Tom
Manse - Founder
TOM MANSE: THE MAN WHO
KNEW THE SHIPS
By Roger LeLievre
(This article first appeared in Inland Seas, quarterly journal
of the Great Lakes Historical Society)
In these days of desktop publishing, the Internet and digital imagery, it’s hard to imagine someone beginning a new publication with little more than a drafting table, an old camera and a dream. Yet in 1959, Thomas Manse launched the first issue of “Know Your Ships,” the familiar guidebook to boats on the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway, in his Sault Ste. Marie basement with just that trio.
Armed with a 1900 Kodak camera (the kind with a bellows that folded out from the front) that used large-format film to yield black and white, post card-sized negatives, Tom began shooting pictures of the passing freighter parade through the Soo Locks in the late 1940s. He had a good example to follow: His father, John Manse, who worked for well-known Sault marine photographer A.E. Young, had taken hundreds of pictures of boats at the Locks a decade earlier.
Tom often said he started really concentrating on his photography in the mid-1950s because he feared that when the St. Lawrence Seaway opened there would be wholesale scrappings of many familiar freighters. As it turned out, he was right.
He set a goal for himself of getting at least one photograph of all the ships sailing the lakes. In 1992 he estimated his collection at more than 25,000 negatives and slides. He could often be found at Mission Point, sometimes in the company of his wife, Mabel, and daughters Judy and Cindy, or with other vessel enthusiasts. He counted among his friends the late Rev. Edward J. Dowling, S.J., considered the Great Lakes’ foremost marine historian and the late Edwin Wilson, a long-time boat buff from Milwaukee, whose massive photo collection now resides with the Milwaukee Public Library.
There is no record of when or even why Tom decided to publish a book about boats. But publish he did.
That first issue of “Know Your Ships” was just 44 pages. Staplebound, it sold for 50 cents. Yet it contained listings for more than 600 American and Canadian lakers, with information gathered mostly from the vessel reporting room at the Soo Locks. It was conceived not as a publication aimed at those working in the shipping industry, but for tourists, ship fans and people who lived along the water and wanted basic information about the ships that passed their homes.
In the beginning, Tom had a hard time convincing shopkeepers along the Soo’s Portage Avenue to carry the book, so he assembled a crew of junior high and high school students to stand just outside locks’ property and sell the books to tourists. The kids — some of whom used deep-pocketed carpenter’s aprons to hold books and change — made money off commissions. Eventually store owners saw the demand for the little booklet and began stocking it on their shelves.
Putting together early “Know Your Ships” was a labor-intensive, time-consuming process. Any four-color work, such as the smokestack monograms found on each issue’s center spread, Tom did by hand, using the drafting skills honed in his job as a machinist at Sault Ste. Marie’s Michigan Northern (now Edison Sault) hydroelectric power plant. He would often look out the window while at work and spot an unfamiliar stack marking, which he would sketch or photograph, making a more accurate rendition later as he worked at night in his damp basement at home. That basement also contained a photographic darkroom, barely big enough to turn around in, from which he turned out postcard-sized prints with a vintage contact printer. His first business venture was Marine Photos, followed by Wolverine Publishers, followed, finally, by Marine Publishing Co. Loose-leaf notebooks, each entry printed in neatly in block letters, provided a cumbersome reference to the thousands of negatives he was busy filing in mismatched metal drawers and old, wooden cabinets stacked in the basement.
Among the pictures included in that first “Know Your Ships” was a cover shot of Canada Steamship Lines’ steamer Lemoyne, downbound at Mission Point in early winter. Inside photos, all black and white, included the Edmund Fitzgerald (which was a new boat that year) and the passenger liner South American. In that issue, 25 U.S.-flag vessel operators were referenced, and a footnote indicated that approximately 70 freighters passed through the Soo Locks each day. According to the book, Pittsburgh Steamship Co. (U.S. Steel) operated 57 boats in the lakes trade. Canada Steamship Lines operated 61. A few ads helped defray the cost of printing.
The 1960 “Know Your Ships” was a virtual twin of its predecessor, with a picture of the passenger ship South American on its cover. The black and white photo was dressed up with the addition of spot color on the vessel’s smokestack. The first four-color photos appeared in 1967.
During the mid-’60s, Tom started to branch out. In 1963 he published (with the sponsorship of the National Bank of Detroit) a “Small Craft Boating Manual,” which was given away free to individuals obtaining boat loans at the bank, and a tourist guide book called “The Soo Locks.” The “Tri-County Travel Guide” followed in 1967, a larger-format booklet consisting mostly of advertising for tourist-related businesses in the Eastern Upper Peninsula.
In 1968, he left his job at the Edison hydro plant to direct the newly-formed Le Sault de Sainte Marie Historic Sites and was a key figure in obtaining the obsolete lake boat Valley Camp for use as a museum in Sault Ste. Marie. As he devoted more and more of his time to this project, some of his other publishing ventures began falling by the wayside, until just “Know Your Ships” remained (although he did bring to market a line of laker postcards in the early ‘70s and a set of placemats featuring the stack markings of Great Lakes and Seaway fleets during the 1980s).
The 1979 edition of “Know Your Ships” was the last to be staple bound. By that time, the book was just under 100 pages. In 1980, perfect binding was first employed. This allowed the name of the book to be printed on the spine. By 1990, another 25 pages had been added. Up until his death, Tom still readied corrections for the next edition the way he always had: with a loose-leaf binder and a pad of yellow legal paper. Publication of “Know Your Ships” was always pretty much a one-man show: The book would be produced over the winter, published in the spring and distributed by Tom during the summer. Recent years have seen the addition of a research staff of volunteers and a regular cadre of boatwatchers who contribute photographs and news tips.
Those who knew Tom knew he was a born salesman. He loved to talk steamboats and he loved to load his car up with “Know Your Ships” and head to Port Huron or Duluth or the Welland Canal on sales trips. In the process he made friends from one end of the lakes to the other. He made the trek from his home on Kimball Street in Sault Ste. Marie to Mission Point or to the end of the Soo Locks’ West Pier literally thousands of times over the years, just to see what boats were coming and maybe snap a picture or two for “Know Your Ships.”
Some who knew him considered him a bit of a curmudgeon Others judged him by his accomplishments, “Know Your Ships” being one, the successful Valley Camp museum ship another. On Feb. 11, 1986, declared by the City of Sault Ste. Marie as “Tom Manse Day,” the local paper editorialized: “He’s almost like the prototypical weathered skipper — competent, grouchy, hard-bitten and experienced. ... He’s talked ships and shipping every day of his life and what he’s forgotten is more than what most people could know in a lifetime.”
Born in Sault Ste. Marie in 1915, he grew up just blocks from the locks. Fiercely proud of his Italian-American heritage, he was active for years in the city’s Christopher Columbus Society. But despite his love for Great Lakes ships, Tom never worked aboard one. He often related an ill-fated attempt to ship out when he was a boy. “My father came right up the deck after me,” he recalled. Although he was kiddingly referred to as a “dry-land sailor,” Tom was thrilled to ride aboard the Valley Camp in 1968 as it was being towed across Lake Superior to its final port in Sault Ste. Marie. In his later years, he also enjoyed trips as a guest aboard the William G. Mather, Arthur M. Anderson and Charles M. Beeghly.
Tom died
on April 27, 1994, at his home in the Sault, just as the 1994, 35th
anniversary edition of “Know Your Ships” rolled off the press.
Roger LeLievre - Editor & Publisher
Roger LeLievre is the present editor and publisher of "Know Your Ships." Born
in Sault Ste. Marie (Mi), he makes his home in Ann Arbor (Mi).
His lifelong interest in Great Lakes vessels started in the 1960s when, as a child, he spent summers at his grandparents' cottage on the banks of the St. Mary's River just downriver from the Soo Locks.
During high school, he worked as a tour guide on the Museum Ship Valley Camp and Sault Ste. Marie, and shipped out on the Ford Motor Co. ore boat Ernest R. Breech for a season in 1973. A graduate of Central Michigan University with degrees in journalism and photojournalism, he is a long-time reporter, page designer and editor for The Ann Arbor News. Besides "Know Your Ships," he is a founder and contributing editor to “Great Laker” magazine. He is an associate member of the International Ship Masters’ Association and a board member of the Marine Historical Society of Detroit and of Great Lakes and Seaway Shipping Online, Inc..
Matt Miner - Researcher
Matt is a Michigan-based vessel enthusiast and photographer.
Gerry Ouderkirk - Researcher
Capt. Gerry Ouderkirk is a familiar sight in the Toronto harbor.
George Wharton - Researcher
George Wharton is a long-time vessel enthusiast who lives in Strathroy, Ontario. As well as "Know Your Ships" activities, he does website editing and research work as an archivist and Publications Editor for Great Lakes & Seaway Shipping Online Inc. the parent entity of www.boatnerd.com. He also writes a column for the Great Lakes Seaway Review/Great Laker quarterly magazine. George is an associate member of the International Ship Masters' Association and serves on the Advisory Council of the Marine Historical Society of Detroit. George's wife Darlene shares his love of ships and often accompanies him on trips to the water's edge..
Wade P. Streeter and Franz VonRiedel -
Researchers
Capt. Wade
P. Streeter can often be found at the helm of the tug Magnetic in the Detroit
and Rouge rivers. Franz VonRiedel is a Duluth-area tug operator and
enthusiast.
John Vournakis - Researcher
A
Sault Ste. Marie native, John is retired after a long Great Lakes career
sailing for the U.S. Steel fleet (where his job as watchman provided an
enviable vantage point for marine photography!). He is a distinguished Great
Lakes marine photographer and historian and a long-time member of the Marine
Historical Society of Detroit and the Great Lakes Maritime Institute.
Jody Aho - Researcher
Jody is a lifelong Duluth resident and boatwatcher. He sailed one summer as a
deck cadet aboard the Cason J. Callaway while attending the Great Lakes
Maritime Academy. He is a board member of the Lake Superior Marine Museum
Association and the author of the book "The Steamer William A. Irvin, Queen of
the Silver Stackers."