John Bonser (steamship captain)

John Henry Bonser was a steamship captain from Oregon, United States and British Columbia, Canada. He piloted dozens of sternwheelers over his 40-year-long career and pioneered many rivers in the Pacific Northwest.

John was born in 1855 at Sauvie Island near the banks of the Columbia River in Oregon, the second son of James Halstead Bonser. Riverboating was a tradition in the Bonser family, as both John's father and grandfather had been rivermen on the Scioto and Ohio rivers.

In 1871, when John was 16, he and his older brother, Thomas Albert Bonser, left home and began working on riverboats on the Cowlitz, Lewis and Columbia rivers, doing everything from piloting the crafts to cooking in the galleys. Then in 1880, Albert drowned while working as a deckhand on the sternwheeler Latona. John considered quitting the river trade, but told his family that he would never let any river beat him.

For the next thirty-one years, he would keep that promise and would gain the reputation of being one of the best swift-water pilots in the business.

In 1881 John married Ida English and built a home in Woodland, Washington. On many occasions Ida would travel with John, even when their children, daughter, Viroqua, and son, Francisco, were born, the family would live on whatever sternwheeler John was piloting at the time. Ida would take the wheel if John was called away on an emergency and provided nursing care to sick or injured passengers and crew. When John began designing his own sternwheelers, he always made sure that a living quarters was built so that his family could accompany him.

In 1882, John became the master of the Latona on the Lewis River and then went on to captain the "Queen of the Riverboats" on the Lewis, the Mascot, which offered daily service to Portland, and provided important transportation and delivery services for the settlements along the river.

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