Written by Timothy T. Tater, Music and Inspiration by Gordon Lightfoot
The legend lives on from the Tennessee down To the lake that they call Kentucky, Where a ship built to haul what the rockets would need Made a journey that ran out of lucky.
The Delta Mariner, three hundred twelve feet, Was a vessel of singular mission— She carried the stages and boosters below For the spacecraft of American vision.
From Decatur she’d sail with her cargo so rare, Atlas rockets and Centaur stages, Down the Tennessee River and out to the sea, A route she had traveled for ages.
On the twenty-sixth day of cold January, Twenty-twelve was the year of this tale, She was bound for the Cape and the launchpads that wait When the darkness and rain set her trail.
The bridge at the crossing of Eggner’s old ferry Stood silent in fog and in gloom, And the lights that should mark where the tall ships pass through Had gone dark—and would seal her doom.
Now a pilot was hired who knew the inland ways, A river man brought for his knowledge, But the navigation span’s lights had been out for a year, And the crew never questioned his passage.
Through the rain and the night, there was one light still burning, A green glow through mist hanging low, But it marked a span built for the pleasure craft only— Thirty-three feet from the water below.
The Mariner’s height was some fifty feet tall, And the crew felt uncertain and wary, But they trusted the pilot, they followed his word Toward the span at the old Eggner’s Ferry.
At eight in the evening, the bow struck the steel, And the bridge span came tumbling down, Three hundred and twenty-two feet of the road Crashed onto her deck with a sound.
The cars on the highway had skidded and stopped Just five feet from the edge of disaster, And the drivers looked down at the wreckage below Where the bridge met a ship that was faster.
But fortune was kind on that dark winter night, Not a soul on the bridge or the boat Was injured or harmed when the structure came down— A miracle keeping them float.
The rockets inside her survived without scratch, The Atlas boosters still gleaming, But the Mariner sat with a bridge on her bow Like a nightmare from which there’s no waking.
The Coast Guard came out and the salvage crews too, To cut loose the steel from her hull, And they moved her downstream to the shallows to work Where the cranes could remove what was full.
For weeks she sat idle at Paducah’s dry dock While they patched up the wounds she had taken, Then onward to Florida, cargo intact, A month after everything shaken.
Seven million in damage to fix up the bridge, And the lawyers would argue for years, Three million from Foss Maritime finally paid For the night of confusion and fears.
Now the Safety Board studied and issued their word On the cause of that dark navigation: The crew had the charts and the radar on board But relied on one man’s poor direction.
The lights should have burned and the pilot should’ve known, And the officers ought to have questioned, But complacency grew from a safety record That left too much danger unmentioned.
So remember the Mariner when you sail through the night On the rivers that wind through this nation, That the tools on your bridge are worth nothing at all If you fail at your verification.
The new bridge stands tall where the old truss once crossed, Four lanes wide with an arch standing true, And the Mariner sails—now called RocketShip proud— Still carrying rockets on through.
But the legend lives on from the Tennessee down To the lake that they call Kentucky, Of a ship and a bridge and a dark rainy night When Kentucky ran right out of lucky.
January 26, 2012 — Eggner’s Ferry Bridge, Kentucky Lake
PHOTO: Andy McLemore – Flickr: DSC08748, CC BY-SA 2.0
