By Homer HirtPhoto Caption:
Captain Tom Corley, the last first-class steamboat pilot on the Apalachicola River. Photo by permission of his son Ric Corley.
Several weeks ago I wrote an article for the Jackson County Times about steamboat men on the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint Rivers system. I ended the article with this:
"There are still some sternwheelers in action on other rivers, but no commercial ones…………unless you count one that is in Columbus, Georgia……….a boat built by Captain Tom Corley, who also started as a cabin boy and........but, wait…….that’s another story!"
At that time I began formulating an article about Captain Corley, but for the most part kept it in the recesses of my mind. Then, recently it started coming together, this man was one that I knew personally, a real river-man that lived until 2001, a man who not only piloted steam and diesel towboats, but also constructed a sternwheeler in 1993, when he was in his eighties. According to him, he worked through twenty five helpers "one at a time" as he built the Seminole Princess in a boatyard in Panama City.
I met Tom Corley not long after we began loading the first cargo out of the Jackson County Port at Mile 103 on the Apalachicola River. The Port Director had contracted with a company to load crushed cars to barges. After filling a couple of the open hopper barges, piled high with vehicles that had once been someone’s dream cars but were now mashed down to about two feet high each and destined for the scrap yard in Mobile, Alabama, we stood by for the towboat that was to carry them down river to the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway near the mouth of the River.
One day we looked down the river and we saw the Louise. She was unlike the usual "push" boats. True, she had the knees for lashing to the barges, but she was long and flat and her propulsion was visible…..a huge, slow turning wheel. Dipping her paddles into the swift, muddy waters, she came about to lie alongside our pier. Soon she made up to the first barge, and up the ladder came a slender man, under six feet in height, and brown as a piece of weathered wood. He stuck out his hand to me and said: "Tom Corley" and I shook it and replied "Homer Hirt". And that is how we met.
He soon departed, pushing the heavily laden barge around the bend and out of sight. We watched, and I thought that I would never have contact with the good Captain again. I was wrong.
This man that I met so informally with a handshake and with four words passing between us had a long history on the rivers, and would have a continued career on waterways for another twenty years. I would, through those years, have a cup of coffee with him, or listen to his stories over a meal or hear his opinions, succinctly expressed, as we entered into the conflict over the water uses on the ACF, with both of us fighting for continued commercial navigation.
I would hear from others and from him bits and pieces about his varied career, not only on the inland and intra-coastal waterways, but chasing German submarines on the broad Atlantic Ocean during the perilous days of World War II.
And I would listen with awe as he described how he went on the boats at the age of eleven and worked his way up to captain with an unlimited license "on any commercial vessel". So, here I will give you some of the highlights of his life, some in his words, some in his son Ric’s, who took over his father’s business and most certainly inherited his admirable traits.
Tom Corley began serving on the River as many other young fellows did in his day. His family owned a farm near Columbus, Georgia, and he, along with his brothers, milked cows, grew vegetables for sale to vendors, cleaned and repaired the structures and in general worked seven days a week, from before daylight until after dark. All young folks come to believe "there’s something better out there for me". For young Tom, just under the age of eleven, the "something" which beckoned was the W. C. Bradley, a sternwheeler on which his two uncles served as engineers.
So, one day, rising before 3:30 AM, young Tom Corley gathered some belongings in a bag and walked down to the river. The cabin boy had not showed up, so Tom, not quite eleven years old, signed on in his place. In his own words: "My first trip; … it was an elation. I was working! I was gonna’ get $10 a month. It was the first time I had been paid to work". Tom worked three months on the boat, steaming between Columbus and Apalachicola. Finally his mother and grandfather came to get him. Again, in his own words: "Grandpop, I’ll go back home wi’ y’all, but I ain’t pulling no more teats". He retuned home, attended school, farmed (no milking) and worked every summer on the boats.
His opportunity to move up to pilot came because of a pilots’ strike. The boat was tied up and the owner, Mr. W. C. Bradley, offered him a job to take it down to Apalachicola. He accomplished that feat, and was soon on the way to being a full-fledged, licensed river pilot. He never stopped or looked back. He ran the rivers, from the ACF to the Mississippi and its tributaries, and eventually served his country during World War II.
Captain Tom also became a marine surveyor (inspector) and had more than fifty two years of service in that field, surveying over twelve thousand boats and ships during that time. His qualification as an "Unlimited Master of any steam vessel, any gross tons on any ocean", added to his marine surveyor’s level of proficiency and service would be credentials enough for any two people.
To me, his time on the steamboats on the three rivers, his advocacy of inland navigation and his willingness to speak out, loud and clear, on issues he believed in gave him a special aura. His determination to keep working appealed to many folk. His advice and counsel was of the best, and will be missed.
(Note: some of the quotes above are taken from the book "Voices of the Apalachicola" by Faith Eidse. Some other information came from his son, Captain Ric Corley, who follows in his father’s footsteps as a licensed river boat captain and a marine surveyor, and, I might add, a good storyteller. I called him last week to verify the names of two of Captain Tom’s boats, and we quit talking about thirty minutes later!)
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