This website is resolutely dedicated to venerable but arcane engines of commerce on Lake Michigan, those commercial vessels that toiled in obscurity within and among the lake’s harbors during the early decades of this century.   I use the term marginalia since my historical preoccupation is with those craft that inhabit, at best, the margins of Great Lakes maritime history.   I will focus primarily upon those little-known small passenger boats, workboats, fish tugs, and the like that spent their commercial lives ferrying freight and people, hauling scows, and spreading gill nets upon the waters of Lake Michigan.   I have little interest, as far as these pages go, in the grand or the tragic:   If you expect to find the Edmund Fitzgerald or Lady Elgin here, you will be sorely disappointed, since their stories and the stories of noteworthy Lake Michigan vessels like them have been told many times by others.    I intend here, instead, to tell the stories of vessels that pursued their labors in relative anonymity, vessels that, during their commercial lives, were important to the people for whom they provided services and to the people who manned and owned them, but vessels which, today, are largely forgotten.   In this vein, I hope to continue in the tradition of regional maritime historical research and writing pioneered in the Lake Michigan area by Arthur C. and Lucy F. Frederickson and Edward Middleton, among others, and continued today by individuals like Kit Lane with her "Saugatuck Maritime Series," although, at least initially, my contributions will be electronic, rather than printed.

I expect to publish a complete history of a vessel or group of vessels approximately every four to six weeks, depending upon my competing professional and paternal duties and obligations.   The material for these pages comes, primarily, from my own collections of photographs, notes, and documents, assembled over the years from about the time I turned ten years old, and augmented by photographs from other collections.    Infrequently, I may publish histories contributed by other writers. I intend for each issue to be as factually detailed and complete as possible, reflecting my own preoccupations with historiographic method and research, preoccupations I call scholarly but others might call obsessive.   Representative of those scholarly (or obsessive) preoccupations is my policy to include a vessel’s official registry number (US for American, C for Canadian, BR for British) and former and subsequent names when the vessel is initially cited in the text, using procedures borrowed mostly from the Steamship Historical Society of America.   For example, if the passenger boat Saugatuck (one of my favorites) is mentioned concerning her original American service, its first appearance in the text will read Saugatuck 116149 [b Alfred Clark (C 126193), c Saugatuck (US 116149)], indicating her American registry number, her next name and Canadian registry number, and her final name when she returned to American registry.   If it were the Alfred Clark being discussed, it would appear Alfred Clark C 126193 [a Saugatuck (US 116149), c Saugatuck (US 126193)], indicating that the Clark had previously been in American registry, named Saugatuck, and returned to American registry, renamed Saugatuck.    The underscored small letters indicate the chronology of a vessel’s renamings.  Obsessive?   Perhaps, but the additional information will insure that it is known exactly what vessel, named Saugatuck is being discussed, while perhaps giving the reader data that might help him or her pursue their own research on the vessel.

This site is composed using a combination of Microsoft FrontPage 98 and basic HTML code, is best viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0, and is located on the server of Wright State University at Dayton, Ohio, where I am a faculty member. I am not overly fond of glitzy websites filled with eyecatching graphics, but do admire attractive but simple sites;   I intend this site to appear as if it were pages in a journal or book.    The font, which MSIE users should see, is Book Antiqua.   Since I anticipate that most visitors to this site will be particularly interested in the photographs it contains, I have attempted to provide as large a file size for those images as possible, insuring relatively crisp and detailed images, while also attempting to keep their loading times as minimal as possible.   Please have patience while the pages download:   If you have any degree of interest in Great Lakes shipping history, you will not be disappointed.

By creating this website it is plainly clear that I have no reservations about sharing with other Great Lakes aficionados whatever historical material and knowledge I may have assembled over the years.   I am, however, very protective of the work I have devoted not just to this website, but to the years of labor I have put forth to gather the information it contains.   Several unpleasant experiences in both my professional and amateur publishing endeavors force me to ask you, if you enter this site, not to appropriate any material, text or images, found herein, in whole or in part, for any form of publication or electronic transmission in any medium.   By entering this site, you also agree not to store electronically this site’s contents, in whole or in part, other than for personal and non-commercial use.   Permission for the publication or redistribution of any or all of the material on this website can only be granted in writing from me, William Lafferty, the site’s creator, and Wright State University.

This number of Lake Michigan Maritime Marginalia  recounts in copious detail the career of the steam gill net fish tug Jean R.  The next installment of LMMM will settle once and for all, I hope, the question of the genesis of the unique Great Lakes self-unloader, a  vessel type that has its origins on Lake Michigan (as opposed to what others may claim).  Be certain to view the rare advertising booklet, published in 1892-93, heralding the coming of the crack Lake Michigan overnight boat Manitou, to be found in the Lake Michigan Maritime Marginalia Bonus section. 

If you think there may be something of interest for you on this site, and you agree to the above conditions, click below to enter Lake Michigan Maritime Marginalia.