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I was a deckhand on a tow boat, working on the Black Warrior River. We would pick up coal tows at Port Birmingham, and points south, and take them to Mobile, and then head back north with iron ore or coke for the steel mills.

There is a fleeting area on the river at mileboard 354, near Brookwood, where several companies kept barges tied up because the river is about as wide as it gets there, with very little current, normally.

We tied up there one night in the fog while I was off watch. I came on watch at midnight. Well the first thing I had to do was check on a pump we had running on a leaking barge out on the head of the tow, about 370 feet from the boat. So grabbed a cup of coffe and headed out there. Checked the pump, everything was okay. I sat down on a timberhead to lace up my boots facing back toward the boat. The boat had really bright deck lights on it, and they were on. I can see someone walking around on the barges right in front of the boat, but it is too far away for me to tell who it is. There were, after all four other crew members on the boat, so I did not think much of it at the time. This person was wearing blue jeans and a white tee-shirt.

I walked back to the boat, and went into the galley, where the rest of the crew was hanging out. Every single one of them was wearing either a dark blue or a black shirt. I asked who was out walking around on the barges. They all looked at me like I was crazy, and swore up and down no one was out there. I knew all these men very well, and while I would'nt put it past them to play some kind of joke, this was not one of those times.

About six months before this happened, a Warrior and Gulf Navigation boat ( I think it was the MV Muavilla, but I am not sure, which later went on to destroy a bridge and cause a passenger train to go into the river, but that is another story) was tying up a tow right there where we were tied up. They came in and caught a bowline, which was a two inch nylon line tied around a massive oak tree, and the pilot began to "flatten out" the tow, (moving the stern close to the bank using the bowline as a pivot) so that the deck hands could catch the rest of the banklines.
There was not enough slack in the bowline, and it pulled one of those massive oak trees over onto the barges.
There was still a deckhand on the head of the tow collecting equipment, and the tree landed squarely on him, crushing him to death.

He was wearing blue jeans and a white tee-shirt at the time.

As an aside, I have heard that the Mauvilla could not keep a crew aboard for any length of time after the railway disaster. I have heard the boat is haunted.