joins fleet for Corps workers

QB9901, the Army Corps of Engineers’ newest quarterboat, arrived in Vicksburg during the weekend. (The Vicksburg Post/PAT SHANNAHAN)

When the revetment season begins later this year, people who work on the Vicksburg District’s mat-sinking unit will have more modern sleeping and dining facilities.

The Army Corps of Engineers took delivery of a $9 million quarterboat at the Patti Shipyard in Pensacola, Fla., and the floating barracks joined the fleet in Vicksburg over the weekend.

The new boat, dubbed QB9901, will join two other quarterboats, QB9401 and QB9501, that were built by Patti in the mid-1990s. Members of the engineering and labor force live on the boats while working along the Mississippi.

River banks are lined with concrete mattresses, wired together, in strategic locations to control erosion and help channel the river.

The revetment fleet typically leaves Vicksburg when water levels on the Mississippi are low in mid-summer and works into the fall.

The new boat is 301 feet long and 40 feet wide, said Kel Shurden, a mechanical engineer in the Revetment Section of the River Operations Branch.

“On the top deck it will have 43 staterooms and is capable of sleeping four people to a room,” he said, adding they will normally assign only two.

On the main deck will be dining facilities and the kitchen that will feed the entire crew.

“On the forward end will be what we call the officers’ mess that will seat 80 people. On the aft end will be the laborers’ mess that will seat 147 people,” Shurden said. “That will let us seat 227 people at one time.”

The part of the barge below the main deck will house an emergency generator, electric and diesel powered fire pumps and other pumps.

The quarterboat was built to U.S. Coast Guard passenger vessel regulations, providing a much higher degree of safety for the crew. Those design standards will allow the quarterboat to remain afloat even if one of the hull compartments floods.

Shurden said the new quarterboat is the same size as the other two quarterboats and the utility/power barge that make up one part of the revetment fleet. Because all of the barges are the same length and width, the resulting tow presents a flat surface to the boat that pushes it.

“This is one of the best-looking, most well-built vessels I have ever seen,” Shurden said.

He said the owner of the shipyard and all of the workers clearly took extreme pride in their workmanship.

Shurden said the arrival of the new quarterboat will allow the district to retire two boats that were built in the 1960s. They will first be offered to other federal agencies. If no other federal agency needs them, they will be transferred to the General Services Administration that will offer them to agencies of the states. If no state wants them, they will then be offered to local governments. As a final resort, the GSA will put the old quarterboats up for sale to the highest bidder.