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Individuals desiring to use this material in their own research may do so. ========================================================================= Formatted by U.S. Data Repository Chief Archivist, Linda Talbott All of the above information must remain when copied or downloaded. =========================================================================== Source: The Milwaukee Journal August 22, 1947 Fifty Years of Water Flowed Under Keels Capt. Hoxie Starts Second Half Century Sailing Across Lake in the 'Trough' He's Worn By Kirk Bates Of The Journal Staff Fridays have always been impor- tant to Capt. Allan K. Hoxie. But this isn't just an average, important Friday. It's the day he begins his second half century as a Great Lakes sailor. He began the first half century - on a Friday, too - as a deckhand on the H. M. Avery, a two masted lumber schooner out of South Haven, Mich. He begins the second half century as master of the Milwaukee Clipper, largest passenger ship on the lakes. The job is no novelty for Capt. Hoxie, for he has skippered the Clipper - he took command on a Friday, too - ever since it went into service in 1941. On only one trip since then has the Clipper ever docked without Capt. Hoxie on the bridge. Capt. Hoxie is dean of the Great Lakes skippers. He has been sailing in and out of the Milwaukee harbor for so many years that he knows his way around it better than you know the way around your living room. CROSSED LAKE MANY TIMES He probably has crossed Lake Michigan more times than any man who ever lived. He has crossed so many times, according to waggish friends, that he has "worn a trough in the lake and now all he has to do is to head his ship into the groove and let it go." In the 50 years that he has been sailing - in boats moving under can- vas, by coal and oil, in that succes- sion - he has seen just about every- thing that can happen to a ship or a sailor. Except a wreck. He has never been in a shipwreck, never had to abandon ship, never lost a vessel, although he has been beached twice - both times near Milwaukee - in bad fogs. "But I was lucky," he explains, adding, "you have to be lucky to last 50 years in this business, for one bad mistake and you aren't a captain any more, even if you get out alive. Both times I ran onto the beach I hit gravel bottoms and got away with a few scratches in- stead of having the hull torn open on a rock." But the captain has seen storms - "waves *0 feet high and that's as high as they get on the lakes" - so bad that even members of his crew were afraid. And he has been held in port, when he wanted to go out, by weather so dirty that the crew refused to budge. BATTLED ICE He has battled ice for hours, but he has always got through to the dock in the end. He has seen the lake frozen all the way over twice - "ice only an inch thick in the middle, but all the way across." He's sailed through fog so thick he couldn't see five feet ahead of the pilot house with the wind howling so he couldn't have heard a foghorn if there had been one a hundred yards ahead. Allan Hoxie was 17 - and not long off an Iowa farm - when he became a sailor. His first boat rides had been in an excursion launch on the Cedar river at Waterloo, Iowa, near his home. He loved the boat. When his family moved to South Haven, Mich., he saved his money, bought a little sailboat and got a job in a factory. But the lake called him, so on Aug. 22, 1897, he shipped out as a deck hand on a little schooner. "A deck hand in those days did everything." he recalled. "But most- ly he manned the pumps. Those old wooden tubs leaked so much you had to keep pumping every minute to keep the boat afloat. You were glad to get a watch as wheelsman, for that was a rest from those pump handles." After two years under sail, Hoxie got a job as cabin boy on a little passenger steamer between South Haven and Chicago. That was much better - it had steam powered pumps. A few months later he became wheels- man on a package freighter out of Buffalo. He had started up the ladder, and in 1903 - he was 24 then - he became an officer, second mate on the City of South Haven. In the meantime he had been married, in 1901. In 1906 he received his master's license, and in 1907 he became first mate. That fall he took out a little passenger ship, the City of Kalamazoo, for a few trips as skipper. He was 27 and the youngest "old man" - the crew's term for a captain - on the lakes. The next year he was working as a first mate again, this time for the Pere Marquette line, which of- fered him a year around job. He needed it, for he had a son and a daughter as well as a wife to sup- port. He got a job running between Ludington and Milwaukee. He has been sailing in and out of Milwaukee ever since. He established his home in Ludington and he still lives there. SHIFTED WITH OWNERSHIP Came 1910 and Hoxie became a skipper, captain of the Pere Marquette No. 4. He got bigger and better boats through the years and, in 1934, when the Wis- consin-Michigan line took over the Pere Marquette passenger ships he went with his boat to her new owners. He has worked for them ever since. "Sailing," said Capt. Hoxie, think- ing back over his half century on the water, "isn't like it used to be. Tech- nical inventions like ship to shore telephones, radio, radio beams, auto- matic sounding meters, have taken the guesswork - and most of the danger - out of sailing. Harbors and shores are marked so that anybody who can see can get through them now. "And life on shipboard is certainly different. I started for $15 a month. We slept in a hole in the hold and the saying was that we got clean bedding every year. But the bedding really wasn't changed that often. Meals were mostly potatoes and salt pork, with rice pudding a great delicacy. START AT $200 A MONTH "Now a boy who has never seen a ship can start for nearly $200 a month for a 40 hour week. I thought I was lucky to get $150 a month as captain on my first ship. Crews now sleep in clean, comfortable bunks, eat as good food as the passengers - fresh meat, fresh fruit every meal. In the fire hold there must always be a bucket of ice cold lemonade. Friday when the Clipper docked in Milwaukee there was a celebration aboard for the captain who is beginning his second half century. There was a big cake, bouquets and congratulations from the owners and crew. When the ship pulled out again a few hours later, Capt. Hoxie was up there beside the wheelsman, taking his ship through the harbor he knows so well and out into the lake he loves. Note: It appears to say "waves 10 feet high" which is certainly a typo or misquote. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Capt. Allan Kenyon Hoxie was born in Raymond, IA., on August 12, 1879, and married Miss Mary Elizabeth Chatfield, the daughter of a Methodist minister, on December 26, 1900, in Paw Paw, MI. The couple lived in South Haven, MI., for 5 years where their daughter Marian, born in 1902, and son, Dr. Allan Preston Hoxie, was born in 1903. In 1908 the family moved to Ludington, Mason Co., MI., and lived in the Russell Hotel for the first year. They moved to Milwaukee, WI., for a short period while their son attended Marquette Dental College. Returning to Ludington after his graduation they built their dream home, a real log cabin with a huge stone fireplace and hardwood floors, at Hamlin Lake. Capt. Hoxie reluctantly retired from the lakes on October 21, 1954 at age 75, and passed away in June, 1963, at Ludington. He is buried at Crystal Spring Cemetery, Benton Harbor, MI. Source: Ludington Daily News, December 23, 1960. Boatnerd.com (retirement date) ==========================================================================