Captain Harry Montgomery

Captain Harry Montgomery, of the harbor tug Dreadnaught, of Cleveland, was born in Bangor, Ireland, in 1861. His father, Capt. James Montgomery, sailed vessels to the East Indies for twenty years, one of them being the sugar ship Robina, which he commanded for fifteen years. He was often accompanied by his family on these trips and it was while the ship was lying in the harbor of Bombay that one of his daughters was born on board; she was accordingly named Robina, after the name of the vessel. Upon retiring from sailing Captain Montgomery embarked in the lime, coal and brick business on shore. He also owned four coasting vessels. His death occurred in 1896, when he was eighty-seven years of age.

Harry Montgomery commenced sailing at the age of eleven years in the ship Arbitrator. On the third voyage to Quebec she was caught in a storm and waterlogged, but they succeeded in navigating her to St. Pierre island, where she remained six weeks, undergoing repairs. Young Montgomery was sent by his uncle, who commanded the vessel, to Halifax on the steamer George Shadduck, and from that port he sailed on the steamer Hibernian for Liverpool, where he was met by his mother, who, warned by a dream, had come up from Bangor to meet him, although he had informed no one that he was on his way home. For two years he sailed to Troon, Ayr and Ardrossan, Scotland, on his father's vessel, and he then went to sea again. He made a trip from Belfast to Pensacola, Fla., and returned in the ship Fannie Atkinson, being absent nine months, and he subsequently joined the Rosedale, loaded with steel rails for the New York Central railroad. After a voyage of fifty-six days the vessel reached Baltimore in a leaking condition and was placed on the ways for repairs. Montgomery leaving her there and joining the schooner Ruth A. Price, in the fruit trade out of Baltimore. After about five months he went to the lakes and shipped on the steamer Missouri, serving as deckhand for about half of one trip, when he was made wheelsman, holding that post for the remainder of the season. Then he was wheelsman in the steamers Oakland and Ontonagon, being wrecked off Conneaut, while employed on the latter vessel; the Ontonagon had four vessels in tow but was caught in a storm and had to drop them. She was leaking badly and finally broke in two. Eight of the men got off in a fourteen-foot boat, while the remaining five floated about on half a vessel for nearly three days before the tugs Annie Moiles, Cora B., Ella M. Smith and S. S. Rumage went to their relief. In 1883 Captain Montgomery took out his master's papers, and he has since commanded the harbor tugs Cora B., Music, Curtis, R. K. Hawley, Florence, Cushing, T. M. Moore and Dreadnaught.

The Captain was married in 1890 to Miss Eleanor Hobson, of Cleveland, and they have two children, Robina and Harry.

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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.