The riverboat captain is a storyteller, and Captain Don Sanders will be sharing the stories of his long association with the river — from discovery to a way of love and life. This a part of a long and continuing story.
By Capt. Don Sanders
Special to NKyTribune
How strange it is that a simple comment or question can shake so much dust and cobwebs off long-buried memories. For example, an older article in the venerated river weekly, The Waterways Journal, concerning the towboat DUNCAN BRUCE. Written by the late Captain Alan L. Bates, the story prompted Clark Sigman, owner of a diving company on the Kanawha River, to ask former BRUCE deckhand Richard Dale James, “Do you know whatever happened to it?”
How strange it is that a simple comment or question can shake so much dust and cobwebs off long-buried memories. For example, an older article in the venerated river weekly, The Waterways Journal, concerning the towboat DUNCAN BRUCE written by the late Captain Alan L. Bates.
Mr. James replied, “Seems like it sold for use as a movie prop, but the venture that bought it went bust, and they scrapped her sometime around 1980. If that’s not correct, I imagine somebody will chime in to correct me.”
It was Richard James’ observation that jogged my memory cells into the recollective mode.
According to Capt. Bate’s article, “the modern diesel towboat did not spring up overnight.” Rather, rivermen were more familiar with paddlewheelers that proved more practical on the shallow rivers before locks and dams raised the level of the Ohio River after 1922. The DUNCAN BRUCE, built by Ward Engineering Works, Charleston, WV, in 1927, was an attempt to revive a rapidly waning interest in paddlewheel-driven towboats instead of the propeller-powered boats taking over after the deepening of the river. Ward Engineering developed a complex system that allowed the use of the recently-introduced diesel engine instead of steam as the source of power for locomotion. The higher speed diesel engines presented a new set of challenges when incorporated with traditional paddlewheels. Ward’s solution was a reduction gear drive for sternwheels first incorporated into the construction of the BRUCE in the winter and spring months of ‘27. When completed, the DUNCAN BRUCE was the largest and most potent sternwheel towboat on the Western Rivers – meaning the Mississippi River and its tributaries.
The BRUCE had two sternwheels driven by separate diesel engines which gave the boat considerable maneuvering ability as one wheel could come ahead forward while the other operated in reverse. In effect, the innovative vessel could twist around within its length. Though the DUNCAN BRUCE intended to revive an interest in sternwheelers, she was converted into an ordinary propeller-driven towboat by the American Barge Line at Jeffboat, Jeffersonville, Indiana by 1933. ABL operated the BRUCE until selling it to O. F. Shearer & Sons in 1947. Shearer ran the boat until 1973. She was still towing barges on the Kanawha River, for sure, when I was the first Captain of the P. A. DENNY in Charleston, WV in 1976, and possibly-still, in ‘77.
The DUNCAN BRUCE, built by Ward Engineering Works, Charleston, WV, in 1927, was an attempt to revive a rapidly waning interest in paddlewheel-driven towboats.
Soon after the first of the year in 1978, a general excitement arose at home in Covington. Universal Studios of Hollywood, California was in town recruiting for all sorts of expertise for a new TV mini-series soon to go into production based on author James A. Michener’s novel, CENTENNIAL, which traces the history of northeast Colorado from prehistory times until the early 1970s. I had no intention of becoming starstruck, so I ignored the appeal until a local man of about my age contacted me. Jim Schworer operated a limousine service often catering to celebrities coming to the Cincinnati area, primarily when the Beverly Hills Supper Club featured first-rate, nationally-known entertainers before a disastrous conflagration destroyed the club killing 160 patrons and injured over 200 more, just months earlier. Jim knew, through his celebrity sources, that Universal was seeking someone with river savvy to assist their Art Director in a search for “steamboats, flatboats, keelboats, and any other types of boats that plied the rivers in the early to mid-1800s.” So I volunteered my services and became the Assistant to the Art Director with an assignment to find those boats the Hollywood people naturally figured were lying casually about, all over the river.
Soon, I was on the telephone and discovered a pair of authentic-looking reproduction keelboats on the Wisconsin Dells and made inroads to procure them for the production. An authentic sidewheel steamboat was a tougher challenge. However, Universal Studios knew they could reconstruct a relatively recent riverboat into the mid-nineteenth look if only I could find one available for alteration. That’s when I suggested the DUNCAN BRUCE, often affectionally called the “Drunken Brute,” or the “Sunken Duncan” by admiring fans of the historical riverboat.
On a cold, blustery day, my boss, the Art Director, and I found the BRUCE afloat in the Bosworth fleet near Point Pleasant, West “By God” Virginia, where the Ohio and Great Kanawha Rivers meet.
Ward’s solution was a reduction gear drive for sternwheels first incorporated into the construction of the BRUCE in the winter and spring months of ‘27.
After the director shot a series of photos, he declared the DUNCAN BRUCE was the perfect boat he was seeking. In the warm rental car on the long ride home, my boss told me what he planned to do to transform only one side of the BRUCE into the sidewheel steamer needed for the project. Though disappointed to hear the studio had no plans for completely reconfiguring the vessel, I was thrilled when he concluded, “Once we’re done shooting the necessary scenes for the series; you can have the boat to do with it whatever you want.”
After the Art Director packed up the results of the discoveries during our foray and headed back to the studio lot in Universal City on the outskirts of Los Angeles, I anxiously waited for his telephone call. As I always kept a packed suitcase beneath my bed for any sudden, unannounced adventures I quite-often experienced in my youth; I was ready to go practically anywhere at a moment’s notice. Surprisingly, however, the director didn’t call as punctually as I anticipated, so I began to wonder if he was going to call at all. Finally, the phone rang close to midnight several days later than expected.
“Sorry, I didn’t get back to you sooner,” the Art Director began,” but when I presented our findings to the producers, I hadn’t even finished when I was suddenly interrupted. ‘You’re spending too much money. YOU ARE FIRED,’ they told me.”
He went on the say that we found precisely everything he anticipated. Lower financial constraints for the made-for-TV mini-series were tighter than for a made-for-the big-screen film, so the budget was tighter than his expectations. With those few words, my Hollywood career went by the boards with the immediate discharge of my boss. He assured me, though, that his dismissal on the CENTENNIAL shoot was not detrimental to his ultimate film career. Still, any aspirations I harbored for a teaser in the film industry dissolved before the phone call ended.
The BRUCE had two sternwheels driven by separate diesel engines which gave the boat considerable maneuvering ability as one wheel could come ahead forward while the other operated in reverse.
As soon as I learned early on what the Art Director wanted to find, I immediately thought of Captain John Beatty who already had or could get, everything necessary to recreate a mid-19th Century scene for the cameras. But at that time, Captain Beatty and I were not on speaking terms as we sometimes were according to the Captain’s whims. John owned towboats, barges, cranes, floating pipe flats, two former Navy minesweepers, and about any and everything anyone could ever need on the river.
Soon after the discharge of the Art Director and I on the CENTENNIAL production, Captain Beatty was, indeed, the go-to person Universal Studios hired to supply the river equipment for the filming segment at Augusta, Kentucky on the Ohio River several miles east of my hometown. Cappy Beatty enjoyed his time working with Universal and regarded the experience as one of the most exciting episodes of this long and storied career on the river.
While researching some information concerning the shooting of the CENTENNIAL segment at Augusta, several pictures emerged of a local lad. He was an extra in the filming but went on to become an idol on the big screen. Seventeen-year-old George Clooney, son of Nick and Nina Clooney, was among the many answering the “cattle call” for bit parts in the production. Oddly enough, while I was still with the studio, George’s mother called my house a few times, “just to chat,” she said. A Cincinnati television celebrity also found my number and telephoned to blather about the CENTENNIAL project. After my quietus in the TV production industry, I was little more than a dead fish.
Jim Schworer operated a limousine service often catering to celebrities coming to the Cincinnati area, primarily when the Beverly Hills Supper Club featured first-rate, nationally-known entertainers.
That’s when I suggested the DUNCAN BRUCE, often affectionally called the “Drunken Brute,” or the “Sunken Duncan” by admiring fans of the historical riverboat.
Seventeen-year-old George Clooney, son of Nick and Nina Clooney, was among the many answering the “cattle call” for bit parts in the production. (c) Coleman-Rayner
Captain Don Sanders is a river man. He has been a riverboat captain with the Delta Queen Steamboat Company and with Rising Star Casino. He learned to fly an airplane before he learned to drive a “machine” and became a captain in the USAF. He is an adventurer, a historian, and a storyteller. Now, he is a columnist for the NKyTribune and will share his stories of growing up in Covington and his stories of the river. Hang on for the ride — the river never looked so good.
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The River: How a riverman almost had a gig in the TV production industry — and first met George Clooney - User-generated content
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