These two versions actually seem pretty close for a 23 year-old story, but for grins I thought I'd attempt a small dissection.... Bruno's non-OCR manager story bits are in green Dave's found "Captain Smith" story is in orange....

It was at the old Rooster Bridge at Demopolis, Ala. -- April 28, 1979

I'd say that both stories agree on the basics...

And as Paul Harvey used to say..." that's the rest of the story..."

Oops! Minus 10 credibility points for mentioning PH!!

The CAHABA, Capt. Jimmy Wilkerson, was dropping 2 of his 4 barges thru the East span of Rooster Bridge -- around mile 200 on the lower Tenn-Tom -- with intent of running around thru the lift span and catching them below. Pilot Earl Barnhart was on the tow helping the 2 deckhands take off safety wires, winch wires, etc. Wilkerson underestimated current, and got too close to the bridge. They had taken loose all rigging except the stbd. winch wire, which had somehow fouled. This wire pulled the stbd. tow knee under the bridge, and when it broke, the towknee popped up and hung in the bridge steel. Now he's stuck, and the current laid the CAHABA onto the bridge, stbd. side to.

The next step was to back the vessel upriver and then go over to the far West side and traverse the bridge's channel span with the boat, and run down and catch the barges. It was just too dangerous to try to bring the barges through the bridge span in the current.

I've omitted alot of detail. I think that they are saying more or less the same thing WRT dropping barges under the "slack" east end of the bridge. For a second I wondered about Smith's use of "channel" span when it looked like a lift bridge, but I assume that he meant the same. Also, when I looked again at pics 3, 4, 5, not only does it look like a bascule-type lift bridge, but it appears that it is already open (looks like tilted roadway to me, anyway).

What righted the vessel? She had just topped off with fuel at Demopolis, 14 miles upstream. The CAHABA has one central fuel tank fwd. of the engines. Had that tank been 1/2 full, she might have never come back up.

....Notice that the boat re-surfaced right side up on the down stream side. What luck you say? Nope, WGN ballasted all their vessels with three to four feet of cement in the bottom. The boat was like a little yellow rubber duckie, and came back up like a duckie oughta do. The boat suffered major cosmetic damages....

They could both be right. Most anything beyond a pontoon boat or speedboat is ballasted and what Smith says the CAHABA carries for ballast doesn't seem at all unusual. You never get to see the below-waterline hull profile in the pics, but for river work I'm going to guess that it is pretty shallow draft and that any ballast is spread across a wide hull section. Looking at the pics where the boat is in its most extreme position, my gut says that -- with as much superstructure as it has along with shallow draft -- it looks perilously close to passing its "righting moment", the point beyond which it would capsize and not recover. If it was that close, then a full tank of fuel way down low could have tipped the balance, where a more mobile incompletely-full tank would have actually contributed to a capsize. In the end, though, the river may not be deep enough to permit a complete capsize and would've saved the boat's butt if everything was buttoned up.

Anyhow, I believe both of them and Smith's extended story has great detail, Paul Harvey notwithstanding! So, does getting overanalytical take the fun out of such Internet oddities??

And, yes, the notion of "manager" did contribute to the paper-passing imagery!

Jim