Jesse Rogers, Corps of Engineers and R&D Maintenance

Few people know the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway as well as Capt. Jesse Rogers and his crew. Rogers is captain of the mv. Tenn-Tom, the Corps of Engineers-owned towboat tasked with much of the regular maintenance work along the 234-mile-long waterway that connects the Tennessee River in northeastern Mississippi to the Tombigbee River to the south and, ultimately, the Mobile River and Alabama’s deepwater port in Mobile.

“This job is different than your typical captain or pilot, because I manage the floating plant with the crane barge,” Rogers said. “Our tasks are a little bit different than just running up and down the river.”

In any given year, the mv. Tenn-Tom and its crew might conduct clamshell dredging when sandbars form, assist with planned and unplanned lock outages and conduct regular maintenance that doesn’t require a closure at any of the waterway’s 10 locks and dams.

“We’re involved in any of the maintenance that goes on at the locks where they need a big crane,” Rogers said. “That consists of cleaning and painting the gates or working on tainter valves that are in the tunnels of the lock. Pretty much anything on the lock itself that needs attention, we try to get that done during closures.”

Rogers and his team also work on pipelines, set bulkheads and maintain boat ramps at recreation areas. Primarily, that work is done with the Mobile Engineer District’s new floating plant, the barge SAM 2301. That barge, which features a Liebherr hydraulic crane, recently replaced an older barge, along with its Manitowoc friction crane. The mv. Tenn-Tom also has at its disposal a barge with an excavator and a cutter head dredge attachment for responding to shoaling hot spots, among other applications. The mv. Tenn-Tom, Rogers said, can also work beyond the confines of the Tenn-Tom Waterway, whether that’s as far as Memphis on the Mississippi River or up the nearby Black Warrior-Tombigbee Waterway, which stretches to near Birmingham, Ala.

And while the mv. Tenn-Tom is the exclusive work boat of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, which falls under the mission of the Mobile District, the mv. Tenn-Tom’s crew is actually employed by R&D Maintenance, the Corps’ maintenance contractor for the waterway. R&D Maintenance has held that contract with the Corps since 1985, and crewing the mv. Tenn-Tom is part of the contract. That arrangement is unique among all other vessels within the Corps of Engineers’ fleet. Typically, Rogers and his crew work four days a week, Monday through Thursday, although in emergencies that schedule can change.

“We’ve worked 30 or 40 days at a time when needed,” he said.

While Rogers started with the Corps aboard the mv. Tenn-Tom the mid-2000s, his career in the maritime industry goes back to the early 1990s.

“I started in, I think it was, 1992 with Old Man River,” Rogers said. “Of course, Kirby bought us out right after I started. We stayed with OMR colors for a good while, and then it switched over to Dixie Carriers. It eventually went to Kirby. Through Kirby, I started as a green deckhand, went to tankerman and chief engineer, and then got my pilot’s license.”

Roger said at that time he wanted to work on bigger boats, so he went to work for Bunge for about four years.

Rogers then moved over from Bunge to work on the mv. Tenn-Tom in 2005. He spent a little time working for the Tennessee Valley Authority aboard that agency’s towboat before coming back to the mv. Tenn-Tom last year.

Rogers said, while he has no prior family connection to the maritime industry, he nonetheless grew up on the river. A native of Fairview, Miss., Rogers and his dad spent plenty of time fishing on Pickwick Lake.

“We were always fishing on the river, camping on the Tennessee River, and I always saw the boats with barges going up and down the river,” he said. “I was always fascinated with that. I’ve always been drawn to the water. It’s kind of like my second home.

“I’m old enough to remember when they were building the Tenn-Tom Waterway,” Rogers added. “I lived really close to where Jamie Whitten Lock is, and we would go down there and watch the construction. It was pretty neat.”

Rogers’ move toward the maritime industry came on a hunting trip with his brother-in-law when he was 20 years old.

“I was seriously thinking about going into the military,” Rogers said. “On that hunting trip, my brother-in-law introduced me to a guy who worked at Old Man River. He’s retired now. We talked for a while, and I told him how I was unsure what to do. He told me about the river industry and encouraged me to give it a try.

“I went in for an interview, got the job and just immediately fell in love with it,” he added. “The rest is history.”

Rogers said one thing that appealed to him about the maritime industry was how hard work is rewarded.

“On the river, if you worked really hard, you could get promoted up,” he said. “It was more on your work ethic and not who you were.”

One impressive aspect of Rogers’ career is that he’s done it all on a towboat: deckhand, a licensed tankerman, chief engineer and pilot/captain.

“I know guys that just want to learn what they’re doing, just their job,” he said. “But I think your value to a company is a lot more when you know every aspect of the towing industry.”

When asked what’s changed over the years, Rogers said communications and electronics are two things that stand out. He said he can remember a time when “we’d be lucky if we were coming close enough to a town that our antenna on the boat could pick up things.” Now, satellite TV, internet access and smartphones are ubiquitous.

“And that’s good, because people have good communication with home, so I’m not knocking it,” he said, “but it’s a distraction. It’s a wonderful tool if you use it right.”

He said he also misses the days of calling the office and communicating by radio with other vessels.

“Now, everybody just sees each other on AIS, it shows where we’re going to meet, and we might just mumble a few words,” he said. “We’ve kind of become a nation of just looking at screens and not being very personal about things anymore.”

When he’s not on the boat, Rogers, who now lives in Iuka, Miss., enjoys spending time with his wife, five grown children and nine grandchildren. He also enjoys classic cars and drag racing.

“I go from running eight miles an hour on the boat to 140 miles an hour,” he said.

His wife works at a high school in Iuka now, and Rogers said he plans to speak at a career day to tell the students about the opportunities in the maritime industry.

“I just think that’s the future,” he said, “to talk to kids and get them interested.”