William L. Mercereau

Loading salt into a Pere Marquette Railway freight boxcar for shipping and transporting

SS Pere Marquette No. 22 carferry
at loading slip in Ludington, Michigan

Pere Marquette #21 carferry leaving Ludington, Michigan

Mercereau was born at Union, New York, on June 9, 1866.[1] As a boy of fourteen he worked part-time in a drug store in his hometown.[2] When he was 18 in 1884 he went to Montana and Idaho, where he worked in drug stores as a general laborer. He later moved back east to Saginaw, Michigan, and as a young man of 105 pounds (48 kg) he started as a coal stoker on locomotives for the Flint and Pere Marquette Railroad.[3] After just more than a year at this job he had increased his weight by 20 pounds (9.1 kg).[4]

Mercereau then took on a job associated with bulk shipping of material in steamships which the railroad company operated out of Ludington, Michigan.[2] He was a ship's clerk working out of the company's office at Bay City, Michigan. The first steamship he worked on was the break-bulk steamship Pere Marquette No. 2, that carried large quantities of salt in bulk. He later worked on the steamships Pere Marquette No. 3 and No. 5 for a few years.[2] These vessels were handled by freight crews that took the material off railroad boxcars and transferred it into the bulk carrier vessel tanks to be shipped across Lake Michigan to Wisconsin. There another freight crew would unload the steamship vessel tanks and transfer back onto railroad cars. This was a costly, labor-intensive, time-consuming process for each break-bulk transfer that took away profits.[4]

Mercereau then quit working for the railroad company and went to college in St. Louis, Missouri, to obtain a business degree.[3] After graduation he returned to Saginaw in 1897 and became an assistant manager in the railroad company's main office. In August 1898, he was promoted as assistant to the superintendent of marine operations at Ludington.[3] After a few months on the job he took over the position of the previous superintendent.[2][4]

in the 1890s, technology was introducing the idea of just loading the complete railroad freight car onto the ship instead of transferring its contents to ship holding tanks. The package steamships with bulk holding tanks had carried freight this way since 1882, but this antiquated technology became obsolete. The railroad car ferry then came about, and the first ones were wooden craft. In 1897 the first all-steel carferry was introduced – the SS Pere Marquette (later given the number 15). Mercereau organized and managed this new state-of-the-art technology for the railroad company. He then started ordering more steel carferries to add to the company's existing fleet of wooden carferry ships.[5] He became the Superintendent of Steamships for the Pere Marquette Railway in 1899.[4][6]

The next steel carferry for the railroad company was the SS Pere Marquette No. 17, which was basically the same as PM No. 15 except with more extensive cabin accommodations. Mercereau completely planned and oversaw the construction of this steel vessel that was built in a shipyard in Cleveland in 1900. His wife Louise christened the ship in 1901 when it was officially launched.[2]

The Flint and Pere Marquette Railroad company meanwhile in 1901 acquired another railroad company that already operated a wooden carferry.[7] This carferry originally was called the SS Muskegon and but was renamed as the SS Pere Marquette No. 16 as the second carferry in its fleet.[1] Mercereau ordered and supervised the construction of another steel carferry that was given the title Pere Marquette No. 18. With business growing rapidly, he ordered two more steel carferries. These became SS Pere Marquette No. 19 and SS Pere Marquette No. 20 that were also built in Cleveland. Mercereau eventually had built the SS Pere Marquette No. 21 and No. 22 and other all steel carferries.[5][8]

Mercereau engineered and supervised the development of the Pere Marquette fleet of train carferries for the railroad company.[1] He was known in the railroad industry as the "Father of the Fleet" since he gave 31 years of service to the Pere Marquette Railway.[9][10] Mercereau became the organizer and operator of the world's largest carferry fleet during his working career.[11] He was also known as the 'father of the railroad on the water' because he brought to fruition the idea of loading the complete railroad car onto cross-lake ferries for transportation as a complete loaded freight car unit.[12] That increased overall profits for the commercial transportation industry in general in the long-term.[13] He had ultimately developed Ludington into the home port of the world's largest carferry fleet.[6]

Mercereau retired on September 1, 1931, from the railroad company after a 50-year working career.[14] He died at the age of 91 on the evening of June 22, 1957, in Dunedin, Florida.[2][15]

• Hilton, George Woodman (December 2003). The Great Lakes Car Ferries. Montevallo Historical Press, Inc. ISBN 978-0-9658624-3-1.
• Read, Frederic (1939). Tracks. C & O Railway Company.

• Pere Marquette Service of Pere Marquette Railroad (1915), chapter on Railroad across the Lake / How the Pere Marquette Handles Its Interstate Freight Business.