John Cowley
If danger and shipwreck are among the incidents that fall to the lot of the Great Lake mariners, the subject of this sketch, an efficient marine engineer, now residing at St. Clair, Mich., has had his full share. But he possesses the fortitude and bravery of the typical lakeman. He is a native of Canada, having been born in the Province of Quebec.
Our subject spent his boyhood and youth on his father's farm; but he early acquired a taste for life on the water, and in 1867, at the age of twenty years, began his nautical career as a fireman at Montreal. Since that time he has served in various capacites on many of the better class of lake craft, including the India, William Chisholm, G. B. Hale, Horace A. Tuttle, John W. Moore and Continental. Among his experiences on the lakes have been six shipwrecks. Mr. Cowley was aboard the Guiding Star when she blew up in 1870. He was one of the crew of the propeller Tioga when that ill-fated vessel was burned in 1877. He was wrecked on the C. B. Hale on Saginaw bay, October 8, 1897. For twenty-five years of his lake career he served as engineer with Canadian license.
Mr. Cowley was married in Mooretown, Ontario, and has four children, one of whom is now a sailor. Mr. Cowley's experience on the lakes and his careful attention to his duties have made him a skillful and well-known sailor.
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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.
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