Racism was at the heart of a dockside melee in Alabama that went viral over the weekend, according to the captain of the vessel whose Black crewman was attacked by a clutch of allegedly intoxicated white pleasure boaters.
“This whole thing is just because these guys were being assholes,” Capt. Jim Kittrell told The Daily Beast in an interview on Tuesday. “I was nice as a peach when I was talking to them at first: ‘Please, help me out here, fellas. Move the boat up a little bit.’”
The fracas began on Saturday evening when Kittrell found a pontoon boat docked in the spot reserved for the sightseeing riverboat Harriott II. He asked the boat’s owners over his PA system to move but was ignored, according to police. So Kittrell said a friend of his brought a smaller craft out to the Harriott II so a senior deckhand could go ashore and clear the way for the larger vessel, carrying 227 passengers, to dock. Kittrell said he only needed “two or three feet” to maneuver the Harriott II in safely, but after the clearly intoxicated people on the pontoon boat continued to simply disregard him, he had no choice but to call 911.