- Rig
- Steam tug
- Dates
- 1894
- Length
- 69 ft
- Eras
- Modern era
- Concepts
- maritimeshippingfishingheritage
- Within
- Beaver Island
Summary
The Margaret McCann was a 69-foot steam tug reported built in 1894 at Grand Haven, Michigan, for the McCann family of St. James, Beaver Island. Captain John McCann’s 1930 obituary says he had her “built in partnership with his father” James McCann; a 1986 family retrospective instead recalls that John “ran” the tug after his father “had purchased” her, and says she was named for James’s wife, Margaret McCann. Working out of St. James, she carried mail, passengers, and fish between Beaver Island and Charlevoix, was chartered for at least one Great Lakes salvage job, and joined at least two documented rescue efforts near the archipelago: the ice-bound mail tug Violet in early 1909 and the storm-wrecked Lucie A. in December 1913. She was sold in May 1919 to a Buffalo, New York buyer for canal and river towing.
History
The tug’s construction is dated by Capt. John McCann’s own 1930 obituary: built at Grand Haven in 1894, in partnership with his father, St. James merchant James McCann, who had settled on Beaver Island in 1885 after emigrating from Ireland. John McCann had by then already trained as a boat builder and worked as a draftsman under the Great Lakes naval architect Frank E. Kirby at the Wyandotte Shipbuilding Co. in Detroit; he went on to run the Margaret McCann for most of the next quarter-century.
The earliest dated activity found here comes from June 1897, when the Charlevoix Sentinel reported that “Capt. James Reid… chartered the tug Margaret McCann, of Beaver Island, for work on the Cayuga wrecking job” — three years after her reported construction, and no further detail on the job survives in the held record. Through the 1900s and 1910s the Sentinel and its successor papers carried frequent, largely undated notices of her routine work: fishing trips, dockyard inspections at Charlevoix, and regular mail and passenger runs between St. James and Charlevoix, including winters when the larger steamer Beaver laid up. A January 1913 notice calls her “a strong seaworthy craft” for having “begun the work of carrying the mail this winter as long as weather conditions will permit.”
In late January 1909 the Margaret McCann took part in the rescue of the mail tug Violet, trapped in ice for several days off Cross Village with her master, Ed Martin, engineer Barney Martin, and one passenger aboard. The McCann located the Violet but could not reach her; her crew instead pushed a boatload of food across the ice floes to the stranded tug, whose crew was reported down to a box of canned tomatoes. Unable to free the Violet, the McCann and a second tug, the Parmelee, abandoned the attempt; the steel tug Berger, out of Manistique, ultimately completed the rescue. The following week’s Sentinel reported that the McCann herself had been damaged in the effort, striking a sunken crib while trying to land at the Cross Village dock and breaking a bucket on her paddlewheel.
Nearly five years later, in mid-December 1913, the Margaret McCann was out lifting her own nets near the Fox Islands when she found the gasoline fishing boat Lucie A., wrecked and beached a week earlier in a gale, her crew (John Weideman, Hugh Bracy, and Melvin Brady) living on short rations in a fisherman’s shanty. The party chose to stay with their damaged boat until help could reach them properly; the McCann returned to St. James that evening, and Capt. McCann cabled Charlevoix with the details. Roy Ranger and a crew then left St. James at nine that night in the gasoline boat Rhine to tow the Lucie A. home, a four-hour crossing during which her crew worked the pumps continuously to keep her afloat.
The Margaret McCann’s local career ended in May 1919. The Charlevoix Courier reported that “Capt. Ava Smith left on Saturday last for Buffalo, N. Y., with the fish tug Margaret McCann of St. James, formerly owned by James McCann, which has been sold to Benj. L. Cowels of Buffalo,” for towing use on the Hudson River; engineer E. N. Emory made the delivery voyage with Smith and stayed on in Buffalo. Capt. John McCann remained active on the island afterward, designing and building a new tug, the Venus, in 1924, and died at his St. James home in April 1930 after a stroke.
Significance
The Margaret McCann is the best-documented of the several McCann family vessels recorded in the held Charlevoix newspapers, and her career traces a working pattern common to Beaver Island’s early-twentieth-century fishing tugs: fishing, mail and passenger carriage, occasional salvage charter work, and participation in the informal mutual-aid rescue network that answered distress calls before the Coast Guard’s later reach. The family that built and ran her went on to a wider maritime and boat-building legacy on the island: Capt. John McCann’s sons Harold, Ulysses, and Emmet all became boat builders, and his daughter, Marguerite McCann Runberg, later returned to the family’s St. James home, which her son converted into the McCann House bed-and-breakfast. A separately documented Beaver Island tug captain named Roland McCann (likely a member of the same family, though the surviving record does not establish the exact relationship) was still running a different tug out of St. James as late as 1940.
Evidence and limits
No source held here gives the Margaret McCann’s official number, gross tonnage, beam, depth of hold, or hull material. Her 69-foot length comes from a single 1986 family retrospective published ninety-two years after her reported construction, not from a contemporary registry or inspection document, and this article does not treat it as independently confirmed. That same 1986 account and the 1930 obituary disagree on whether John McCann built the tug himself in partnership with his father or whether his father purchased her outright; both versions are preserved here rather than reconciled. A separate, unrelated Beaver Island person record, John McCann, names a “John McCann” as captain of an unidentified fishing tug in 1900; given the tug’s 1894 construction and John McCann’s documented decades running her, this may be the same man, but no source held here states the connection directly, and the two records are kept separate. The tug’s final disposition after her 1919 sale to Buffalo, including how long she worked the Hudson River and when she left service, is not documented here.
Open questions
- Can maritime registries or local records supply the Margaret McCann’s official number, tonnage, and builder of record?
- Is the 1900 fishing-tug captain “John McCann” of John McCann the same man who ran the Margaret McCann for decades afterward?
- What was the Margaret McCann’s service history and fate after her May 1919 sale to Benjamin L. Cowles of Buffalo?
- What relationship, if any, connects Roland McCann’s 1940s tug to the family that built and ran the Margaret McCann?
See also
Sources
- Charlevoix County Herald, December 20, 1913, report reprinted from the Charlevoix Sentinel on the Lucie A. rescue.Names the tug Margaret McCann as the vessel that found the Lucie A. party and returned to St. James so Capt. McCann could cable the particulars. Credited "—Charlevoix Sentinel"; its own opening and headline are missing or interleaved with advertising in this reprint. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
- Charlevoix Sentinel, mid-December 1913, "MAROONED" (headed, in the held OCR, "MAPOUNDED") — "Gasoline Boat Lucie A. Cast Up By the Angry Waves on an Inhospitable Shore."The apparent original Sentinel account within a combined-year OCR file, printed in an issue that elsewhere references a Historical Society meeting "Friday evening, Dec. 19th," dating it to mid-December 1913. Unlike the County Herald reprint, it names the Lucie A.'s three-man crew — John Weideman, Hugh Bracy, and Melvin Brady — and says they were wrecked "a week ago last Sunday" on Little Fox (the report calls it "the Foxes"). It otherwise matches the reprint's account of the Margaret McCann finding the party, returning to St. James, and Capt. McCann cabling the particulars before Roy Ranger's Rhine effected the tow. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
- Charlevoix Sentinel, June 23, 1897, brief notice.Within a combined-year OCR file, in an issue carrying the masthead "CHARLEVOIX, MICH., WEDNESDAY, JUNE 23, 1897": "Capt. James Reid was here again yesterday. He has chartered the tug Margaret McCann, of Beaver Island for work on the Cayuga wrecking job." This is the earliest dated activity found here for the tug, three years after her reported 1894 construction. No other detail on the Cayuga job or its outcome is given. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
- Charlevoix Sentinel, January 2, 1913, brief notice.Within a combined-year OCR file, in an issue carrying the masthead "Charlevoix, Michigan, Thursday January 2, 1913": "The steamer Beaver having laid up for the winter, the St. James tug Margaret McCann has begun the work of carrying the mail this winter as long as weather conditions will permit... The Margaret is a strong seaworthy craft." The same combined file carries many similar, undated notices of the tug's routine mail runs, fishing trips, and dockyard inspections at Charlevoix across roughly 1904-1913, which are not separately cited here. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
- Charlevoix Sentinel, January 28, 1909, "Four Days Imprisoned."Within a combined-year OCR file, in an issue carrying the masthead "CHARLEVOIX MICHIGAN, THURSDAY, JANUARY 28, 1909." Reports that the mail tug Violet, owned by the R. Beutel Co. and crewed by Ed Martin (master) and Barney Martin (engineer), was trapped in ice near Cross Village for several days; the Margaret McCann located her but could not reach her, delivered food across the ice floes with the tug Parmelee, and had to abandon the rescue, which the steel tug Berger of Manistique ultimately completed. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
- Charlevoix Sentinel, February 4, 1909, brief notice.Within the same combined-year OCR file, in an issue carrying the masthead "CHARLEVOIX MICHIGAN, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4 1909": "The St. James tug Margaret McCann is a victim of the Violet job. In an effort to make a landing at the Cross Village dock, she struck a sunken crib, breaking a chunk out of one of the buckets of her wheel and bending her shoe," and came to Charlevoix for repairs before returning home. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
- Charlevoix Courier, May 14, 1919, "Left Saturday for Buffalo."Within a combined-year OCR file, in an issue carrying the masthead "COURIER, CHARLEVOIX, MICH., WEDNESDAY, MAY 14, 1919": "Capt. Ava Smith left on Saturday last for Buffalo, N. Y., with the fish tug Margaret McCann of St. James, formerly owned by James McCann, which has been sold to Benj. L. Cowels of Buffalo. The tug will be used on the Hudson river, between Albany and New York, for towing." A companion notice (undated in the held OCR but naming the same trip) adds that engineer E. N. Emory shipped on the delivery voyage and remained in Buffalo for the season. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
- Charlevoix Courier, April 23, 1930, "Death Closed Active Career" / "John McCann, Well Known Lake Captain Is Dead."Obituary, in an issue carrying the masthead "COURIER, CHARLEVOIX, MICH., WEDNESDAY, APRIL 23, 1930." Says Capt. John McCann was born on Mackinac Island in 1869, moved to Beaver Island with his parents at 14, began boat-building at 16, worked as a draftsman under naval architect Frank E. Kirby at the Wyandotte Shipbuilding Co., and "had the Str. Margaret McCann built in partnership with his father at Grand Haven in 1894," after which he followed commercial fishing at Beaver Island and Charlevoix. Says he designed and built his "present boat," the tug Venus, in 1924, married Grace Martin in Chicago (the printed year, 1832, is plainly a typographical error), and died at his St. James home after a stroke, survived by two daughters and six sons, including Rolland of St. James and Mrs. Vern Runberg of Minneapolis. It does not name the Margaret McCann's official number, tonnage, or builder of record beyond "built... at Grand Haven." No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
- Charlevoix Courier, August 1986, "Bed and Breakfast — Beaver Island style," by Doug Truax.A retrospective feature on the McCann House bed-and-breakfast, ninety-two years after the tug's reported construction, tracing the family from patriarch James McCann (emigrated from Ireland 1852, settled Beaver Island 1885, ran the "James McCann and Sons" store) to son Capt. John McCann, who "ran the 69-foot tug, the Margaret McCann, which his father had purchased," and later "built many boats including the 64-foot Venus." Names John McCann's three boat-building sons (Harold, Ulysses, Emmet) and daughter Marguerite McCann Runberg. This is the only source held here giving the tug's length, and it is a 1986 family recollection, not a contemporary registry document; it also describes the tug as "purchased" by James McCann rather than "built... in partnership with his father," as the 1930 obituary has it, and the two accounts are not reconciled here. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
Added 1 August 2026 · revised 4 August 2026. Recent changes
Cite this article
Beaver Island Archive, “Margaret McCann”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/vessels/margaret-mccann-1913/, accessed [date], citing Charlevoix County Herald, December 20, 1913, report reprinted from the Charlevoix Sentinel on the Lucie A. rescue. (and 8 further sources listed on the page).
Last revised 2026-08-04. Fill in [date] with the date you read it — this page is static and cannot know that.