Yes, and one of them was the flat-bottomed sternwheeler Preston that pulled deadheads out of the river to keep it navigable. It worked all up and down the west coast of the US (as part of the Army Corps of Engineers). Deadheads are the logs that broke out of log booms being floated down river from operations upstream, heading down to Puget Sound area mills. One end would sink and get stuck in the mud and the other end, under the surface, would impale unwitting boat operators. My cousin was the last captain of it before they retired it to a museum in Anacortes. Where Burl Ives lived until his death. (Unrelated, but there isn't a lot of Anacortes history to share, so I put both parts of it here to bulk up the post).