Powerful water pump taken off duck boat that sank in July

BRANSON, Mo. — Records show a water pump had been replaced with a less powerful system in a tourist duck boat that sank in a Missouri lake, killing 17 people.

The Kansas City Star reports that the original Higgins pump, which is capable of removing as much as 250 gallons of water per minute from the bottom of a boat, was replaced with two less powerful electric pumps in the boat that sank in July at Table Rock Lake in the Branson area.

The capacity of those two pumps wasn’t clear. But Coast Guard duck boat inspection records show that other Higgins pumps have been replaced in recent years in other duck boats, with the new pumps capable of extracting a combined 20 gallons of water or less per minute. That’s not even one-tenth the pumping capacity of a Higgins, which was one of two pumping systems aboard the original World War II era duck boats.

One pumping system was for normal operations as the boats transported troops and equipment from ship to shore, while the Higgins was to keep the boats afloat in difficult conditions such as wind speeds of more than 15 mph or wave height of more than 3 feet.

After the war, as the boats were converted for tourism, the Higgins pump was sometimes removed from duck boats so the vessels could be lengthened, or “stretched,” to accommodate more passengers.

Issues arose when the sunken boat faced near hurricane force winds.

Investigators haven’t determined whether the less powerful pumps played a role.