'The Commodore (as he was know to all his friends) was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1855. He came honestly by his life's work for hi father and Grandfather before him were both captains on the Columbia and Willamette Rivers. As a small boy, he used to stand on a candle box in the wheelhouse of his grandfather command and 'help him' steer the boat, and at the age of fifteen signed as a deckhand on the old steamboat Vancouver, so by the time he was old enough to go before the United States Steamboat inspectors he was ready to 'sit for' his Master's Ticket and got it. Soon after he joined the Oregon Steam Navigation Company. In 1883 he went to British Columbia, first running on Kamloops Lake and later going to the Fraser Rivas as Master of the William Irving, remaining on that boat till 1886, when he returned to Portland as Superintendent of the Union Pacific Railway Water Division.'