Life as vortices in the Ohio River

The Ohio River has bested the Hercules, a once mighty barge with a crane that could lift sunken vessels.

Sapped of its strength, the Hercules rests at the bottom of the river,
only its crane and two steel beams jutting above water near the shoreline.

Next to it, a towboat lies partially submerged, its pilothouse listing
like a drunken sailor. And next to that, the rusting hull of an old Navy
minesweeper breaks the river's surface like the belly of a dead whale.

Cincinnati Enquirer, 1998

"Vortices" - Jeremy Parnell

The story of the Bermuda Triangle of the Ohio River began in 1992 when a barge sank near the Kentucky shoreline outside Maysville, Kentucky. A subsequent salvage operation in 1994 tried to raise the barge with two Navy minesweepers. The minesweepers were the next victim as they too became stuck in the mud. Next came a towboat trying to free the minesweepers. Damage to its engines quickly rendered it crippled.

Finally came the salvage barge named "The Hercules" and its towering crane. The triangle made short work of it as well. While hoisting the original barge, the crane aboard the Hercules broke as the barge reached the surface, and down it sank again. Then the Hercules itself sank, coming to rest on top of the barge it was supposed to save. Eventually the minesweepers and the towboat sank as well. The entire salvage operation was caught in what an Army Corps of Engineers spokesperson would later call "'The Bermuda Triangle of the Ohio River".

Today, you can still see remnants of the wreckage peaking out of the Ohio River. Some local residents have called it a junkyard and feel that it blights the shoreline. I completely disagree. It's actually quite a remarkable addition to Maysville, especially when coupled with the story behind the wreckage.

I understand why some people may want it removed. It's old and rusty and doesn't look like it belongs there — your typical junkyard. That's all true. But I believe that if you look at it in a certain way, it really is beautiful. Even without dressing up the photo, it looks like a forgotton grave marker, a symbol of finality, especially with the city behind it that may represent life and the continuation of things. The story itself is a story of the power of the Ohio River. We build dams to control the height of it. We build bridges over it. We build walls to change the shape of it. But sometimes the river just doesn't want to let things go.

It's Life as a River. The metaphor goes way back, but I first read it in Herman Hesse's Siddhartha. It fits. You know countless little things are going on in the city in the distance, but the river brings it to a final point in these strange vortices.

Life is a process until death. You never actually see the same river twice. The water you saw a moment ago has already moved on. Likewise, life is continually unfolding. The product of life, like the river, is that at some point it will draw you in to a final resting place. There's nothing you can do to avoid it, and all of mankind's inventions (engines and cranes, science and medicine) do little to prevent it. Sometimes the end is just a little spot off to the side of the Ohio River where you're watching life go on in the distance.