Life as towboat captain not always ‘romantic’

Jay Railey keeps busy working on his house in Mont Belvieu.

“My father was a towboat captain, my grandfather was a towboat captain and all my uncles were towboat captains. I grew up wanting to emulate my dad, since he was my hero.

“When I was 4½, he started taking me out on the boat with him. When I was 16, I began working on the boat during the summer. Then when I turned 19, I joined the Coast Guard, and I was in there for 10 years.

“When I got out, I tried everything I could think of to stay away from the water. Nothing worked out for me. So I thought, well, I’ll just fall back on what I know, and I went to work on towboats. I did that for more than 40 years, pushing barges up and down the intercoastal waterway.

“When I was young, I had a lot of romantic notions about being a towboat captain. But when I actually got into the work, it was no longer romantic. I wasn’t free to do what I wanted to do, like I was when I was a kid. It was just making a paycheck, although the money was great.”

When did you retire?
“I stopped when I was 72. My supervisor was constantly telling everybody that whatever I decided on the boat as the captain, he would back me up 110 percent. I had a disagreement with one of the fellas on my boat, so I called my supervisor and told him I want to get this guy off the boat. My supervisor said we can’t just arbitrarily get rid of people because you don’t want him. I said, well, you either get him off the boat or you get me off the boat. I’m leaving today if he doesn’t leave because I’m not going to get in fisticuffs with him. He’s 25 and I’m over 70. But he wouldn’t help me out, so I just walked off the boat. That was my last day.”

— Jay Railey