Peter Lamare, Jr.

Peter Lamare, Jr., who has been engaged for more than a quarter of a century as engineer on the Great Lakes, was in charge of the motive power of the steamer Charlemagne Tower, Jr., during the season of 1896. He was born in 1852, in Montreal, Canada, and his father, also named Peter, has been a successful marine engineer for many years, at present running a vessel on the Ottawa River, in Canada; his mother was Julia (Sylvester) Lamare. When Peter, Jr., was eight years of age the family removed from Montreal to Ogdensburg, N. Y., where he received his schooling. In 1870 he began sailing, spending three months on the propeller Lawrence, of the Northern Transportation Company, after which he was in the ferryboat Prescott two seasons, and in the propellers Milwaukee and Garden City for shorter periods. Following his service on the Garden City he joined the steamer St. Albans, in which he was wrecked on Lake Michigan in the year 1881. The lake was full of ice, which cut a hole in the bow of the boat, and she foundered twenty miles off Milwaukee. The temperature at that time was twenty-one degrees below zero, and the crew were compelled to row in the small boats to the city, but they succeeded in reaching port in safety. After this Mr. Lamare spent a short time on the propeller Nashua; was in the Selah Chamberlin one year; in the Continental four years as fireman and one year as second engineer; was second on the Haskell three seasons; second of the Colonial five months and chief of her three months, and during 1892 was assistant engineer of the John Harper and Superior, in turn. In 1893 he was chief engineer of the Superior until she was laid up in July, after which he became second on the Missoula. He was chief of the Missoula during 1894 and all of 1895 up to the time she was lost on Lake Superior late in the fall, having thrown off her wheel during a storm. She laid in the trough of the sea for twenty-six hours after losing her wheel, shifted her cargo and rolled over on her beam-ends. The crew left her in the yawl- boats, nearly losing ten men through the tipping over of one of the boats, and they were twenty-two hours in making land and three days on shore without anything to eat. Then Mr. Lamare, the captain, and three men took one of the boats and finally succeeded in reaching Sault Ste. Marie, from which point they sent a steamer after the remainder of the crew. During 1896 Mr. Lamare was chief of the Charlemagne Tower, Jr.

Mr. Lamare was married in 1884 to Miss Mary Ellen Countryman, of Prescott, Canada. Their children are: Warren Tilden, Pearl Adeline and Carrie Irene.

Return to Home Port

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.