George Watson Jones

The credit of establishing the first exclusively marine newspapers of the Great Lakes is accorded to the gentleman whose name introduces this article, it being the Detroit Marine News, which began publication in 1880, and he continued its editor for some time. He was born in Lorain, Ohio in 1840, a son of George Washington Jones a well known and prominent shipbuilder.

During his childhood our subject was taken by his parents to Cleveland, and throughout his life has been greatly interested in lake marine. For a time he temporarily filled the place of marine editor of the Detroit Free Press, and this led to his establishing a distinctively marine paper. He was deeply interested in commercial questions relating to the water ways connecting the east and the west, and was especially devoted to the opposition of the free ship bill, feeling that American ships should be built American material by Americans. Ill health prevented Mr. Jones from continuing the publication of the Marine News, but the idea thus inaugurated was taken up by others, there now being a number of distinctively marine publications along the lakes.

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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.