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1902] MARINE* REVIEW AND MARINE RECORD, | 27 THE REMARKABLE FAMILY OF WARD.» Probably the most extraordinary: family that. has ever. ex- ploited the natural resources of the great lake states -was the Ward family, who. literally. wrested fabulous fortunes from Michigan when money was a great deal scarcer than it is to-day. Probably no single family ever had a greater genius for the prac- tical affairs of life. Deficient in education they were masterful in native resource and were brilliant business men. 'The last member of this extraordinary family--that is the last who was part and parcel of the original group--is Capt. Eber Ward who is now living in Detroit. His uncle was cld Sam Ward and his cousins were Eber B. and David Ward. Discussing them lately in Detroit Capt. Ward said: "My uncle Sam could scarcely write his name; E. B., my cousin, could do only a little better; David was the only one who had anything like an education. 'The Ward brains came from Mrs. David Ward, born Prey, my grandmother, the' wife of a Baptist minister, at Rutland, Vt. _ From what.I know of her, it is my opinion that it was her superior qualities that made her descendants of the elder generation, such remarkable men and wo- men. Of course there were exceptions, but on the whole the Wards were endowed for great achievements, ambitious, hard- working, gifted with singular foresight and acumen along the practical side of life. I make one exception, my own career, which has been of no special interest to anyone except myself," pursued the old gentlemen, modestly and with a most serious face. "But the elder Wards could pick up a living almost any- where. That was one of their great peculiarities. All the boys knew how to get along. "My father lived for twelve long, dreary years in the Adirondack mountains on a farm where almost anyone except a Ward would have starved to death. It was rocky soil, hardly fit to raise anything except mountain shrubs; yet he managed to make it pay him and besides raised a family of ten children, six girls and four boys. Three girls are alive yet, one ninety, one eighty- five, and one seventy. You may ask, 'Why didn't he get out, move off, to fine government land, in the west?' Well,my boy, in 1820, this whole country, aside from a narrow strip along the sea coast, was a vast wilderness. Remember, the first railroad wasn't built till 1828, and as for newspapers and other means of intelli- gence, they were exceedingly costly and had practically no circu- lation beyond the cities. Really, my father didn't know about Michigan, that's the plain truth of the matter. However, in 1837, he decided to' come west. It was a lucky day for him when he left Keys township, Essex county, on the Au Sable, in the Adirondacks, a region still visited for its rugged grandeur. On our journey west, on the Erie canal, at Auburn, I fell over- board. I was only four years old and was nearly drowned; in fact, went down twice. After nearly seventy-five years this childhood's episode is still vividly impressed on my memory. We went from Buffalo to Chautauqua on the Peacock, a -tiny: steam- boat of no account to-day, but thought one of the wonders of the world in '37. From Erie, we came to Detroit on the North America, a small side-wheeler. Our destination was Marine City, called then Newport; but soon I came to Detroit where I've lived for nigh on to sixty years. "After I first drifted into steamboating as clerk,, at $10 a month. on the little steamer Port Huron, which ran from Detroit to Port Huron, up one day and down the next. I was always identified with the transportation business, sometimes as. owner, again as manager; but never sailed. enough to make any pre- tense. -The Ward line was regarded, in its day, as the most important transportation line of the lakes. I built the Kewee- naw, which was 300 ft. long, the Saginaw, the Minneapolis, the Colbourne, and others. My first steamers had. low pressure beam engines, the others were propellers. . There were no pro- pellers, you know,. till 1850. The first was the. Vandalia, and when she passed, at 6 miles an hour, people stood on the. wharf, spellbound, to see her go by. The next were the Oswego, Chi- cago, Sampson and Hercules. Those were the days of indivi- dual ownership; and, in my opinion, after the trusts are done, well return to this way of doing business. . I think, too, .that the limit of size has been reached, and that dimensions will go down again. The 500-footers are really too long for the curves in the rivers, take too much dock room, too long to load and un- load, and all that. "For more than a quarter of a century I managed the Ward line and saw the Lake Superior trade grow to gigantic propor- tions and enrich Detroit. Gradually, too, I saw it fade from our city and. so far as I know, we have never regained that trade. Many have been the explanations of this condition, but to my mind it came about in a very simple way. After the panic of 1873, Detroit merchants were poor. The upper peninsula traders asked for long credit. We couldn't give it to them; Chicago was willing to carry them, and did so, obtained the trade, and has managed to hold it ever since. "The year 1846 was made memorable in vessel interests by the appearance of the first shipment of copper in Michigan. I was on the Independence, the boat that brought it down from the Cliff mine, on Eagle river. John Chipman and I were up north taking a trip. . The Independence shipped ten barrels of ore at the Cliff mine, for Pittsburg, where it was smelted. This was really the beginning of the great smelting business in Spring- wells, near Detroit. In 1852, T also saw the first iron brought down from the upper:country. It came on the Atlantic, one of Cousin Eber's 'boats. At Marquette we shipped a quantity of iron slabs. The ore had been smelted near the mine. It took years to discover that it was more economical to smelt in the coal country. - I next ran the Turk in Lake Superior, where there were nine or ten small sailing craft built about. the rapids, You _can sav they were about too tons each. One day, I was at the Sault. It was a small place then of only 500 inhabitants, among whom were many Indians, but great excitement prevailed. One of the schooners was actually to run the rapids! It was regarded as an utterly foolhardy voyage, almost certain to result in the destruction of the vessel and the death of all on board. At the appointed time the banks were lined with people, all ex- pressing their misgivings. Even the Indians, who were accus- tomed to shoot the rapids, in their canoes, shook their heads and said it was bad, bad. By and by, alone came the doomed schooner, all canvas set, a stiff gale carrying her straicht into the rapids. The moment she struck her sails backed, she shivered from stem to stern and some of her rigging fell with a terrific crash. Then, she dashed forward, racing like mad through the wild, swift water, down for over a mile--and strange as it may seem, escaped without a scratch. She sailed to Detroit, where she put in many seasons in trade before she finally went to.the boneyard. : "T see by the papers that the new trip to Buffalo is regarded "as fast, and so it is, but bless you, old captains made the run forty years ago in excellent time. 'The chart says, if I remember rightly that the distance from Detroit to Buffalo is 256 miles, which the new boats make in fourteen hours, or a little less. But forty years ago there was a record-breaker at nearly that speed from Cleveland to Buffalo, which is counted 180. milesy Well do I remember the hot rivalry between the Empire State; which ran from Cleveland to Chicago, and my cousin's boat, the Ocean, from Detroit to Buffalo. The start was made amidst great excitement. Each steamer was stripped of every possible ounce of extra weight and no passengers, except a few friends, were allowed on board. Capt. Ward even had sailors with mops down in the hold, mopping out the bilge water in the space between the timbers and the bottom planks. Possibly there may have been a ton of bilge there. At any rate, the Ocean. won, and for years afterward enjoyed the glory of being the fastest boat on the great lakes. Her time was ten hours and' fifty five minutes, which is not much less than the fastest time of the new boats to-day. The Ocean was finally cut down into a tow barge, and now has long been in the boneyard." TO EXTEND GAS LIGHT SERVICE. Officials of the Lake Carriers' Association have been endeay- oring for some time past to have the United States lighthouse in- stitution provide means for maintaining lights at certain isolated points on Lake Superior after the light keepers have left for the season. Vessels are often in commission two to four weeks after the lights have been given up for the winter. The light keepers:are, of course, forced to leave some time before the ves- sels have all tied up for the season, as they have difficulty. in get- ting ashore after the fall gales set in and can not take the chance of being confined in the lighthouses all winter. The lighthouse board is acting upon the request of the vessel owners, but it is not now probable that the plans under way will be carried out until next year. Before putting in operation the scheme of providing tanks at the lighthouses, so that Pintsch gas may be left burning for some time after the keepers have gone, the lighthouse inspector at Detroit, who is in charge of the Lake Superior district, pro- poses an experiment on this score at the Windmill point station, just above Detroit. Col. Wm. St. John, representing the Safety Car Heating & Lighting Co. of New York, which controls the Pintsch patents, spent several days on the lakes recently with the district officials of the lighthouse service, and will render. all necessary assistance in the experiment. It will be necessary also, if the gas buoy service so popular on the lakes is to be extended as it should be on the St. Mary's river and in Georgian bay, to establish a plant for the manufacture of gas at Sugar island on the St. Mary's river. Col. St. John has had this matter under consideration with the lighthouse board and it is expected that something will be done shortly. Canadian government officials are trying to provide means for the establishment and mainten- ance of quite a large number of gas buoys in the Georgian bay district, and it is suggested that gas for the buoys made. at the proposed plant at Sugar island could be sold to the Canadian de- partment in charge of this work. The captains of the steamer Maine and schooner Jackson, hailing from Sarnia, got themselves into trouble at Cleveland last Saturday. The boats arrived Saturday afternoon with about 1,000,000 ft. of lumber on board. Without waiting to make an entry they began to unload the lumber. Collector of Customs Leach heard of what they were doing and put a stop to the pro- ceedings. Mr. Leach put a keeper in charge of the boats: to prevent further attempt to unload until an entry was made of the stock. yes