By Rob Alway
Editor’s note: For the past several years, I have made it a personal mission to tell the stories of the Great Lakes maritime industry and, especially, the people who work aboard its vessels. As someone who has spent much of my career watching, photographing and studying these ships, I believe their stories deserve to be told.
Documenting the industry is important for preserving its history, but it is equally important for its future. Great Lakes shipping plays a vital role in our nation’s economy, and its continued success depends on attracting new generations of skilled mariners.
Recently, I spent four days aboard the SS Wilfred Sykes, a 1949 steam-powered freighter operated by Central Marine Logistics. This series explores the ship, the work it performs and, most importantly, the people who keep it sailing.
ABOARD THE SS WILFRED SYKES — At 22 years old, Gavyn Crawford is one of the younger sailors aboard the SS Wilfred Sykes, but spend a few minutes talking with him and it becomes apparent that his interests belong to another era of Great Lakes shipping.
Crawford, of Ingalls, near Menominee, has a deep interest in Great Lakes maritime history. In some ways, he is nearly a walking piece of that history.
His wardrobe frequently pays homage to vintage Great Lakes shipping companies, old beer brands and even some long-gone cigarette brands — the sort of logos and names that once appeared around shipyards, waterfront taverns and aboard Great Lakes vessels decades before Crawford was born.
For Crawford, though, the interest goes well beyond clothing.
“I’ve always been really history orientated,” he said. “I’ve always liked the boats and a lot of history associated with the boats.”
That connection to history also runs through his family.
Crawford’s family has roots around Cedar River, Michigan, a small community along Green Bay in Menominee County that once served the region’s lumber industry. Schooners, schooner barges and lumber hookers called there to load cedar, pulpwood and other forest products.
Crawford grew up hearing those stories and seeing evidence of that maritime past.
His great-grandmother painted schooners and lumber hookers that visited Cedar River, and Crawford still has many of those paintings along with historic photographs of the harbor.
“I was always one of the ones that loved looking at genealogy,” he said.
Growing up in Michigan’s western Upper Peninsula also meant that working boats were never far away. Menominee and neighboring Marinette, Wisconsin, have long been connected to shipbuilding, while Escanaba remains one of the Great Lakes’ traditional ore ports.
Crawford graduated from Stephenson High School in 2022. By then, he had already begun finding his way into maritime work.
He started working around 2020, first getting aboard commercial fishing boats through family friends. He also worked around the marine industry in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, including Sarter Marine Towing and work associated with ship launches at Marinette.
Commercial fishing provided the next step.
“My first time out on an actual commercial boat was through a family friend of ours,” Crawford said. “I just went from bigger boats from there, made my way up the ladder, so to say, up the hawsepipe.”
Once Crawford earned his Merchant Mariner Credential, he began looking toward the larger Great Lakes vessels.
The Sykes was actually his first choice, but there was no opening at the time. Crawford instead went to work for Great Lakes Fleet. After a couple seasons there, an opportunity aboard the Sykes finally opened.
He joined the vessel in June 2024.
Since then, Crawford has also spent time aboard the Joseph L. Block, but he returned to the Sykes and has been permanently assigned to the vessel since March 2026.
Crawford is an able-bodied seaman utility deckhand and day worker. He is also one of the vessel’s higher-seniority deckhands and frequently serves as a relief wheelsman or relief bosun.
Given the choice, he prefers the pilothouse.
“Most of the time, I take the wheeling gig,” Crawford said.
And unlike many young sailors who eventually hope to earn a mate’s license and continue advancing through the officer ranks, Crawford already has a pretty good idea where he would like his career to take him.
He wants to become a career wheelsman.
“I love wheeling the boats,” he said. “I love the wheeling gig. I love this boat.”
That position has a long tradition on Great Lakes vessels. Wheelsmen stand watches in the pilothouse and steer the ship under the direction of the captain or mate. For Crawford, there is an appeal in becoming one of those experienced sailors who spends a career at the wheel rather than viewing the position merely as another step toward the next license.
The Great Lakes also offer something Crawford said he would not have found sailing deep sea: proximity to home.
“You can still get off at the docks and the ports and go up the street, you know, and visit friends and family,” he said. “That’s a big reason why I decided not to do deep sea. I wanted to stay on the Great Lakes so I could still see friends and family close by.”
Crawford’s interest in maritime history has also connected him with people far beyond his own vessel. He has worked with Great Lakes historical organizations, particularly the Marine Historical Society of Detroit, and has assisted with some of its projects.
Those connections have helped create a network throughout the Great Lakes fleet.
There is a running joke, Crawford said, that he seems to know somebody aboard nearly every boat.
But behind the joke is something he believes is important about working on the Great Lakes.
“You build them connections because out here, where everyone’s a family, it doesn’t matter what boat you’re on, what company,” he said. “You always look out for each other’s backs.”
Crawford is also part of a small group of relatively young Upper Peninsula sailors aboard the Sykes. Oiler Chase Wehner is also from the Menominee area while wheelsman Adam Larson of Escanaba is currently serving as interim steward’s assistant.
Larson is a second-generation Sykes sailor. His father spent his career as a wheelsman aboard the vessel and was among the last Inland Steel sailors to serve aboard the ship.
For Crawford, those connections between generations are especially appropriate.
He works aboard a vessel launched in 1949, studies the ships and sailors who came before him, collects pieces of maritime history and surrounds himself with reminders of an earlier Great Lakes.
But his own story aboard the lakes is only beginning.
At 22, Crawford has already progressed from commercial fishing boats to major Great Lakes freighters and into the pilothouse of the Wilfred Sykes.
And if things go according to plan, that is exactly where he intends to stay — behind the wheel of a Great Lakes ship.
Next: Aboard the Wilfred Sykes: Part 7. Cadet Filson sets his sights on becoming a master
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This story is copyrighted 2026 by Sable Points Media.