BOOK REVIEW – FIVE STARS
Ship Captain's Daughter by Ann Michler Lewis
This is the story of the author’s father Willis Carl Michler who sailed the Great Lakes for forty-seven years and was a captain of thirteen different ships.
The captain’s daughter wrote that he was “Drawn to the water and the big ships as a young man, he followed a dream of becoming a Great Lakes ship captain, and he and my mother and I lived it out together, in all its rich and varied and demanding dimensions.”
I grew up at the head of the Great Lakes in Superior, Wisconsin. Great Lakes freighters were a common sight. As a youth I was fascinated by the bum boats that supplied the supplied the ships crew with their daily needs while the ships were docked loading and unloading cargo. When I was still in high school I would take my parents speed boat out in the Duluth/Superior harbor and tie up to the bum boat where I could buy beer.
The captain’s daughter also enjoyed her experience of visiting the bum boats.
Here is a look at those Bum boats from the authors own experience.
"When I felt my first foot on the deck, I started to breathe again. He took my hand, and we made our way to the little door. Four steps down and, phew! The smell of sweet tobacco made me gag. I plugged my nose and hesitated, but the cheery calendar girls smiling and winking all around were very welcoming, not to mention the ladies on the covers of magazines on the book rack. Half of our ship’s crew was in there, talking and laughing, drinking beer and smoking and telling jokes. No other girls in there, that’s for sure! Dad quickly steered me around to the back, which was so crowded that I disappeared in between the cases of watches, bins of underwear and socks, boxes of birthday cards, bottles of perfume, razors, aftershave, and columns of cartons of Camels and Lucky Strikes. All sizes of transistor radios covered the walls from floor to ceiling. I noticed a whole section of cough medicines and a display of Brylcreem with a big cardboard picture of a man with curly dark brown hair and a blond woman with her hand behind his ear. What I liked best of all, though, were the boxes of candy and gum lined up in double rows in front of the cash register right next to the cigarette lighters. Behind the register stood Mr. Kaner, who was gruff, gravelly voiced, and kind of scary to a young customer like myself. He seemed to know everyone by name and was passing on the news from the last ship, where he had just seen a sailor who had previously been on our ship. When he saw me, his bushy eyebrows shot up in surprise. I took a step backward, but he came around the counter, bent down, and made a big fuss over me, telling me that I was beautiful and that I had been brave to come down. Afterward, he took me over to the freezer and let me pick out a free ice cream bar. Dad bought a Dreamsicle for himself, and we said good-bye to Mr. Kaner and went out on deck to eat our treats.”
This book is an excellent look at the life of a Great Lakes ship captain’s family in the years when America was loved and envied. A great book!
More excerpts from Ship Captain's Daughter by Ann Michler Lewis
Father’s sailing career spanned the height of Great Lakes iron ore shipping, the lows of the Great Depression, World War II (during which time the sailors served the country as members of the Merchant Marine), the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, the advent of radar, and the development of the taconite trade. He sailed before the invention of computers, GPS, cell phones, email, and Skype—and before sailors could apply for summer vacations. When I was growing up, we relied on letters.
Today the ships that traverse the Great Lakes can be tracked on the internet. Many are twice the size of the freighters my dad first sailed, though at this writing, my father’s last command, the SS Herbert C.
Most people in Duluth welcomed spring. For our family, it was the beginning of the end, not only of winter, but also of our land time together. When the days grew longer and the ice on Lake Superior began to break up, Dad’s shipping orders were soon to come. Every day they didn’t was a relief.
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