If you’ve driven by Lake St. Clair recently, you likely noticed the icy sheet covering its surface, stretching toward Canada. Perhaps you noticed a freighter or two, creeping along the horizon.
These freighters cruise up and down the Detroit River, returning from or headed to the Great Lakes. But what happens when those freighters need something from the mainland? It turns out these boats utilize a unique mail service in Detroit that has been operating for more than 150 years.
The service is offered by the J.W. Westcott Company, which delivers goods from the port of Detroit to the passing freighters via a bucket tied to a rope. Captain J.W. Westcott founded the operation in 1874.
A new exhibit at the Dossin Great Lakes Museum offers a thorough glimpse into the history of the company and Captain Westcott’s integral role in Detroit’s maritime industry. Westcott himself grew up in a family that had ties to the Great Lakes and its maritime concerns — and at just 20 years old, he became its youngest captain.
“He learns the ins and outs and a lot of the headaches involved with piloting, in his case, steamships on the Great Lakes. And so there comes a time when he decides to put one of his ideas into practice, and that’s taking orders to ships as they’re moving up and down the river” said Bill Pringle, curator for the J.W. Westcott Company exhibit currently at the Dossin Great Lakes Museum on Belle Isle.
Westcott devised a plan to meet boats passing through the port with any mail intended for them. Someone onboard would simply lower a bucket to Westcott who would place the mail into the pail to be hauled up. In the same way, outgoing mail reports could be transferred from the boat to Westcott.
His system was an important part of ensuring shipments weren’t slowed down. Unpredictable weather conditions and broken equipment could cause delays in scheduled shipments, and boats depended on telegrams from Lake Erie ports to Detroit briefing them on important information that might hinder their ability to do business.
“These boats would stop in Detroit and anchor and send someone on shore to get the orders from the telegraph office. And, obviously, this was a pretty colossal break in their timeline," explained Pringle.
Time was money in shipping, and Captain Westcott was intent on eradicating this disruption in the ships’ journeys.
“He partners with these shipping companies to gather the orders for where they’re going to be docking ahead of time,” according to Pringle. From there, he rowed himself out into the river to meet the passing steamships, threw them a rope, did his best to stay inside the boat as it got jerked up out of the water, and deposited telegrams into a pail which they hauled onboard.
For a while, it was a one-man show.
“In those early days, it was Captain Westcott by himself, 24/7,” Pringle said. “River traffic was day and night, so he basically only got time to rest at the dock in the rowboat where he napped in between needing to go out and take out orders to these boats.”
Eventually, he hired other people to help run the mail business. The business would eventually acquire a mail contract, but not until the 1940s when Westcott became the sole agent of mail delivery on the Detroit River.
As time went on and technology advanced, some of the J.W. Westcott Company’s communication services were not as imperative as they once were. But the company has remained a steadfast agent in adapting services like Amazon and DoorDash for passing sailors.
“They advertise, ‘Hey, if your ship is passing by Detroit and you really want a Detroit style pizza or coney dogs, we’ll go get it for you,’” Pringle said.
The exhibit, "Mail by the Pail: The J.W. Westcott Company," is now open in the Robert M. Dossin Gallery and runs through August.
