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The following is from W. Russell Brown, of Thunder Bay, Ontario: "My father and his brother, W. J. Brown, operated passenger ships in and out of Detroit from 1893 to 1903. The old sidewheelers CAMBRIA and CARMONA. I was on the CAMBRIA when she was partially wrecked and drifted onto the beach at Point Zdward, Ont., July 1897 and my uncle, We Je Brown, of Detroit, took over the CARMONA from my father at the close of the season at Collingwood. He had her rebuilt there and she came out in June 1898 as the "New" CARMONA and was, I believe, the first exclusive passener cruise ship on the Great Lakes. Later he took her back to Collingwood, lengthened her by 40 feet and renamed her PITTSBURG. She was burned at Sandwich in September 1903. W. J. Brown leased the CITY OF TH# STRAITS from D&C Lines in 1902. I was assistant purser on PITTSBURG in 1902 and was transferred to the STRAITS on her first trip and was on her when she was transferred back to the D&C in September 1902. The CARMONA was positively the first exclusive cruise ship on the Canadian side of the Lakes and I don't know of any U.S. cruise ships in the Lakes at that time...I was up and down the river every summer from 1893 to 1903 on these ships. My uncle, William J. Brown, had the first cut-rate drugstore on Wood- ward and Congress (in Detroit)...He had the steamboat office in the drugstore and about 15 years ago I met an old man there who told me that he was a deck-hand on the PITTSBURG in 1903 and after she tied up for the season the purser advised all the crew that they were to go across the river to Brown's drugstore to get their moneye He said they were all paid in gold coin." The Rev. Edward J. Dowling, S.J., will be the speaker on Nov. 15 at the Grosse Pointe War Memorial, 32 Lakeshore, Grosse Pointe, east of Fisher. Fr. Dowling's subject will be the government boats that have been built on the Great Lakes, a topic on which he is the acknow- ledged authority as witnessed by the separate listings which he has prepared in the past for the Historian as well as other journals. The date is on a Friday and the meeting starts at 8 pom. If yeu are early, however, there is a magnificent view from the War Memorial. out over Lake St. Clair. It has been some years since we last met at the War Memorial and this will be a sort of homecoming and reminder of the days when we were the guests there of the late Norb Neff.