River Pilot Completes Long Haul Tugboat Captain Scotty Fletcher Has Watched The Columbia River Change And His Sons Grow Up

When Scotty Fletcher first started piloting tugs, Bonneville was the only dam on the lower Columbia River.

His typical route was Astoria, Ore., to Portland. His typical haul was stove oil. And his tug, the “Louise Ann,” was a toy compared to today’s vessels.

Fletcher, of Walla Walla, retired last month after nearly five decades on the Columbia and Snake rivers.

He started in the days before tugs had radar - blowing the steam whistle and counting the lapse before the echo on foggy nights. He watched the first water pour through the spillways of The Dalles Dam in 1957, and saw the four lower Snake dams transform Lewiston, Idaho, into an inland seaport.

“He’s the end of an era,” said Ray Hickey, a friend and former boss. “I don’t know of anyone else from the whitewater days.”

”(Retiring) is going to be harder than he wants to admit,” said Fletcher’s wife, Claire. “He has more bilge water in his veins than blood after all these years.”

“It’s been a good life,” said Scotty, 68.

He joined the Russell Towboat and Moorage Co., which later became Tidewater Barge Lines, in 1947. His first job was working as a deckhand for one of his older brothers, earning $6 per day.

“The Fletchers have a long and storied history on the water,” said Skip Hart, Tidewater’s sales and marketing director.

Scotty grew up in Washougal, and the Columbia River was always part of his life. Three of his brothers, Kenneth, Omar and Bob “Mudflat” Fletcher, also worked for Russell Towboat. Two of his sons followed him into the business, and one still works for Tidewater. His 13-year-old grandson, Dean Delavan, has the same aspirations.

But the beginning of Scotty’s career wasn’t auspicious. He was a 19-year-old kid just out of the Army. He rode a Harley, had an attitude and got fired three times during those early years. Somehow, the company always hired him back.

He retired from Tidewater as senior captain. Over the years, he built a reputation for getting the job done, safely and expertly, in every kind of weather.

People don’t understand the skill it takes to move barges up and down the river, Hart said. A tug towing a barge makes a nice picture from the shore. But it’s something else when the wind is gusting at 50 to 60 mph and you’re responsible for millions of dollars of cargo.

“Some people are just born to run a boat. The boat becomes a part of them,” Hart said. “Scotty Fletcher was the best … He sets the standard that every boat operator will aspire to.”

Scotty was known as a tough but fair captain. By the time he finished training new hires, the company usually had a good idea of their mettle.

Among those he trained was his son, Jim, who worked under him for five years.

“I got the last of the good stuff, as far as I’m concerned,” said Jim Fletcher, 35. “My dad is a lion among men. He was a pretty feared man, but he always got the job done.”

Jim Fletcher grew up wanting to be a “tugboater.” His dad would let him drive while he went out to wash the wheelhouse’s windows. “Aim for that light,” he would say before he left. A few minutes later, Scotty would check to see if his young son was following instructions.

“He was testing me even then,” said Jim Fletcher, who’ll never forget the examination his dad gave him as a new hire and trainee.

Now a captain himself, Jim Fletcher understands the draw the river held for his dad - pulling him back again and again, even at the expense of leaving his family on shore.

“It’s almost like making a deal with the devil … You need a strong woman behind you,” Jim said.

When Scotty started working on the river, his shift was 25 days on and five days off. Gradually, that changed to 20 days with 10 days off. At the time of his retirement, he was working 15 days and had 15 days off.

“The river is something not only the boat operator, but his family has to be in harmony with,” Claire Fletcher said.

She married Scotty in 1952. She was 16, an only child and tired of being alone. As a part-time single mother of five, she sometimes wondered about her decision to marry a riverman.

“At 16, you don’t stop to think, ‘This can go on forever,”’ she said.