American Literature of the Sea and Great Lakes

SNIDER, CHARLES HENRY JEREMIAH (1879-1971). A Canadian* born in Sherwood, Ontario, Charles Snider first sailed the Great Lakes* at age eleven and later worked in its merchant marine. During a fifty-year career at the Toronto Telegram, Snider researched, explored, and became a master historian of the Great Lakes, even navigating, as his own skipper, the routes of the early Lakes explorer Rene Robert Cavelier, de la Salle. Noted for locating eleven vessels sunk in the War of 1812, Snider wrote extensively on that era. His knowledge of marine craft, terms, technology, and history permeates his work.

Snider’s The Story of the Nancy and Other Eighteen-Twelvers (1926) presents the Lakes’ darkly mysterious, yet romantically picturesque, nature. Other works include a weekly newspaper column, “Schooner Days,” In the Wake of the Eighteen-Twelvers (1913), Under the Red Jack (1928), and Tarry Breeks and Velvet Garters (1958), a fictional Great Lakes adventure set during the days of French sail.

Donald P. Curtis