John L. Meyer
John L. Meyer, a young and capable marine engineer, gives good promise of an active and useful future in the line of his calling. He was born March 18, 1872, in Port Washington, Wis., and is a son of Leo and Elizabeth (Fuerst) Meyer, the former of whom, a native of Germany, came to the United States when a youth of eighteen years. He located in Port Washington, where he met and married Miss Fuerst, removing to Ahnapee (now Algoma), Wis., in 1872, and the next year established himself in the hardware business, which he conducted with good success until his death in 1894. His son Julius succeeded to the business as manager.
After his school days were over John L. Meyer was also employed in the store, and he learned the tinner's trade serving an apprenticeship of four years. In the spring of 1889, when seventeen years old, he shipped in the lumber barge Ida E., owned by James Dempsey, and he remained with her three seasons, serving the second as assistant engineer, and later receiving promotion to the office of chief. In 1894 he went to Green Bay and became chief engineer of the tug M.A. Knapp. In the spring of 1895 he went to Duluth, where he entered the employ of Commodore B.B. Inman as engineer of the tug Pathfinder, transferring to the Edward Fiske and closing the season in the M.D. Carrington. In the spring of 1897 he was appointed chief engineer of the lake tug Bob Anderson, which position he again assumed in 1898, Capt. Louis King being in command. Mr. Meyer was instrumental in saving the life of Al LeDuc, a fireman, who, having fallen overboard, would have mangled by the wheel had it not been for the prompt assistance rendered. On another occasion he jumped overboard and saved the life of a man who had been knocked out of a small sailboat by the boom, Mr. Meyer is a member of the Marine Engineers Beneficial Association, of Sturgeon Bay, Wis. During the winter months he returns to the old homestead at Algoma. Two of his uncles also follow the lakes: Charles Fuerst as engineer of the steamer Arcadia, and William Gnewuch as master of the Milwaukee tug Welcome.
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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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