamed Semet (1947). In 1971 she was renamed Clare E. Beatty and sank in 2000.
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