Michael Livingston

Michael Livingston, the hale and hearty mate of the Toronto Ferry Company's steamer Mayflower, comes from a family of sailors, his father, a native of Scotland, having been an officer on an English man-of-war, and in fact served in the Royal navy for some twenty-one years, when he retired honorably on a pension. Our subject's mother was an English woman.

Mr. Livingston has now been sailing for over forty-five years, and although compara- tively an old man, he has a most marvelous memory, and recalls his early experiences on the Great Lakes with the utmost ease. At the age of sixteen he shipped on the fore-and-aft schooner Trafalgar, which had a capacity of 20,000 bushels. He then went on the schooner Peerless, of Bronte, remaining on her nine years, when he joined the crew of the schooner Lewis Shickluna. From the Shickluna he went on board the Sir Edmund Head, of St. Catharines, remaining on this boat for two years. After this Mr. Livingston was for nine years on the tug N. P. Sprague, engaged in towing rafts from Malden to Buffalo and Tonawanda, and then for a season he was mate of the three-mast schooner Gibraltar, of St. Catharines. He was afterward respectively on the fore-and-aft schooner J. McLeod, of St. Catharines; mate on the Queen of the Lakes, the Hotchkiss (which has a capacity of 1,500,000 feet of lumber); the Otonabee, mate of the famous old tug Robb, which took an active part in repelling the Fenian invaders in 1866, and still exists as a dismantled hulk alongside the dock at Victoria Park, Toronto. Mr. Livingston was afterward on the steambarge Wales, engaged in the lumber trade, and has for the past eleven years been in the service of the Toronto Ferry Company, being at present mate of the steamer Mayflower.

He has been twice wedded, his last marriage taking place September 22, 1897, and he resides at No. 269 Jarvis street, Toronto, Ontario.

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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.