Posted on October 28, 2026
By Memphis District Commander, Col. John Morrow
On Sept. 17, the Dredge Hurley completed sea trials following nearly 11 months of repowering, modernization, and maintenance at Thoma-Sea Marine Constructors in Houma, Louisiana. The trials included an important demonstration of the vessel’s renewed capability: lowering its dredging ladder and operating the systems that allow the Hurley to remove sediment from the navigation channel.
The successful trials marked the completion of one of the most significant modernization efforts in the vessel’s 33-year history. The project replaced the Hurley’s three diesel-electric power plants with new 3.3-megawatt generator sets, installed a new power-management system and modern digital controls, and updated fuel, lubrication, cooling, and other supporting systems.
The improvements bring the vessel into compliance with current EPA emissions requirements, extend its useful service life, and prepare it to continue supporting navigation on the Mississippi River. The work in Houma involved more than the repower itself. Throughout the shipyard period, the Hurley’s 48-person crew worked alongside the modernization effort to complete the routine maintenance and repairs required to return the vessel to full mission capability. By coordinating that work with the repower, the team prepared the Hurley to transition from modernization and testing directly back to its operational mission.
That transition began almost immediately. On Sept. 18, one day after completing sea trials, the Hurley was released to begin moving toward the New Orleans District for its first dredging assignment following the repower. Rather than returning to its home port at Ensley Engineer Yard in Memphis, the dredge went directly to the regional mission it has supported for more than three decades.
The Hurley’s return restores a distinctive capability to the Mississippi River system. Dustpan dredges are especially suited to the river, using a large suction head and high-velocity water jets to loosen sand and sediment from the riverbed before pumping the material through a floating discharge pipeline outside the navigation channel. For the Memphis District, the Hurley has performed that mission since 1993, responding wherever changing river conditions create a need for additional dredging.
Its latest modernization is also part of a much longer story.
Since entering service as the replacement for the 1933-built Dredge Burgess, the Hurley has been repeatedly modified to meet changing operational requirements. Within a few years of its commissioning, the Corps had already begun planning improvements that would eventually increase its maximum dredging depth from about 40 feet to 75 feet.
More than two decades later, another multiyear engineering effort would begin, but this time, with focus on modernizing the systems that power the vessel. The result returned to work in September: a 33-year-old dredge with a new generation of power and controls, prepared to continue a mission that remains as important today as when the Hurley first entered service.
Built To Adapt
When the Dredge Hurley entered service in 1993, it represented a new generation of dredging capability for the Memphis District. Built by Halter Marine in Moss Point, Mississippi, Hurley replaced the Dredge Burgess, which had served on the river since 1933.
The new vessel was originally designed to dredge to a maximum depth of about 40 feet, but experience on the Mississippi River quickly showed the need for greater capability. In 1997, just four years after the Hurley entered service, the Corps authorized a project to lengthen the vessel and increase its digging depth. Concept engineering was completed in 1999, and the following year the Corps began implementing portions of the larger plan.
The Corps installed new azimuth bow thrusters and a new ladder-hoist system, with the A-frame and hoist sized to accommodate the longer dredging ladder envisioned for the future. The requirement remained, even as the larger modification awaited completion. Extreme high water in 2007 reinforced the need for a deeper-digging dredge, and the Corps subsequently moved forward with the long-planned expansion.
Beginning in 2009, Ensley Engineer Yard and the Corps’ Marine Design Center personnel undertook a major modification of the vessel. The project extended the Hurley’s dredging ladder by 48 feet, bringing it to 108 feet, and lengthened the vessel by about 48 feet. When the work was completed in 2010, the Hurley’s maximum dredging depth had increased from about 40 feet to 75 feet. The modifications significantly expanded where and under what conditions the dredge could operate, but the Hurley’s importance comes from more than its dimensions. As a regional asset, the vessel can be called upon to respond wherever sediment threatens the authorized navigation channel.
Changing river stages and shifting sediment can create dredging needs hundreds of miles apart, requiring the Hurley and its crew to move with the river’s needs.
Few seasons demonstrated that role more clearly than 2022-23. Severe drought across the Mississippi River Basin drove river levels to historic lows during the fall of 2022. At Memphis, the river reached a record-low stage of minus 10.76 feet on Oct. 17. As navigation conditions deteriorated, dredging requirements increased, including at locations that had not required dredging since the early 2000s.
During a record-setting 273-day season, the Hurley’s then-36-person crew removed 14.5 million cubic yards of sediment from 28 locations, the most material the dredge had ever removed during a single season. Twelve of those locations were added because of low-water conditions. The assignments stretched across four Corps districts — Memphis, Vicksburg, St. Louis and New Orleans — and across hundreds of miles of the Mississippi River system. The Hurley’s northernmost assignment was at Cherokee Landing on the Upper Mississippi River at Mile 113; its southernmost was at Sardine Point on Lower Mississippi River at Mile 219, spanning 848 river miles.
The season demonstrated both the value of the capability and the demands placed upon it. By the time the Hurley returned to Ensley Engineer Yard in January 2023, the dredge was approaching its 30th year of service. Its basic mission had not changed, but the vessel had already operated longer, traveled farther, and dredged deeper than originally envisioned when it entered service three decades earlier. Keeping that capability available for decades ahead would require the Hurley’s next major transformation.
Powering the Next Chapter
By the time the Hurley approached its third decade of service, many of the systems that powered the dredge dated to an earlier generation of marine technology. Keeping the vessel ready for the future would require more than routine maintenance. It would require another major investment in the platform.
Planning for the repower began years before the Hurley arrived at the shipyard. Conceptual design was completed in 2018, beginning a multiyear effort to modernize the vessel’s power generation and control systems, meet current environmental requirements, and extend the useful life of a dredge that had become an important regional capability. The project centered on replacing the Hurley’s three diesel-electric power plants with new 3.3-megawatt generator sets. The new generators provide about 135% of the previous power rating and meet EPA Tier 4 emissions requirements.
Extending well beyond the generators themselves, the project also included a new power-management system, modern digital user interfaces and controls, improvements to fuel, lubrication, cooling and utility systems, and work on the vessel’s overhead crane and other supporting equipment.
Integrating that new technology into a vessel built in 1993 required years of engineering and preparation. The team developed repower specifications, procured and tested equipment, and refined shipyard requirements. They also worked through the challenge of connecting modern systems to an existing vessel whose basic structure and machinery had evolved through more than three decades of service.
The Corps awarded the shipyard contract in September 2024, more than a year before the Hurley would arrive in Houma. The extended preparation period allowed the project team to address technical and logistical issues before taking the dredge away from its operational mission. The new generator sets underwent factory acceptance testing and were delivered to Thoma-Sea Marine Constructors in advance, while engineers continued working through power-management integration, controls and other requirements necessary for installation.
Finally, on Nov. 1, 2025, the Hurley arrived in Houma to begin the projects shipyard phase. What followed was an extensive effort inside a vessel whose familiar exterior gave little indication of the transformation occurring within. Crews prepared new foundations for the replacement generator sets, installed the new power plants, and integrated the electrical cabling and control systems needed to bring a new generation of technology aboard the dredge.
At the same time, the repower was only part of the work required before the Hurley could return to the river.
The dredge’s 48-person crew remained with the vessel in Houma, using the shipyard period to accomplish the regular maintenance and repairs necessary to keep the rest of Hurley mission ready. While contractors and engineers concentrated on the new power and control systems, crew members worked throughout the vessel to ensure that completion of the repower would not simply produce a modernized dredge, but one prepared to return to operational service.
The work also reflected the complexity of modernizing a one-of-a-kind vessel. Project planners had identified scheduling, integration, and shipyard risks well before the Hurley arrived in Houma. As work progressed, engineers, contractors, the crew and other Corps personnel had to coordinate modifications across interconnected electrical, mechanical and control systems while continuing to address the maintenance requirements of the vessel itself.
The original project schedule anticipated completing the shipyard work in June. Instead, the work continued through the summer as the team completed installation, integration and testing necessary to return the vessel safely to service. By September, this complex project had finally reached the final stage. The final measure of success would come during sea trials, when the modernized systems would be tested together under the operational conditions for which Hurley was built: dredging.
Back To Work
After months of installation, integration, maintenance and testing, Hurley reached the final stage of its modernization in September. On Sept. 17, the dredge successfully completed sea trials, putting its new power and control systems to work under operational conditions and demonstrating that the vessel was once again ready to perform the mission for which it was built.
The following day, Hurley was released to return to service. Its first destination was not its home port at Ensley Engineer Yard in Memphis. Instead, the dredge began moving toward the New Orleans District, where it would resume dredging in support of the Mississippi River navigation channel. The assignment was a fitting return for a vessel whose mission has always extended beyond the boundaries of the Memphis District.
For more than three decades, the Hurley has moved wherever river conditions and navigation requirements demand, supporting multiple Corps districts and helping maintain a waterway that connects the nation’s interior to global markets.
Much has changed since the Hurley first entered service in 1993. The vessel has been lengthened, its dredging depth increased, and now the systems that power and control it have been replaced with a new generation of technology. Its crew has grown, its operational reach has been repeatedly demonstrated, and the vessel has adapted to conditions and requirements that could not have been fully anticipated when it was built.
What has not changed is the mission. The Mississippi River continues to move sediment, reshape its channel, and present new challenges to navigation. Maintaining that channel requires people, equipment, and capabilities prepared to respond as those conditions change.
And now, after years of planning followed by almost another full year of project work, the repower was finally complete and another dredging assignment was waiting for the crew just downstream. The Hurley is officially back on the river, both dredge and crew ready for business.
