waterway that was closed to commercial boat traffic. >> bayou canot is a subsidiary of the mobile river and in that very dense fog, the operator of the tug mistakenly turned down into bayou canot thinking it was a bend in the river a couple miles further up river than he really was. >> but how could this happen? investigators discovered that the "mauvilla" had no maps on board or even a compass. >> that's a very important thing except people on the river don't look at it that way. all you do is steer between the banks and that's it. >> the "mauvilla" was equipped with radar which wasn't required at the time, but the pilot, willie odom, wasn't trained to use it. when investigators heard odom's story, they went back to the bridge to examine what now seemed like a key piece of evidence.