Sea legs for landlubbers: Ohio will soon have its first river maritime academy
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The Sons and Daughters of Pioneer Rivermen have been celebrating inland waterways for 85 years. The organization is dedicated to the people — and boats — of America’s river history. But now, they’re turning to the future.
The group recently announced plans to open Ohio’s first river maritime academy in Sardis, a riverside community in eastern Ohio’s Monroe County.
With just over 13,000 people, Monroe County is the second-least populated state in Ohio. Its population has steadily dropped since peaking in 1980.
The once-thriving coal industry there is stagnating, and when an aluminum smelting plant shuttered in 2013, it cost the area hundreds of jobs. Now, the county boasts one of the highest unemployment rates in the state.
“In Appalachia, there's a workforce development issue,” said Taylor Abbott, the Monroe County Treasurer and a board member for the Sons and Daughters of Pioneer Rivermen. “We have a lot of people that are below the poverty line.”
He’s hopeful the new maritime academy will help locals find lifelong careers without leaving the area.
“This academy can help bring impoverished citizens from the Appalachian region into the river and have a full-time occupation that they can build their career out of,” he said.
But the academy will help address another problem too: the nationwide shortage of mariners.
Working on the Ohio River
Operating a tugboat on the Ohio River runs in Captain C.R. Neale’s blood.
“I started riding with my father and my grandfather when I was not even five and six years old,” he said. “They were out here a good bit, so if I wanted to see them, well, I was on the boats too.”
His family got into the maritime industry back in the ‘60s, when they acquired a local business in Parkersburg, just across Ohio’s eastern border.
Since then, they’ve grown the business to include a fleet of nine boats. The vehicles are massive: 100-plus-feet-long with rudders taller than most people. And they’re not easy to operate.
Neale pointed to an array of dials, buttons and screens at the helm of one boat.
“So these control the directions of your propellers,” he said. “This is a stern and this is a head. And that is your starboard side and your port side.”
It’s critical he knows how to maneuver this multi-million dollar vessel so he doesn’t damage it or his cargo. Every day, Neale estimates his family’s fleet alone carries tens of thousands of tons of coal, gas and concrete aggregate up and down the Ohio River.
“I delivered a million gallon barge of gasoline this morning with an 850 horsepower boat,” he said. “You can't do that with a train. You can't do that with a truck. So it is the most economical way to move product.”
And because the demand for those products is massive, so is the demand for skilled mariners to deliver them.
The need for maritime workers
“There is a national need for mariners top to bottom — deckhands, pilots, captains and even office staff,” Neale said.
The shortage leaves family businesses like his on constant lookout for new hires.
“It's a struggle every day. Since we're a regional operator and we don't do much long-haul towing, we have to really rely on the workforce that is in this immediate area,” he said.
But there aren't enough qualified people around. In order to work on a tugboat, mariners have to undergo a few weeks of training: safety classes for deckhands, steersman and radar reading classes for future captains.
“You will not learn to run a vessel at a school. It is a hands-on thing,” Neale said. “But the school will give you the basics you need to at least get started doing it.”
Right now though, there’s nowhere in Ohio to get that river maritime training.
“The nearest one is in Huntington, [West Virginia] or Paducah, Kentucky,” Abbott said. “So we're trying to take the assets that we [the Sons and Daughters of Pioneer Rivermen] have and make this Ohio's first river maritime academy and make it one of the most state-of-the-art academies that exists on an inland river.”
Ohio’s first river maritime academy
The Sons and Daughters of Pioneer Rivermen have been working with the Monroe County Board of Commissioners to secure state and federal grants for the project.
The county purchased an old golf course located right along the Ohio River, and plans to convert a building onsite into a visitors center. The Sons and Daughters of Pioneer Rivermen will rent space inside for the maritime academy.
It’ll house a comprehensive collection of steamboat paraphernalia, along with classroom space for students, and two giant simulators — one accessible to the public so they can experience what it’s like to steer a tugboat down the Ohio River, the other for more intense training.
The Sons and Daughters of Pioneer Rivermen is working with Mountwest College of Huntington, West Virginia and private industry partners to offer CPR, steersman and radar courses.
Abbott says this sort of workforce education — which doesn’t require people to move for the training or for the job — is critical.
“The main goal is we're giving people from this area new career opportunities in their backyard, which they need,” he said.
When the maritime academy opens in 2026, it’ll be the first permanent facility for higher education in Monroe County. Abbott estimates between 200 and 250 students will move through the rolling programming each year.
“For us, that's important for our legacy as the Sons and Daughters of Pioneer Rivermen,” he said. “We focused on the history of the river, and now we're looking at celebrating that history, proving the relevance of it and looking ahead, bringing people to the industry again.”
Unlike Captain Neale, not every local has deep generational ties to the maritime industry. But the new Ohio academy will give more people a chance to test the waters.
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