Pilots on the Columbia River

The mouth of the Columbia River has long been one of the most hazardous crossings in the world, where large ocean-going vessels depend on highly skilled pilots to cross the bar and travel safely along the channel that reaches 100 miles inland to Portland. Incoming ships are guided by bar pilots as far as Astoria, where river pilots take over for the rest of the voyage, and the exchange is reversed for outbound vessels. Transferring pilots can often be observed from a small pilots' tug, though getting bar pilots on and off large vessels outside the river's mouth is especially difficult because of rough conditions and high seas. Since the late 1960s, the pilot launches Peacock and Columbia, marked by orange superstructures, have carried bar pilots to and from the river entrance. The first pilot to guide vessels over the Columbia River bar was a Native American appointed by the Hudson's Bay Company, and Concomly, a leader of the Chinook people, watched for ships from his village across the river. In 1847, the Territory of Oregon granted its first pilot's license for the Columbia River, and in 1850 Capt. George Flavel received the first branch license, establishing a dominance over pilotage across the bar that lasted for the next thirty years. Bar and river pilots on the Columbia became renowned for working in some of the most challenging conditions in the United States, where storms and swells from the North Pacific strike the shallow river mouth and, during a hard ebb tide, can pile water against the rapid outbound current to create enormous seas.

Astoria, Oregon · United States