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Recollections of James Swift
Jim was the Waterways Journal's business manager and author of its Old Boat Column.
A Boost From Communications Technology
In this day of computers, fax machines and e-mail it is difficult to realize that in the early days of modern tow-boating, when the captain wanted to call the office, the crew had to break out the yawl, go ashore and find a land phone.
Federal Barge Lines, in an effort to improve the barge line business, put wireless on their boats. Their clerks were also radio operators and used Morse code. One of the men was Herman Radloff, who was on the S. S.Thorpe, now the towboat-museum at Keokuk, Iowa, and renamed Geo. M. Verity.
After World War II voice radio came along. One of the leaders in this field was the Radiomarine Corporation of America, which went after the towboat business. This revolutionized the communications on rivers. Not only could boat crews call ashore, but they could talk to other vessels. The pilots did not have to guess what the boat they were meeting was going to do until there was a whistle signal; they could agree on passing arrangements at a considerable distance.
There was also Channel 4, or the equivalent of the country party line. One could pretty well keep track of what was going on at somebody 's home and down on the farm by listening to Channel 4. On my trips for the Journal I had a radio receiver in the car tuned to the marine bands, so I could keep track of the boats. It was especially good on the lower Mississippi River. I could take it out of the car and listen to it in the motel room.
These radio transmissions to and from the boats had to be handled by someone on shore. Federal Barge Lines had a station in Memphis, WPI, to handle its boat traffic; and RCA ran a station in St. Louis for the Mississippi Valley Barge Line. The Missouri Barge Line, in Cape Girardeau, had a 2-mc. station that didn't even reach Memphis.
In Memphis, Capt. Russell V. Warner saw the need for stations with power that could service his boats and others. In 1932 he persuaded his partner, Capt. George Tamble, to set up a radio station with a "Coast" license that could serve all vessels. There was a hearing in Memphis on their application in 1938. It was approved, and in 1939 WJG went on the air. It was first located on the Warner and Tamble operations barge, and in 1944 was moved to the country, 10 miles from Memphis.
The radio service was well-received. In 1942 at the request of American Barge Line, Warner and Tamble put in a station at Louisville, WFN. In 1945 RCA put in radio-telephone at WGK in St. Louis. WGK was originally in the Rutger Street terminal of the Valley Line.
Warner and Tamble also put in a station, WCM, at Pittsburgh in 1946. It didn 't work, and RCA took it over. RCA sold both WGK and WCM to Ray Gartman on August 1, 1967.
Through the years service on the stations improved with single-side band equipment, VHF, and tape recorders to backup the operators.
As the towing industry increased in size and new communications technology was being developed, the barge lines realized a better system was needed. In the 1970s, a number of carriers, 10-20 of them, started a movement to create such a system, but the depression in the towing industry halted it. American Commercial Barge Line came to the rescue, and with its backing started what was to become WATERCOM, or the Waterway Communications System, Inc., based at Jeffersonville, Indiana.
A new series of transmission towers was erected to take out the blind spots that had plagued river radio signals. WATERCOM used the latest in electronics. Their advertisement in The Waterways Journal reads: "In one minute you can verify your vessels' locations, call in a pickup or drop off change, report on river conditions, confirm fueling arrangements."
The master can also send facsimiles and other data. WATERCOM also stresses its ability to keep boat crews happier with the use of Datron DBS-4000 systems that deliver laser-disk-quality pictures and CD-quality sound on the television, even when the boat is moving.