Captain Hiram Henderson spent 60 years as a lake sailor

Captain Hiram Henderson, master of the schooner Ishpeming, lying at the D.L.& W. trestle awaiting her turn to load for Canada, has seen more service than any other sailor on the chain of the Great Lakes and in spite of his seventy-four years is still hale and hearty, and as spry as many men twenty years his junior. Captain Henderson has been a sailor continuously for sixty-three years, having first shipped as a cabin boy when he was eleven years old.

His father before him was a vessel master and it was but natural that the son should follow in his footsteps. He is known in every port from Montreal to Duluth on both the United States and Canadian shores and there is not a bit of water between these two points that he has not sailed over.

Captain Henderson was born at Pulaski in 1828. He spent his earliest days at Texas Point and afterward removed with his parents to the village of Phoenix. While a resident of that place he ran away from home and commenced his career as a sailor-man. His first trip was as helmsman to a pair of obstinate mules and the trip was from Phoenix to Albany, thence to New York. Captain Henderson was between 10 and 11 years old then and he says it happened this way:

"It was in the Spring and the day before the school teacher had given me a good, sound thrashing. Yes, I deserved it, but when I got home I complained to father and he took me out in into the woodshed and repeated the performance. The next morning I started for school, and on the way went down to the canal. 'Pete' Johnson, a boatman, came along and asked me if I knew any boy whom he could get to drive his mules, and I then went on her shipped for the job, signing papers which would take me to New York. I steered those mules to Albany, when we stowed them in the fo'castle and, hitched to a tug, started down the Hudson for New York, where we tied up.

"I was pretty smart in those days, and the summer previous had made a trip to Chicago with my father and knew as much as any boy of my age about sailing. I wandered around the docks in New York and came across the little bark Margaret. She was ready to get underway, but where she was destined for I didn't know or care, my one thought was to get as far away from father and his birch rod as possible. My only outfit was a hickory colored shirt and a pair of trousers, but the captain fitted me out and away we went. We made Buenos Aires, South America, and it was a year before I got back to my father's home, but that birch rod was still waiting for me and I received a full application of it.

"I was a pretty good sailor then and away I went again and this time I came to Oswego and shipped on the lakes and have remained here since. The first winter I put in Chicago was 1846, at that time you could take in the whole town in 15 minutes, and there wasn't much to see at that. In those days lighthouses were few and far between. The Government had not marked the shoals and reefs with buoys to designate dangerous places, and a sailor had to know his business to make a trip and not find himself high and dry on the shore.

"We got in and out of the harbors as best we could as there were no tugs to meet us a mile or so from shore and tow us in. It was exciting work then, different from what it is now. And such a fleet of schooners and vessels as was on the lakes! I have seen the sail in craft at the height of its popularity and then seen it decline, steam taking its place, until today the old canal schooner, once the pride of the lakes, which loaded to 10 feet, could outride any gale that ever blew, is now a thing of the past and what few of the old boats are left saw their best days a long time ago. I am going to sell out of the Ishpeming when I get a chance and retire to live ashore."

Captain Henderson, 50 years ago, was a resident of this city. Twenty-five years ago he left here and took up his home in Cleveland, Ohio, where he still resides. When asked the name of the boats he had sailed he hesitated, and then said: "Say, young fellow, you have got me stuck. I can't remember them, but if you would string them out they would reach from here to Kingston." The Captain said he had been shipwrecked eight or 10 times, but he did not think the incidents were of any importance - simply a part of the lot which falls to a man who followed the Great Lakes for a living.

Captain Henderson's first charge was a canalboat converted into a small schooner and he carried sand between this port and Henderson Harbor. Among the boats of which he was master were the Typo, C.H. Johnson, Delaware, Francis Pond and Kate Winslow.