The River Rat is a classic tugboat. She was built by Leon Duet Shipyard in Cut Off, Louisiana, in 1953 as the Capt. Esserman, and worked for a series of owners for five decades before becoming Riverview Tug Service's flagship. She received a modern pilothouse, and was repowered in 2003 with a pair of GM 6-71T1 diesels, and, today, spends virtually all of her time here at Lock 12, in Bellevue, Iowa. Here she heads upstream to assist another southbound tow into the lock.
