built, the St. Paul, the Keweenaw, the Mineral Rock and the Phil Sheridan. Career Westcott was master of steamers until 1873 when he established the first range lights at Grosse Pointe, Michigan. He also developed the first lightship on Lake St. Clair in Michigan by buying an old flat-bottomed boat and put a light on it as a guiding light for ships on the lake. These boats then were range indicators on Windmill Point as a guiding light to help ships avoid going aground at Belle Isle and Peche Island, a Canadian island in the Detroit River. Wescott in the 1870s was working in Detroit as an agent representative for Pittsburgh shipping of Pickands Mather Company and other steamship lines. He established a marine reporting firm in 1874. He saw a need for reporting information about ship orders to captains navigating the Detroit River. He also passed messages back and forth to crew members and their families and friends. He would meet large vessels in the Detroit River with his row boat to relay messages written on paper. He charged 25 cents per item, a substantially higher fee than the post office was charging for a piece of mail. People did not mind paying this amount, as it was a needed service that the United States post office was not providing. In addition to communications, the service provided shipping trade information and national and international news. Westcott's service developed into a mail-in-the-pail technique first done in the Detroit River on June 17, 1895. The following procedure saw a man in a rowboat towed out by the Florence B. power boat to meet an oncoming freighter traveling down the Detroit River. This man then threw a line up to a sailor on the large vessel, who would catch it and secure it to the deck. The man in the rowboat would wait until the slack played out and the tight rope then pulled the rowboat in tow at the same speed as the freighter. The mail was transferred between the vessels by a pail on a rope that was lowered from the large ship to Westcott's rowboat. It was then pulled up back up onto the large ship after the mail was exchanged in the pail. After that the rowboat was released from the towing line of the large freighter, it was subsequently rowed to the next oncoming freighter to do