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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by Overmod And since when do you 'tow' something by pushing on it? In all my years of using that word, I've never understood it to mean anything but 'pull'... It's also true that tugboats DO usually push. (Ask any liner captain if the tugs helping his ship out of her berth do so with lines instead of fenders of some sort!) Much easier to work large loads, and the consequences of a line failure (savage!!!) are not present as they are with towing. This doesn't apply to ocean-going or salvage tugs, of course... but what they are pulling is usually not a 'barge'... [/quote] Well, regardless of how you have used and understood "tow," all those boats on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers and others that are pushing those barges up and down the river are called tow boats! And they are powered by big diesel engines. No, they are not "pusher boats." That is a term used only by the unititiated. It is akin to calling a locomotive engineer a "driver!" Or thinking they are the ones that design them. Also, docking and manuevering ships is only a part of what tug boats do. eg. All the materials used on the North Slope and the Alaskan Pipeline was transported on barges towed by tugs from Seattle. Indeed a lot of what is sent to Alaska gets there on barges towed by tugs. A friend of mine lives on the hill overlooking Puget Sound in Seattle, right next to the Ship Canal. I have spent many a day sitting on his deck, enjoying a few cool ones, watching ships going to & from Bremerton, the San Juan ferry, and tugs towing barges.
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