George M. Milne
One of a race of marine engineers, and with the examples of his father, his father's brothers and his grandfather before him, it was more than natural that George Malcolm Milne should early aspire to holding the throttle on a big lake carrier. His grandfather, Alexander Milne, who was born in Scotland in 1809, came to America in the thirties to become engineer-in-chief of the Royal Mail line, and his father, George B. Milne, has been a marine engineer for forty years, being now chief engineer of the Devereux.
George M. Milne was born in 1871 in Rigaud, Province of Quebec, near the site of the Rigaud Cement Works, which were and are still the property of his father. He was educated in the public schools of Detroit and Oswego, in which cities his parents lived while he was a youth. He spent some time in the locomotive works of the D.L. & W. railroad, in Oswego, and in the year 1890 he began sailing on the Great Lakes. During his first season he was oiler on the propeller Onoko. Then he served in the same capacity on the Philip Minch, later assuming charge of the electric plant of the "Clifton House" in Chicago. He did not hold his position long as he was desirous of returning to the lakes, and the next year he became second engineer of the propeller Elfin-Mere. From this vessel he went to the Arundel, also as second engineer, and thence to the propeller Garland, as chief. The following year, 1895, he was chief engineer of the propeller Germania, during 1896, he was chief engineer of the Devereux, under his father, and in 1898 again chief engineer of the steamer Garland for the Detroit, Belle Isle & Windsor Ferry Company.
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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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