A skipper and crew of up to 14 lived and worked on the W.T. Preston, where river maintenance skills were cultivated and passed to the next generation. A diligent fireman could earn a license and rise to engineer, and deckhands could be promoted to mate and eventually captain if a post opened. In 97 years of operations, Puget Sound's snagboats had only 7 captains. Except for the firemen, who ran the boilers around the clock, the crew kept regular hours. When they were not clearing snags, they washed decks, painted, cleaned boilers, or sharpened tools. Work was usually done by 4:30, and evenings were spent aboard or in town. Norman Hamburg, who began as a cabin boy on the Swinomish and retired as captain of the Preston in 1969, recalled that snagboats often worked odd hours to help a neighbor, such as lifting a tug and cleaning a fouled propeller or pulling a farmer's cow from the river and placing it back on the bank. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers operated steam-powered sternwheeler snagboats in rivers from Blaine to Olympia to keep the region's tributaries clear of navigational hazards, and the W.T. Preston was the last of the sternwheelers.