Imagine you’re a parent and your daughters, still in their late teens, announce they want to work on Great Lakes freighters.
The deckhands usually are exclusively male. Perhaps it’s a 70,000-ton coal carrier with grime everywhere. The middle of Ontario or Huron or Superior can seem like the ocean when wind-driven swells reach several meters. The only thing between you and the bottom of the lake is a 500-foot long rust bucket of a cargo ship.
That was the adventure that Catherine Schmuck, and sister Lorraine, undertook upon Catherine’s graduation from Brockville Collegiate Institute in 1981. Today, Catherine is recognized as a celebrated cook, restaurateur, author and Internet star – the Ship to Shore Chef.
She works as a relief cook on cargo ships sailing the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway, feeding crews of 20 to 30, updating her website (https://www.shiptoshorechef.com) and Facebook page, and publishing. She has authored two cookbooks, written a children’s book, and issued a calendar.
While Schmuck was aboard the Atlantic Huron in Lake Huron bound for Chicago with a load of salt, she’ll be in Ogdensburg signing books and greeting patrons from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday, Sept. 13 in the first-floor lobby of Claxton Hepburn Medical Center.
Her love for the Seaway and Great Lakes began as a child. She recalled her Sundays, strolling along Block Island on Brockville’s waterfront, eating ice cream and watching ships.
“How did my parents agree to let me go sailing?’’ she pondered. “My mom and dad married in Germany, then immigrated to Canada where they knew no one, didn’t know the language, and didn’t have a job. Adventure is in our DNA; how could they discourage us?’’
Catherine and Lorraine enrolled in a nine-week certification course in 1981 but were pulled after a few weeks to undertake jobs on ships. Canada Steamship Lines placed Catherine on the Frontenac and Lorraine on the Fort William, renamed the Stephen B. Roman. They worked on several ships and remained on the water until 1994.
“My parents never worried,’’ Catherine said. “We were in fairly new ships. Before I joined the ships, I worked in a bar so they knew I could handle the boys.’’
Within a few years, Catherine had worked her way up to head cook, but she left to open “Creperie Catherine’’ at the Mont Tremblant ski resort north of Montreal in the Laurentian Mountains. Her restaurant remained open for 25 years before she returned to the galleys of the iron behemoths in 2019.
Her job entails menu planning, ordering supplies and cooking. She rises early, writes, prepares lunch, breaks for a walk on the deck, then cooks dinner.
“I am a relief cook so I go to many different ships to give the regular cook a break,’’ she said. “I like a casual environment. I always tell the second cook not to worry about how many pots I use because I will wash my own pots and pans.’’
There are a few absolutes on a freighter. The primary non-negotiable is that every Saturday is steak night. Each Friday, she batters homemade fish and chips, and serves pizza and chicken wings regularly. Her butter chicken is a staple, but the crew’s favorite remains her fresh, homemade bread.
Catherine and Lorraine packaged many of her recipes and Great Lakes stories into a 280-page cookbook, Ship to Shore Chef: Recipes & Stories As I Sail Through My Day. It has sold more than 7,000 copies. A second Ship to Shore Chef cookbook, subtitled More Recipes & Stories As We Navigate Healthier Eating, includes recipes without flour or sugar, part of her weight-loss regimen. Lastly, the sisters published a 50-page, illustrated children’s book, The Stowaway Adventures, the tale of Mitchell Mouse as he sails through the Great Lakes and Seaway.
Schmuck has her favorites along the shipping lanes.
“I love sailing through the Thousand Islands and past Brockville, but there is something very beautiful and mysterious about Lake Superior,’’ she said. “She’s in charge and has a temper, so there is a certain respect to sail on Lake Superior.’’
Her parents, Hannelore and Heinz, provided her fondest memories.
She would beg the captain to blow the whistle whenever she sailed past their riverside home. In later years, her parents moved into Brockville near Block Island and they would wave from their window.
The Iroquois Lock near Waddington was a regular meeting spot, starting in the late 1980s.
“This is back in the day when you could drive to the lock, park your car right there, and walk down as the ship approached the lock. You could talk over the ship’s side and get in a 30-to-40-minute visit.’’
“When the ship came to a stop in the lock, we would lower a bucket over the side and my parents would fill the bucket with goodies and my mail. On one occasion, I was waiting for my parents to arrive and they didn’t come, so I went back into the galley as we pulled out of the lock. Not long after the galley phone rang and it was the captain summoning me to the wheelhouse, a sacred place that I went to on invitation only. He said your mother is on the ship’s radio (years before cell phones). In her very cute German accent she said, ‘Cathy! Can you hear me? We missed the boat and I baked you brownies.’
“I answered my mom, that not only can I hear you, but every other ship in the area on this channel can hear you.’’
That memory makes Schmuck smile.
“I can hear her voice. They started bringing three dozen doughnuts from Tim Hortons for the crew, and a box of Timbits for the lockmaster and his crew. Those were fun times.’’
The lock is fenced these days, but the warm memories endure.
“I can almost hear the echoes of laughter of the many visits there,’’ she reminisced. “When my mom passed in 2023, I was on a ship the AlogTerra and the first opportunity to get off was in Iroquois Lock. I thought it so appropriate to get off the ship in that special place. It was raining as the skies cried with me.’’
Morristown native Jim Holleran is a retired teacher and sports editor from Rochester. Reach him at jimholleran29@gmail.com or view past columns under “Reflections of River Rat’’ at https://hollerangetsitwrite.com/blog/
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