The word 'towboat' is correct and usable in written English
It is defined as a powerful boat used for pulling or pushing barges, ships, or other vessels. Example: The towboat slowly guided the large cargo ship out of the harbor, its powerful engines churning the water behind it.
The costs of barge transport depend on the number of barges being towed by a single towboat; this in turn depends on the dimensions of the waterway.
In a good wind, the skier is lifted off the water and glides in the air behind the towboat, sometimes at heights of 30 m above the water.
Sprague's record is unlikely to be matched by any other paddle wheeler, for the remaining steamboats are mostly showpieces, and the modern Mississippi towboat is of design radically different from its forebears.
To aid navigation, towboat captains have at their disposal electronic depth finders, radar, contraguide rudders, global positioning systems, a sophisticated system of riverbank lights and markers, and a radio telephone to warn other river users of their approach in narrow passages.
Screw-driven and diesel-engined, the modern towboat is made fast to the stern of its tow.
The towboat and its barges get about two hundred feet to the gallon.
But we can not agree with the newspapers here that in the strike of wailway-towboat workers that spread to dry land last month "featherbedding was the issue".
Their first products were a pair of biplane gliders, one built for Archdeacon and the other for French aviator Louis Blériot, both of which were tested behind towboats on the Seine River.
With the development of towboats and barges large enough to hold almost an entire trainload of cargo, however, the port grew to be second in the nation after World War II.
Meanwhile, barge companies have been forced to cut the number of barges pushed by towboats from a typical 25 to 15, and to lighten their loads.
Commercial traffic dwindled, and the grand luxury paddle wheelers gave way to sombre, more prosaic towboats with blocks of barges.
