Love Boat: Oil Spill Caused by Tug Captain Leaving to Find Girlfriend

When the tugboat Mel Oliver crashed into the Tintomara tanker on July 23rd, it caused a spill of 283,000 gallons of oil and blocking 100 miles of the Mississippi River. It now turns out that it was over a jealous tub boat captain, a socially active girlfriend, and love gone terribly wrong.

In a hearing on the accident, Terry Carver testified that left the tugboat in the command of apprentice pilot John Paul Bavaret III. He left the boat after his nephew called to say he saw Carver’s girlfriend in a truck with another man in Illinois.

Deckhand Kevin Pettigrew later told him that Bavaret was slumped over the tug’s wheel at the time of the accident. That should help along litigation nicely against the company.

Carver seems to have followed Shakespeare’s lead in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “I’ll follow you and make a heaven out of hell, and I’ll die by your hand which I love so well.”
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