Life Between the Levees: Americaâs Riverboat Pilots by Melody Golding
Author:Melody Golding
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2019-11-14T16:00:00+00:00
CHARLIE RITCHIE
My name is Charlie Ritchie. I started working summers when I was twelve years old, but Iâve been riding boats since I was two weeks old. My mother was on a boat with me two weeks before I was born and two weeks after. So Iâve been on the river, I tell people, virtually all my life. Iâve been doing this forever. My father is a mariner. Iâm fifth generation. And my father and all his brothers were mariners. My fatherâs name is John Baptist Ritchie Sr. And then my grandfather was a mariner. His dad was a mariner. The first generation is George Ritchie, who was in the book by Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi. [He] was the first of our family that we know of on the river. And now thereâs a sixth generation, my daughter, my niece, and a couple of other cousins and so forth of those two girls that also work on the river.
I was actually running mate at sixteen years old. I went all the way to Pittsburgh running mate on the boat. My brother Larry was the captain. It was a great experience for me. Itâs what we do. Itâs what weâve always done. Our family has always been out there, so it wasnât anything unusual to be on a boat at sixteen running mate. I had a cook ask me the other day when I first started, and I told her twelve, and she said that was impossible. And I said not if your daddy owns the company, so. Itâs hard work, and itâs dangerous. I have the longest license on the river. I have 4,911 miles that Iâve drawn from memory. Every major river on the Mississippi River system. Iâve drawn the length of the Mississippi, the Ohio, the Tennessee, the Cumberland, the Illinois, the Kanawha, the Monongahela, and from memory. So, itâs fairly extensive. Plus, I have license to run the Great Lakes. I have unlimited tonnage masterâs license and unlimited tonnage first-class pilot which is very unusual. I got those when I was very young. I got my original license at twenty-one. My masterâs license I got when I was twenty-four. I have been blessed my whole life.
I did it in a fairly short period of time. My original license, I only got fifty-two miles of license in 1984. I had been on several boats. Every time I would get off a boat, I happened to be in Natchez, Mississippi, and Iâd look up, and there was the Mississippi Queen, and my dad was working on there. He had been on that and the Delta Queen. And so I stayed a night in a motel. Next morning, Iâd come down and said âHiâ to Dad. The captain on there said, âYou need to come to work here.â Iâm like, too many old people for me, and I wouldnât do it. The third time I was down there, I said, âHave those people call me.â They called me, and I told them, I said, âI only got fifty-two miles of license.
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