Captain F. C. Hart

Captain F.C. Hart who has been connected with marine interests from the age of fourteen years, has in his long and varied experience passed through all the successive stages of a sailor's life, now holding the position of superintendent for the J. Emery Owen Transportation Company at Detroit, he has always resided in that city, having been born there August 17, 1848, and he received his education at the public schools. His father, W. W. Hart, who is still living at Grand Rapids, was a shipowner, and had various marine interests several years ago, and to this occupation the son naturally drifted. He first shipped out of Detroit on the Gladiator, where he acted as boy one season, from this boat going to the brig Waurecan as ordinary seaman, and during the season following he acted in the same capacity on the Forest and the Rio Grande. His next berth was that of second mate on the schooner Supply, and in 1866 he was mate of the bark Winslow; in 1867 he was given command of the John P. Ward, after which he sailed the Mountaineer, L. L. Lamb, Wells Burt, Michigan, Emma L. Cayne, and E. A. Nicholson, returning from this boat to the schooner Michigan, on which he remained until 1888. He has since held the position of marine superintendent for the J. Emery Owen Transport- ation Company. Captain Hart's experiences on the water were uniformly fortunate, for he never suffered shipwreck or serious accident, a record which has given much satisfaction to those for whom he has sailed, and added to his own reputation as sailor and master.

Captain Hart was married in August, 1874, to Miss Adeline Gorden, of Port Colborne, Ont., and they have three children: John, who is employed at the Commercial Bank at Detroit; Alice; and Fred, who is attending high school at the present time.

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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.