Ship Captain's Daughter by Ann Michler Lewis Page A

time to time, people have asked me what this life was like—what my father was like, what my mother’s life was like, and what it was like to be the ship captain’s daughter. The stories preserved in this book are my attempt to capture that lifestyle—the cycles of waiting and bursts of excitement, the vital connection to the lake itself—experienced by Great Lakes shipping families like my own.

The Shipping Season Begins
    We were people of the lake. When Lake Superior started to thaw, we started to wait. 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. But sooner or later, inevitably, there they would be, jutting out of the mailbox in the long envelope marked The Interlake Steamship Company.
    The house grew quiet, but the tempo of Dad’s preparations for departure picked up. So much to do before leaving for the new sailing season: fix that leaky faucet at Grandma’s, pick up the new glasses, go to the bank, finish up at the dentist, drain the gas out of the snowblower, and get the lawn mower ready for Mom. Finally, Dad went up to the attic and dragged down the big canvas duffel bag with his name stenciled on it, and the little black bag containing the tools of his trade—star chart, quadrant, compass, slide rule. Then he started packing again.
    Anticipation grew daily. Calls started coming in from the other sailors in the fleet: “What cook did you get?” “Who is your chief engineer?” Most importantly, “Who is your captain, and what’s the name of your ship? Same as last year, or did you ‘move up’?” (Salaries were related to the size of the ship.)

    In late March, my dad’s ship follows the ice cutter’s path from the ports of Duluth and Superior out to the open lake.
    No more help for me with math homework. No more listening to Dad play the piano into the night. Mother always wanted to have friends over for dinner one last time, but there was no more time. All of that was over. From now until the lake froze over again, we were back on “sailing time.” From March until December, we would live our family life in the spaces that we could find in between the loading, unloading, and shipping of ore.
    Some ships laid up for the winter across the bay in Superior at Fraser Shipyards. Dad’s ships, however, always laid up in the lower lakes “down below” the Soo Locks at dry docks in Chicago, Ashtabula, Cleveland, or Toledo. In later years, the sailors flew to and from their ships to begin and end the season. When I was young, however, Dad always took the train. Even when life became more informal, he always wore his best suit, tie, and hat to mark this important occasion.

    Dad prepares to leave for the old Milwaukee Road depot from my aunt’s house in St. Paul, Minnesota, after a going-away dinner.
    Once his ship was fitted out and had set sail, the familiar ritual of calculating his weekly arrival to our area began. The Duluth News Tribune posted the times that the ships passed through the Soo Locks. About twenty-six hours after locking up, he would arrive in the Twin Ports. If he went through the locks at six on a Tuesday morning, he would be due in at about eight on Wednesday morning, which meant Mom would miss her ten a.m. church circle that week. If he left at one on Wednesday afternoon to go back down, he would be at the Soo at three p.m. on Thursday, in port at ten p.m. on Friday, unloaded by eight a.m. on Saturday, back up bound through the Soo by four p.m. on Sunday, and at a dock near us again at six a.m. on Monday. Now the schoolconference for Monday at nine a.m. might have to be canceled, but then again, there just might be a chance that Dad could get off the