American Literature of the Sea and Great Lakes

HAVIGHURST, WALTER [EDWIN] (1901-1994). Walter Havighurst is known primarily as a historian of the Midwest, but he also wrote fiction, much of it influenced by his experiences at sea in the 1920s. Havighurst worked as a deckhand on Great Lakes* freighters and Pacific lumber schooners before going to college and served in the merchant marine before completing graduate school. His first novel, Pier 17 (1935), is about a young sailor with ambitions of writing fiction who gets caught up in a shipping strike in Seattle. The Quiet Shore (1937) and Signature of Time (1949) both describe life on Lake Erie. No Homeward Course (1941) concerns a German sea raider. The Long Ships Passing (1942), a regional history of the Great Lakes for which he is best known, draws on his deckhand experiences aboard Great Lakes freighters.

Peter H. McCracken