Captain P. Walsh

Captain P. Walsh, chief officer of the steamer Modjeska, of the Hamilton Steamboat Company, under Commodore Crawford, is a sturdy specimen of the whole-souled mariner. He was born June 1, 1857, in Oakville, Ont., where his father was a prominent hotelkeeper, and was educated in the separate schools and in De la Salle Institute, in the city of Toronto, receiving a thorough training in all the ordinary branches. For the first years of his active life he was in the hotel business in Oakville with his father, who, with a view of bettering his circumstances, removed to Waterford, a small town near St. Thomas, Ont. Captain Walsh now launched into business for himself, starting a hotel in Burlington when he was about twenty years of age, and thence removing to Hamilton where he conducted a hotel from 1882 until 1886. Tiring of this business, he finally secured a position as timekeeper on the Toronto Street railway, which he held for one year, in 1887 entering the employ of the Hamilton Steamboat Company, with whom he has remained ever since, gradually working up to his present office.

Captain Walsh was married, in 1887, in Hamilton, to Miss Commerford, when he was in the hotel in Burlington. Three daughters have been born to them, Eva, Eulalia and Maggie, all of whom are receiving every advantage for education in the schools of Toronto. Captain Walsh's politics always savored strongly of Liberalism, and he takes an active part in the elections that occur while he is ashore. As a ward scrutineer he is in great demand. Municipal elections make a glorious field for him, and he invariably works and votes for the man whom he considers fitted for alderman or mayor of Toronto. He and his family are members of the Roman Catholic church.

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Volume I

This version of Volume II is based, with permission, on the work of the great volunteers at the Marine Captains Biographies site. To them goes the credit for reorganizing the content into some coherent order. The biographies in the original volume are in essentially random order.

Some of the transcription work was also done by Brendon Baillod, who maintains an excellent guide to Great Lakes Shipwreck Research.