Meet the Master River Pilot Who Conquers the Mississippi Every Day

When a 900-foot oil tanker needs to squeeze through one of the most perilous and crowded waterways in the world, Captain Jared Austin is the only thing standing between safe passage and utter disaster.

Photos by Michel Varisco

It’s winter on the Mississippi River, one of the busiest and most dangerous waterways in the world. Over the past two days, Captain Jared Austin has transported 300,000 barrels of jet fuel on a tanker headed for Europe and fifty thousand tons of corn on a freighter en route to Brazil. Austin is certified to pilot ships between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana. It’s his responsibility to know every bend of the river, and how its mood shifts, depending on the weather.

Today, the job is a four-mile transit from anchor to berth on the Spar Hydra, a bulk carrier that will be loaded with 53,000 tons of soybeans destined for Bangladesh.

Four miles doesn’t sound like much. It’s three minutes on a highway, less than one-sixth the length of a marathon. But winds are gusting and the river is low, so even with highly specialized training and years of experience piloting ships like the six-hundred-foot-long, sixty-thousand-ton Spar Hydra, this job will take Austin sever…