Towboat Legacy Informs Terrorism Thriller

John Jamison, now an aspiring novelist, grew up on the rivers, in Beardstown, Ill., son of a towboat captain father, Francis B. Jamison, known as “Ben.”

“Dad was a towboat captain on the Illinois, Ohio, Mississippi and other rivers. While he enjoyed hunting and camping, more than anything else he was ‘the Captain.’ The most-heard phrase in our house was, ‘You people need to remember that I am a captain, I have been a captain for 40 years, and I will BE a captain for 20 more years after I’m dead and gone!”

Jamison remembers his dad telling stories about many vessels; he remembers the A.H. Crane, the Ragsdale, the Long, the Bob Labdon and the Kyle, among others. “Dad was with The Ohio River Company for much of the time I was growing up, though there were others. Anytime we would ask who he worked for, he waved us off with a, “I worked for all of them at some point.”

Jamison added, “I grew up in a family of storytellers and liars, and I spent most of my time trying to figure out which was which.” Reading was strongly encouraged in the Jamison household. “Dad was always a reader. He was an avid fan of Louis L’Amour—until L’Amour wrote a book that had something in it about dinosaurs. I can still hear Dad’s extensive and intense explanation of why he would never waste his time with another one of those “xxx” books by Louis L’Amour,” said Jamison.

“The Waterways Journal has been part of my world for as long as I can remember,” he said. “I remember learning to read from pages of the WJ, and I have no idea how many various papers and projects I turned in at school that were well-seasoned with photos and data from the WJ.”

Different Path

Unlike some towboat captains, Francis Jamison didn’t encourage his son to follow in his footsteps on the rivers. “The Captain had decided long ago that I was going to college,” said Jamison. “I went to college. For many years, I was the only male on Dad’s side of the family who did not go to work on the river. Dad saw to that right before I graduated high school with a phone call to each towing company owner he knew, informing them that if they hired his son as a deckhand, he would never work for them again.”

“But even at college, I occasionally found an envelope in my mailbox with pages from the WJ and a note saying, “Thought you might like this.”

After college, Jamison embarked on a successful 20-year career as a pastor. Then he transitioned into a second career as a consultant for higher education. The common thread was story-telling. On his website, Jamison says, “As a pastor, I spent most of my time helping people learn to cope with major changes in their lives. I found myself doing exactly the same thing with faculty and staff who were trying to deal with the huge changes taking place in education because of technology, games and other things. In both situations, I found that stories were a great tool.”

Story-Telling Was Key

It was natural that someone who defined both his careers as informed by story-telling should gravitate toward writing fiction. “About 35 years ago,” Jamison told The Waterways Journal, “I had an idea for a book and told Dad about it.” It was a suspense thriller about terrorism on the rivers, with towboats playing a prominent part in the action. “My dad said it was the dumbest “xxx” thing he had ever heard, it could never happen, and I should forget about it. So I did.”

Then his father retired from the rivers. “Dad struggled quite a bit after retirement, being a captain without a boat and not all that interested in changing how a captain captained. The last year or so was really tough, with early signs of dementia. Dad stopped reading completely—except for always having a copy of the WJ nearby. I’m not sure just how much he still understood, but it was one connection with the life he loved that stuck with him.”

Dementia can be tough on the family members of those suffering from it, as the person suffering from it is not always “there” as the person they remember. “We had not had a ‘real’ conversation for five or six months since the dementia had pretty much settled in,” said Jamison.

“But one day, as we sat in the airport, my dad turned and looked at me. ‘Do you remember that story you told me a long time ago, about the boats?’  I looked at him and I saw ‘him.’ I said that I remembered it, bracing for what was going to follow. He said, ‘That scared the hell out of me. That could really happen. I just didn’t want to think about it while I was still out there. You ought to write that down.”

Following “the captain’s” orders,” Jamison said, “my sister pushed his wheelchair to the plane, and I went home to begin writing “Disruption,” my first novel. Dad died about a month later in Texas, sitting in a very nice facility for dementia patients that, in our last phone conversation, he described as ‘a place run by people who have no ‘xxxxx’ idea how to run a ‘xxxx’ boat. I’m going to call the office and tell them I’m throwing every one of these ‘xxxxx’ off my boat at the next lock. And I’m going to tell them they need to send me a decent cook!”

Jamison said he spent the next few months digging through his dad’s boxes, sorting through letters, maps, boat reports, crew reports and Waterways Journals. He spent time talking with other friends and family members who had been or still were on the river. He was introduced to company owners, boat builders and anyone else he could corner, as well as FBI agents and other law enforcement experts.

The plot of “Disruption” involves a hijacked towboat, a devious terrorist scheme, and an intrepid female FBI agent-heroine, Emily Graham, with a retired towboat captain father not too different from Francis Jamison. Jamison originally self-published the novel in 2017—an increasingly common path for aspiring authors in today’s digital marketplace—but says he is negotiating with a traditional publisher. It is available on amazon.com.

“I had photos and diagrams from the WJ pinned to my wall next to the huge spread of the Corps of Engineers Mississippi River navigational maps stretching from below New Orleans to above Keokuk, Iowa. I knew I had to make sure what I wrote would be as authentic as possible, because if I wrote it poorly and somehow misrepresented the boat captain or his crew, my captain would find some way to come back and explain my errors.”

Evidently Agent Emily Graham has gained some fans; Jamison has already followed “Disruption” with two sequels featuring her: “Distraction” and “Disbelief.”