The name J.W. Westcott is a maritime legend and tied to the only mail service on the Great Lakes. The company that runs it is one of the city’s oldest continually operating family businesses.

The nation’s first marine post office was chartered in Detroit on June 17, 1895. In an era before radios helped ships communicate with shore, this service provided important information to captains, not than just mail. Since 1948, mail delivery has been handled by the J.W. Westcott Co., which began serving freighters on the Detroit River in 1874.

The company was started by Capt. John Ward “J.W.” Westcott, who at 21 years old, was the youngest captain on the Great Lakes at the time. It would become “one of Detroit’s best known and least understood business houses” and was “formed because a man hated to see time wasted,” the Detroit Free Press wrote Jan. 15, 1958.

The story goes that Capt. Westcott had docked his package freighter, the Mineral Rock, and headed ashore to do some banking. With him off the ship, his boat and his crew sat idle, doing nothing and delaying its arrival at their destination. While trudging offshore and back again, he decided that there must be a better way for a ship’s master to take care of business without tying up the whole crew and vessel.

Things started out small, with the cap’n buying a wooden rowboat so he could paddle out to freighters to take paperwork - such as information on the captain’s next destinations, pick up their bank deposits for them and deliver other communiques - as the freighters passed through Detroit. Soon, Capt. Westcott expanded the business to include delivering packages and supplies - like coffee and toilet paper - to the ships, and in 1895, it began delivering mail, charging 25 cents a letter.

In 1948, when the Westcott Co. secured a contract with the U.S. Postal Service, and in 1963, was assigned the world’s only non-military floating ZIP code, 48222. “Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night” stops the Westcott Co., as freighters arrive all day and throughout the night. The only thing that can seemingly stop the little mail boat that could is a frozen river; the Westcott Co. operates from April through mid-December.

What’s in a name?

A brief explainer to avoid confusion is in order. The company’s founder, Capt. John Ward Westcott, had a son, whom he named John Ward Westcott - without the “junior” or the “second.” This younger J.W. Westcott joined his father in the family business in 1902, a year after he graduated from high school. Then he had a son - the grandson of the company’s founder - whom he named John Ward Westcott Jr., knowing firsthand the confusion that a lack of a “junior” can bring. This made the second man to bear the name John Ward Westcott Sr. All three of them would take the helm in running the company.

For those keeping score at home, that’s company founder John Ward Westcott (Dec. 19, 1848-Aug. 17, 1913); his son John Ward Westcott Sr. (Dec. 22, 1883-Jan. 14, 1958); and that man’s son John Ward Westcott Sr. (Feb. 5, 1910-Nov. 13, 1969).

Further complicating the story is that not only the business is named the J.W. Westcott Co., but there have been two vessels with the name, the J.W. Westcott and the J.W. Westcott II.

The first J.W. Westcott, the man, led the company as its president until his death in 1913 at age 64. He was such a revered figure that the flag at Old City Hall was lowered to half-staff, as were the flags on passing freighters in the river.

The second J.W. Westcott - again, the man, not the boat - inherited control of the company following his father’s passing, and ran it until his death at age 74 on Jan. 14, 1958, at Mt. Carmel Mercy Hospital following a stroke that he suffered at his home in Redford Township, Mich. The business then passed to his second wife, Mildred W. Simpson Westcott (1897-1989). Mildred Westcott’s stepson, J.W. Westcott Jr. (the grandson of the company’s founder), became vice president and general manager, serving in those roles until his death on Nov. 13, 1969, at age 59.

But the name game didn’t stop there.

J.W. Sr. and Mildred had a daughter together, whom they named Mildred J. “June” Westcott. (Apparently, once this family found a name they liked, they apparently stuck with it, thus creating a confusing family tree for genealogists and historians in the process.) June Westcott married Joseph J. Hogan, and it was he who would take over for his mother-in-law in 1971 and helm the company until his passing in 1995. After his death, his widow, June Westcott Hogan stepped in to run her grandfather’s company, leaving her job as a teacher in the Walled Lake Consolidated Schools to do so. In 1988, her son, Jim Hogan, became president, and his son, Jimmy, is ready to take over, currently serving as vice president.

Sail mail

In 1918, the firm finally fully switched to using motorboats for deliveries. It would also become something of a maritime valet service, shuttling crew members out to vessels for shift changes and the like.

The J.W. Westcott II was built in 1949 by Paasch Marine Service of Erie, Pa., for the Westcott Co. She is 45 feet long, 13 feet across and has a top speed of 15 knots, or about 17 miles per hour. She joined the first J.W. Westcott, which was built in 1880.

Each day, the Westcott and her fleetmates perform a dazzling ballet as she performs a delicate mid-river rendezvous with passing freighters on the Detroit River in order to deliver mail, supplies, crew members and even pizzas - all without either vessel stopping. The Westcott pulls up alongside the moving freighter, and then letters, packages or supplies are transferred by a bucket lowered down two or three stories from the freighters to the waiting Westcott - referred to as “mail by the pail.”

Families of crewmembers serving on Great Lakes freighters - sometimes for six-month stretches without returning home - can write to any vessel, care of the Marine Post Office, 12 Twenty-fourth St., Detroit, MI 48222, and the Westcott Co. crew will ensure it gets to the right sailor.

“The sacks (of mail) going up are always heavier than the sacks coming down,” J.W. Westcott III told the Detroit Free Press for an Oct. 18, 1953, article on the family enterprise. “Sailors are notoriously poor letter writers. They get a lot more mail than they send.”

Inside the Westcott Co.’s office along the river in Southwest Detroit in the shadow of the Ambassador Bridge, each ship sailing the Great Lakes has its own cubbie for mail. Crew on a ship can even order something online and have it delivered to the Westcott office and then have it brought out for a fee of $10 and up, depending on the package’s weight. It also handles food delivery - such as services from Door Dash and Grub Hub - for those sailors who are tired of the menu in the ship’s galley.

In 1960, the company landed a contract to provide transportation for both Canadian and American pilot changeovers (required by maritime law to happen in Detroit). If a crew member is going aboard, a rope ladder is lowered to the Westcott vessel, and the swap is made. This can be either to relieve a sailor whose tour or shift is over, or to staff ocean-going ships as they navigate the Lakes because every “salty” is required to sail the Great Lakes with an American or Canadian pilot on board for the duration.

To the newbie, it’s a harrowing sight, but one that the Westcott II and its fleetmates now perform a dozen or more times each day. But it’s not without its risks. For starters, the boats are both moving, so they need to be traveling at the same speed. The much larger freighters also create a suction that pulls the vessels together. If mail falls into the river, it’s fished out with nets.

In 2022, the Westcott Co. added a 42-foot tug for pilot transfers, which was launched in 1977 as the Huron Maid and until that point had served the Lake Pilots Association in Port Huron, Mich. After being acquired by the delivery company, she was renamed the M.S. Westcott in honor of Mildred Simpson Westcott, the company’s former leader and the daughter-in-law of its founder, in 2022.

In 1950, the J.W. Westcott and the J.W. Westcott II met 20,899 freighters between them, an average of 76 per day - one every 19 minutes. In 1970, the J.W. Westcott II handled about 1 million pieces of mail. But as freighters grew larger - up to 1,000 feet long - the number of them on the Lakes shrank. That meant fewer deliveries. By the 1990s, the Westcott Co. was handling about half as much mail as it did 20 years earlier. Then e-mail and cell phones made it easier for sailors to stay in touch with the world on shore, further cutting down on mail volume. Still, as it entered the 21st century, the Westcott Co. was still averaging about 6,000 runs from April through mid-December and handling about 400,000 pieces of mail.

Tragedy

At 6:45 a.m. on Oct. 23, 2001, the Westcott II approached the Norwegian oil tanker Sidsel Knutsen near Zug Island, south of the Ambassador Bridge. She was helmed at the time by 48-year-old Cathy Nasiatka and deckhand Donald Lewis, 50, was on board to assist. This trip was to carry two Canadian pilots - Alain Gindroz and Tom Roesslein - out to the Knutsen and then another vessel so they could each join other crew members on the freighters and help guide the freighters through the Detroit River, Lake St. Clair and the St. Clair River.

The Westcott II had done this thousands of times since she entered service 52 years earlier. But the Westcott was 25 minutes early and about 2,900 yards away from where their meet-up was expected to take place. This meant that the crew of the 533-foot Knutsen wasn’t prepared for the mail boat’s arrival. Normally, the massive freighters slow down to around 10 knots (about 12 miles per hour) for the 45-foot Westcott to pull up alongside. Because the Westcott was early, the pilot of the Knutsen was still below deck and not yet at the tanker’s controls in order to slow her speed. Further adding to the danger, the U.S. Coast Guard investigation found that the two vessels had failed to communicate after initial contact was made an hour before the incident.

Other Westcott Co. captains told investigators that it was expected that a freighter is ready for the mail boat’s arrival, and that it was not unusual for the Westcott II not to communicate with a ship once on the water because her noisy engine made it hard to hear over the radio.

The Westcott II swung around to line up parallel next to the Knutsen, but because of the tanker’s speed, the Westcott II came into contact near the stern of the freighter, not amidships like she was supposed to. Struggling to keep up with the Knutsen’s speed, the Westcott II quickly fell toward the rear of the tanker, where suction from the massive Knutsen pulled the Westcott II down and possibly pinned her under the freighter’s stern. Three-foot waves crashed into the low-riding Westcott II, and she began to take on water.

Nasiatka tried to pull away at full throttle, but that caused the bow of the Westcott II to dip down to the port (left) side, sending waves crashing over the bow and filling it with even more water. Within just 15 seconds, an incident report from the Transportation Safety Board of Canada said, the Westcott II was listing at about 45 degrees. One of the pilots aboard the Westcott II tried to open the cabin's sliding door, but couldn't because of the water pressure. As the boat listed, she started to sink, bow first.

"Actions by the operator compounded things," Gary Kassbaum, senior regional investigator for the Canadian agency, said of Nasiatka, "but these were decisions that had to be made in fractions of a second in the darkness."

The two pilots managed to exit the Westcott II while it was underwater and in total darkness. They were wearing lifejackets, which brought them to the surface; the two Westcott crewmembers were not, despite there being 14 lifejackets on board.

The Knutsen activated its searchlight and shone it on what its crew thought was floating debris in the 53-degree water, but turned out to be the two pilots. The men were rescued by the tug Stormont from Windsor, Ontario, which heard the distress call from the Norwegian freighter and sped out to help. The survivors told the crew of the Stormont that the Westcott II had become swamped and simply rolled over.

“They said it went down fast,” Stormont Capt. David Knowles told the Free Press for a story the day after the accident. “They felt (the Westcott II) hit bottom. They pried open a door and shot up to the surface.”

The pilots were treated and released from a Windsor hospital. But the two-member crew of the Westcott II remained missing.

Sam Buchanan, the Westcott Co.’s senior captain, had been scheduled to work the day of the sinking but had taken the day off.

“This is a nightmare,” Buchanan told the Free Press for an Oct. 24, 2001, article. “We’re like a family. We work here 24 hours a day.”

“This is a loss that extends beyond the tragedy for the families of missing (crew) and the company,” the Detroit Free Press Editorial Board opined the day after the tragedy. “The Westcott was a local institution, a symbol as it chugged along the river each day, of the defining importance of the Great Lakes to this entire region. It was part of the local character. … For decades, the Westcott was a connection to home for countless Great Lakes sailors.”

By dark, Detroit police divers had located the sunken mail boat, resting upside-down in about 30 feet of water. Nasiatka’s body was found inside the cabin of the Westcott II. The body of deckhand David Lewis, 50, of Eastpointe, Mich, was found more than a month after the sinking by duck hunters around Fighting Island, near Amherstburg, Ontario, on Nov. 27, 2001. Lewis left behind a son, Damien, and daughter, Chyna.

Honoring Capt. Cathy

Catherine “Cathy” Mitchell Nasiatka, 48, began as a deckhand on the Westcott II, going on 186 training runs before before taking the helm herself about a month before the sinking. In that time, she made 116 trips as the boat’s captain. She also piloted tour boats for the Diamond Jack cruise line. At the time, she was one of only a few women to ever skipper commercial vessels on Michigan’s eastern coast.

The Algonac, Mich., resident was the first female skipper of a commercial vessel to die on the job. On Nov. 4, 2001, nearly 1,000 people crammed into Most Holy Trinity Church in Corktown for her funeral. "We are not here to mourn today," the Rev. Russ Kohler, pastor of Holy Trinity and chaplain to the Port of Detroit, told those in attendance. "I am here to salute her."

Holy Trinity has a special ministry - Apostle Ship of the Sea - that is dedicated to mariners. Nasiatka’s name was added to an obelisk commemorating the 300th anniversary of the founding of the City of Detroit that stands outside the parish.

A wife, mother and grandmother, she was known for wearing earrings modeled after boat propellers. She was born in Detroit and became interested in boating during her years living on the water in Algonac. In May 2000, she left a 20-year career as a human resources manager for Ameritech and got her license. She sent an e-mail to colleagues explaining her decision, telling them that she was using her love of the water as an escape. But “your love shouldn’t be your escape, but instead, it should be your life,” she wrote.

“She was the strongest, most fearless woman I ever met,” her husband, Gary Nasiatka, told the Free Press for a Sept. 28, 2002, story. “She had her mind made up that that was what she was going to do. Nobody was going to stop her.”

In addition to her husband, she was survived by two daughters, Kristy Budnick and Jacqueline Nasiatka, and a grandson, Tommy.

“That was probably the saddest story I ever covered,” said Detroit Free Press journalist Bill McGraw, who spent 37 years as a reporter in the city. “Watching the husband of the captain pacing the shore as they dragged the river for her body and that of her colleague was horrific.”

The mail must go on

Salvage operations began the day after the sinking. Meanwhile, the mail delivery had to go on, and the Westcott Co. resumed service two days later using another boat, the 41-foot Joseph J. Hogan, named for another of the Westcott Co.’s late owners. The Hogan was built in 1957 as the Ottawa for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It was purchased to serve as the Westcott II’s fleet mate and back-up in 1995.

The Westcott II was brought to the surface on Oct. 29, 2001, after several days of salvage attempts amid bad weather. She was towed to a salvage marina in Ecorse, Mich., to be repaired and outfitted with a new 240-horsepower Detroit Diesel engine. The Westcott Co. crew worked all winter at Gregory Boat Marina on East Jefferson Avenue in Detroit to refurbish her from stem to stern with new lights, wiring, a new console and fresh paint. The Westcott II re-entered service April 9, 2002.

Demonstrating that the Westcott Co. does more for the city’s maritime community than just deliver mail. On July 12, 2023, the Mildred Simpson Westcott, assisted in rescuing ironworker Spencer Baker, who had fallen 140 feet from the Ambassador Bridge while working on repairs.

“I mean, there’s nothing I could ever do to repay the people who saved my life,” Baker, who suffered broken bones but lived, told WDIV-TV (Local 4). “If those people weren’t there, I’d probably never get to see my 4-month-old daughter again or my beautiful fiancee. I’m just so thankful and fortunate for those people that were there that helped me because it really saved my life.”

In 2005, the Westcott Co. was honored with a Michigan Heritage Award for more than 100 years of service to the Great Lakes maritime community. On June 7, 2024, it celebrated its 150 years of serving the Great Lakes with an event on the Detroit Riverfront. The company continues to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 252 days a year. As of June 2025, it had 18 employees.

For those looking to experience the “mail by the pail” experience for themselves, the Westcott Co. will bring you along as it delivers to passing freighters. It is an incredible and unique experience. For booking details, go here.

To commemorate the J.W. Westcott Co.’s 100th anniversary, the Dossin Great Lakes Museum opened an exhibition called Mail by the Pail: The J. W. Westcott Company. It runs August 2025 through August 2026.