Chamber raffle offers winners a special boat ride

Tickets available at Marine City locations

By Barb Pert Templeton

If boarding a small boat that travels across local waters delivering items to large vessels sounds like a neat way to spend an afternoon the opportunity has arrived in Marine City.

The local chamber of commerce is hosting a raffle and for $20, ticket buyers have the chance to win a boat adventure for four on board a small mail delivery boat owned by the J.W. Wescott Company in Detroit.

Laura Merchant, the director of the Marine City Area Chamber of Commerce, is a friend of Sam Buchanan, the general manager of J.W. Westcott Company. She said she contacted him to see about hosting a raffle that would offer a free ride on board one of his boats. She said Buchanan was happy to help and agreed to welcome the winners onto one of their boats this summer.

“Sam was open to it and said they could even do something special and make a mail delivery on the water,” Merchant said.

The raffle tickets are on sale now and can be purchased at the following locations in Marine City: The Sweet Tooth of Marine City, the Chamber of Commerce office, MC Marketplace and The Mariner.

The raffle drawing will be held on May 15 at 8:30 a.m. and the winners can then connect with the Wescott Company and pick a date for their ride in June, July or August.

“We’re excited about this. I always thought the tugboat was cool but this is awesome too,” Merchant said, referring to a previous chamber raffle whose top prize was a tug boat ride.

Proceeds from tickets sales will go to the chamber and be used to reinvest in the community with marketing initiatives for the betterment of the business community.

A rich history

The J.W. Westcott Company is located in the city of Detroit at Riverside Park and they have regular access to the Detroit River where they service passing ships.

The company’s website at jwwescott.com states the company was established in 1874 with the story actually beginning in 1848 with the birth of John Ward Westcott, into an illustrious Michigan shipping family.

The family, including uncles and John’s father, owned a number of shipping lines and while he was growing up the youngster worked in his father’s boat yard and went on to be a cabin boy on one of their liners called the Ste. Forester. By age 20, John earned his master’s papers, becoming the youngest captain on the Great Lakes. At the time, according the history link on the J. W. Wescott website, a lack of reliable forms of communication between shipping companies and their vessels was a major problem. Ever-changing weather conditions, congestion in ports, breakdowns in equipment and other unforeseen complications anywhere along the Great Lakes could spell financial disaster for a company. John Westcott sought to remedy this communication problem by establishing his company in the Port of Detroit in 1874.

The marine reporting agency John founded would field destination and dock information from shipping companies and deliver them to passing vessels from his dock on Belle Isle. The modern marvel of engineering – a line tied to a bucket – would be thrown over the side of the passing vessel. Westcott would place communique inside and the bucket would quickly hoist back up. This string of events would come to be known and ‘mail in the pail’. Over the years, the business grew and services expanded to more than just company reporting. In 1948, the J.W. Westcott became an official U.S. Postal Service mail boat and soon would earn the world’s first non-military floating postal ZIP code—48222. Today, J.W. Westcott continues to serve the Great Lakes marine community providing everything from mail and sundries to your latest delivery from Amazon and even food deliveries from restaurants in Detroit.

To find out more about the J. W. Westcott Company visit them online at jwwestcott.com.