CHAPTER 1
Fish Boats to Speedboats
The Alma F. was the first Shepler boat. She was a humble fish boat, and William Henry Schepler probably wasn't her first owner. He was a fisherman back in the days when the Straits area teemed with whitefish, trout, and walleyes. There were so many fish that the Indians described the Straits area as "the birthplace of all fishes." William's son, also named William Henry, but nicknamed Cap, recalled working for his father. He started by cleaning fish and casting gill nets from the Alma F. Back around the turn of the century, a Straits fisherman built his dock by constructing boxes of eight-foot cedar logs. The boxes were floated out into the harbor and arranged in a straight line ten to twelve feet apart. Then each box was filled with stones and sunk. More cedar logs were used to attach the boxes, and planks were nailed on top to form the deck. In the winter, Cap worked with his father, cutting ice and storing it in their ice house, packed in sawdust, for sale to the railroads and the local butcher shops.
Then, when Cap was fourteen, his father bought their first little boat, and they both worked aboard her. Cap recalled, "An old Indian fisherman and I used to run a trap net rig. In the summers, we'd catch tons of fish and sell them to retail and wholesale places."
Ken Teysen, who owns Teysen's Gift Shop in Mackinaw City, knew the original William and describes work aboard a fish boat: "It was so cold that the men had to wear long johns most of the year. Their hands took a beating from constantly handling the wet, cold, heavy nets: they were arthritic and deformed."
Cap told Ken about one terrifying adventure. He was on board, dressed in boots and slicker, when he suddenly fell overboard. He wasn't missed for half an hour. "I just waited for my dad to pick me up," said Cap. "I knew he would." Cap's dad drove the Chief Wawatam, the railroad ferry that ran between Mackinaw City and St. Ignace. Because the Chief was a railroad ferry, she had to run year-round, requiring her to break through ice. She was designed as an ice-breaker, using the latest technology of the time that had been developed in the Straits of Mackinac. The Chief Wawatam was nicknamed "The Bull of the Woods" because she had two very powerful steam engines. William Henry also was captain of the Algomah II, the ferry that carried passengers and freight between Mackinaw City and Mackinac Island. The ferry service was started in 1881 by "Hap" Arnold, using the Algomah I, the predecessor of the Algomah II.
The Algomah II was two hundred feet long, went nine to ten miles an hour, and was powered by a three-stage steam engine that was stoked with coal. Henry Ford was said to have installed the engine. Certainly, when the Algomah II was retired, Ford took the engine to Greenfield Village.
At that time, the Algomah I's superstructure was cut off, and the old ferry was turned into a barge. Eventually, it was sunk to protect the shoreline. Then when the Mackinac Bridge was being built, concrete contractor Merritt-Chapman and Scott built their dock over the barge. Today, Shepler's main office is located on that dock right above the Algomah I. Cap got his first lessons in navigation and seamanship aboard his father's fish tug and drove the Algomah II himself as well as being wheelsman on the Chief and the state boats. Frank Davis, who was an engineer on the Algomah II, described Cap as "a good skipper and a good brother to work with." Cap's real brother, Bob Schepler, worked as captain on the George A. Sloan lake freighter and kept the original spelling of the family name.
In 1930, Cap married Margaret Jamison. Ken Teyson knew the Jamisons and all their many children. Margaret, nicknamed Marge, who was the oldest, a woman described by all who knew her as dynamic and feisty. She and Cap made a complementary pair, each bringing character traits that were vital to their marriage and the success of their business. Cap was easygoing and charming, a hard worker who played just as hard. Marge's youngest sister, Ellen Eastman, who was a flower girl at their wedding, says, "Marge always had a lot of energy; she knew what she wanted and went after it. She was the backbone of the business." About Cap, Ellen said, "He didn't know an enemy, and he never met a stranger."
After their marriage, Cap and Marge moved to Wyandotte, downriver from Detroit, because Cap got a job as captain of the Barbette, a big, beautiful yacht that belonged to the Hiram Walker distillery family of Windsor, Ontario. Bill remembers his dad telling him about working aboard the Barbette. "Everything was shined, polished, cleaned, and scrubbed. The people wanted these jobs to be just perfect. It was the culture of that area." A well-stocked liquor cabinet was in the forepeak of Barbette. When they went from Canada to the American shore, they had to go through customs, but they didn't declare the stock on board. It seems that Cap knew a friendly customs inspector with a taste for fine Canadian whiskey. One day, Cap slipped him the usual bottle, and the official carefully tucked it into his back pocket. As the two walked down the gangplank, the officer slipped and fell on his back. He cautiously reached around, felt something wet, and said, "God—I hope that's blood!"
Later, Cap became captain of the Alice F., another big, beautiful yacht belonging to the Fisher family of Detroit's famous Fisher Body Company. The Alice F. had ten or twelve staterooms, and Cap headed a crew of two deck hands, a chef, two busboys, and a chief engineer. She was built of mahogany and teak with a white-painted hull and every luxury. Bill remembers one of his dad's favorite stories. "One afternoon, they were at Harbor Beach, preparing for an afternoon cocktail cruise. Dad was apprehensive about the weather. At the time, the only way to predict weather was to look at the sky and the barometer. Dad could read them well. Fishermen are on the water all the time and learn all the signs. Dad didn't like the looks of the clouds, and when he tapped the barometer, it dropped abruptly. He knew they were in for a bad blow. He got all the lines tied to the dock and even put the anchor line out. But A. J. Fisher was determined to go and insisted that they leave on schedule. Dad said, `You go if you want to; I'm staying onshore.' Fisher was furious. The wind came up at hurricane force. It was blowing so hard that four of the lines snapped, but they stayed safely tied to the dock. When it was all over, A.J.'s father, Walter, told his son, `Whatever Captain Shepler says, you believe. It's gospel.'"
Cap could take the Fishers wherever they wanted to go. His captain's license was for all the waters of the Great Lakes and their tributaries, and he had an ocean offshore amendment, so he could take the boat to Florida.
When World War II broke out, Cap enlisted in the Merchant Marine and served aboard the Sultana, a six-hundred-foot lake freighter. Cap worked four hours on and four off with very little time on shore. Years later, Bill went aboard a replica of a freighter like the Sultana and was appalled by the cramped and Spartan living quarters. He added, "And there was nobody there to help you in a storm."
At home, Marge raised their two children, William Richard, born in 1932, and Penny, born in 1937. Contributing to the war effort, as did most Americans, Marge planted a victory garden, had a flock of leghorn hens, and made all the children's clothes. Bill remembers that when a rubber band broke, she would tie it together instead of reaching for a new one.
After the war was over, Cap saw freighters and private yachts being scrapped and decided that Lake shipping wasn't a very promising career, especially for a man with a family. In the spring of 1945, Cap was discharged from the Merchant Marine and became the captain of the Algomah II, which was running between Mackinaw City and Mackinac Island. Marge, who had stayed back in Wyandotte, decided to visit Cap, whom she hadn't seen in a couple of months. While they were together there, they began to see potential consistent with their business and personal interests and talents. Cap was driving the Algomah II, young Bill was parking cars, and Marge had started a hot dog stand.
Bill, just twelve or thirteen, wasn't sure what his father intended to do up north. All he knew was that his father was going to find a job there and that Mackinaw City was a great place to swim. Bill and his friends would skinny dip and dive off the twenty-foot-high railroad dock. That was a great life for him. Cap moved to Mackinaw City for the summer but kept the house in Wyandotte for the winter.
The once-prosperous fishing business was defunct. Deadly sea lampreys had made their way through the Welland Canal to the Great Lakes, where they adapted all too easily to fresh water. The lampreys attached themselves to healthy fish and sucked the life out of them. Eventually, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) developed a program of poisoning the streams where the lampreys spawned, but it was almost too late; the fish population plummeted, and it took decades to recover.
Cap's dad and mother still lived in Mackinaw City, in a house near the docks where he had leased property for his fishing business from the Michigan Central Railroad. Cap took over the lease. The property was conveniently located at the foot of the railroad dock, near the state boats dock. There was room to park cars for the ferry passengers: Bill's grandfather, William, had been running a parking business on a small scale, and Cap decided to expand on the idea. He put up signs and charged thirty-five cents a day or seventy-five cents for twenty-four hours. He remodeled part of his dad's old fish net building into a home for the family with two bedrooms, bath, kitchen, and living room.
All his life, Cap was daring and took chances to succeed, but he always did so with the full backing of Marge, who thoroughly investigated and approved every project and expenditure. It was a winning combination.
Now Cap and Marge had another idea. The ferries were so slow that people waiting to cross often stood around for a long time with nothing to do. They turned the rest of the fish net building into a snack bar. She did the cooking: hamburgers and hot dogs, coffee and soft drinks, and her own baked goods. Bill's friend, Jack Kerby, remembers those pies. "They were her specialty, and the tourists really grabbed them up." Marge even planted a rhubarb patch for her rhubarb pies. She washed laundry every day and hung it by the building to dry.
Bill was put in charge of parking the cars. He was sometimes helped by friends like Jack. Bell's Fishery was next door to Shepler's new enterprise, and little Donny Bell, five years old, became Bill's shadow. He was a little guy with a speech impediment, always dressed in a cowboy outfit, who thought Bill's job waving cars into place was especially desirable. Bill finally gave into his pleadings and allowed him to give it a try. "How much do I owe you?" asked the customer.
"Firty-five cents," lisped Donny proudly. Bill and Jack cracked up.
On another day, Donny got a chance to share a rare treat. Algomah's freight came in on trucks or by train. One day, while they were unloading groceries for an island restaurant, two half-gallon tubs of vanilla ice cream fell into the harbor. After the Algomah crew left, Jack and Bill decided to go after them. It wasn't an easy job—the ice cream was at the bottom of the harbor, under twenty feet of water—but they finally managed to lug the tubs to the surface. Just as they were about to dig in, a woman customer gave them a chocolate cake she didn't want to take to the island. Donny Bell got a share, too, and none of them ever forgot the time they had all the vanilla ice cream and chocolate cake they could possibly eat.
Bill's memories aren't always so delicious. He used to play in an ancient sixteen-foot skiff. One day, his cousin Jim Anderson joined him, and they decided to take it out. Jim had had polio and couldn't use one arm, but that didn't stop them. Neither did the fact that they didn't have a set of oars. They decided that their one oar plus a piece of wood from an orange crate would do just fine. Their idea was to paddle out a hundred feet from the end of the dock to an old crib that had once been a part of the dock. Bill planned to grab one of the pilings to turn around and paddle back. However, the wind came up and took them much farther out. No matter how hard they paddled, they kept going farther and farther from safety. Finally, a man on shore saw their plight and came to their rescue in a leaky rowboat. Bill says ruefully, "I caught hell, and I deserved it. Jim couldn't even swim."
The parking lot and snack bar did well, and Cap came up with still another idea. He saw how it was possible to change the rather tedious forty-five-minute trip on the Algomah II into a swift and glamorous adventure. He remembered the quality of the yachts and envisioned a speedboat that was beautifully made and luxuriously appointed. He found a boat that had been owned by the Jefferson Beach Amusement Park. She was a twenty-eight-foot Hacker Craft with a six-cylinder Kermath engine, made of varnished mahogany with chromed hardware. The only problem was that she'd been neglected and was in sad shape. But Cap knew how to take care of a wood boat. He rebuilt the engine. He took out the screws, one at a time, and replaced them with bigger ones. He stripped off the layers of battered varnish, sanded and bleached the wood, and finished it with ten coats of fresh varnish. The hardware was replaced, and the leather seat cushions were recovered. The boat had new red carpeting, and a red carpet on the dock led to the boat. Cap and Marge named her Miss Penny for their daughter. Bill's friend Hap Dowler remembered her, "The Miss Penny was really fast; her top speed was thirty-five miles per hour, but she wasn't too good in rough water."
With the boat in beautiful shape, Cap and Marge worked out the details of their ferry service. The Algomah II made only five trips a day to the island. Cap could see that there was a real opening for a charter service that was completely flexible. Their customers would be people who had missed the last departure at 6:45 p.m. or needed immediate service. They ran charters at all hours, charging $12 for a boatload in the daytime and $15 at night. Mackinaw City businessman Stan McRae recalled the early days: "Shepler's would operate when other boats quit. I wonder how many hours (Cap) logged."
Bill says, "We'd go out when Arnold's was still tied to the dock—but safety always comes first. If we think it's not safe, we don't operate."
David Armour, deputy director of Mackinac State Historic Parks, crossed about three days a week for thirty-six years and began crossing with Cap. He says, "Cap was more interested in getting people aboard than running on a schedule. If a regular was late, he'd wait for him. I'd ask when the boat was going and Mrs. Shepler would read the schedule, but I'd say 'But when is it really going to leave?'"
Bill said, "It was tough. Mom cooked, Dad ran the speedboat, and I parked cars."
When Bill was sixteen, Cap encouraged him to get his captain's license. He had the necessary 365 four-hour days of experience working with his father, and Cap coached him on the questions he was likely to get. Before WWII, Cap had spent five days in Detroit's Federal Building, taking his captain's license tests that covered trigonometry, buoyancy, navigation, and a host of other information, so he had a good idea of what Bill would be up against. Bill took the test in St. Ignace, passed, and became one of the youngest captains on the Lakes.
At the time, Bill's real passion was football. With the ferry service running into October, Bill went down to Wyandotte in September and stayed so he could play for Roosevelt High. His aunt, Ellen Eastman, remembers that Bill ate and slept the game, was absolutely determined to win, and even yelled football plays in his sleep.
