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????? Great Lakes Skipper Buried in Kinney Cemetery

Date and source of obituary unknown. Gotten from the St. Clair Co. Library, Pt. Huron MI

Veteran mariners of Port Huron and vicinity mourned the passing of Capt. George T. Van Camp, 82, Great Lakes skipper, who was buried in Kinney cemetery Sunday after funeral services in First Baptist Church.

Captain Van Camp, who died Wednesday in the home of his daughter, Mrs. Percy Hugill, Toledo, was known as the skipper who brought the last full-rigged schooner up the Maumee river 28 years ago.

The story of Captain Van Camp's life is a saga of the development of shipping on Lake Erie. During his long sailing career he watched the growth of Toledo harbor from a few scattered lumber camps along the river front to modern loading docks, beside which his biggest schooner would have been dwarfed.

Older residents of Toledo remember Captain Van Camp as the owner and master of the Schooner Anna P. Grover. The old vessel often carried as much as 350,000 feet of lumber in her hold and on her decks.

Captain Van Camp was born in Port Huron Oct.16, 1856. He used to recall that his father laid the keel of the first full-rigged sailing vessell built north of Port Huron.

He began his long sailing career when he was 14. He retired in 1919 on account of failing eyesight.

He was one of the first petitioners for colored lights on channel buoys in Toledo harbor. He blamed his failing sight on difficulty in distinguishing the old white channel markers from the white lights of the city in the background.

The old skipper never lost a ship. One, off KeIley's Island, the Anna Grover lost most of her cargo of coal but Captain Van Camp and his crew managed to save a 20-ton steel marine boiler lashed to the deck.

Captain Van Camp is survived by four daughters, Mrs. Hugill and

Mrs: Larine Cromley, both of Toledo, and Mrs. Bert Atkins, Wadhams, and Mrs, Ernest Crawford, North Street: three sons, Ben, Charles and Edsel Van Camp, all of Port Huron, and a sister, Mrs. Emma Landfair, Lake Orion, Mich.



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