snagboat

This hefty job was given to Captain Henry Miller Shreve, the U.S. Superintendent of Western River Improvements, a trader and an engineer who had designed a special steam-powered snagboat, the Heliopolis, capable of clearing dead wood from the water.

Interstate 69 Matt Dellinger 2010

I wished to follow that abandoned water highway, and to visit its presiding genius, Horace Bixby, 179 still alive and in service as pilot of the government snagboat, his headquarters at St. Louis.

Mark Twain: A Biography 2003

I returned by way of New Orleans and the Mississippi River, for I wished to follow that abandoned water highway, and to visit its presiding genius, Horace Bixby, -- [He died August 2, 1912, at the age of 86] -- still alive and in service as pilot of the government snagboat, his headquarters at St. Louis.

Mark Twain, a Biography — Volume III, Part 2: 1907-1910 Albert Bigelow Paine 1899