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Captain Mason B. McCune was one of three brothers from Ellisburg, near Sackets Harbor, New York, who joined the United States Life-Saving Service and eventually became Captains in the Coast Guard’s Small Boat Service on the Great Lakes. Mason served 33 years, Maurice 28 and Merle 20. In the local dialect, those names were pronounced (and still are today) “Mace,” “Morris,” and “Merrill.” Their father, Charles, and Uncle William, started it all as surfmen at the Big Sandy Life-Saving Station, between the Sandy Point and Pulaski (Selkirk/Salmon River) Lighthouses.
Men in charge of Life-Saving Stations (LSS) were also called “Keepers,” so researchers can become confused, particularly if their source is a newspaper reporter or “historian” who didn’t know the difference. Most LSS senior officers were cross-trained to be able to fill in, at least temporarily, as lighthouse keepers. Mason McCune was one of those, and although his time at the Fort Niagara Lighthouse was indeed short, his career in the service of his country deserves some special mention here.
McCune actually started his Life-Saving Service career at Niagara in 1914, rising to First Mate in less than two years. He was on duty there when he filled in for George Ferguson as Fort Niagara’s Lighthouse Keeper, sometime in 1918, and then again from early May to sometime in mid-June, 1919 while Ferguson recuperated from the shock and injuries sustained in the Cleveland Clinic hospital explosion of May 15. 1919.
All three McCune brothers, Mason at Charlotte/Rochester, Merle at Oswego, and Maurice at Presque Isle/Erie, became famous as nemesis to the prohibition rum-runners who constantly tried to smuggle booze across the lakes from Canada. They were notorious for being unbribable and lived with prices on their heads. They all wore firearms everywhere, even at home, to protect themselves and their families.
Mason became best known for being the first to chase down and capture the infamous Ben Kerr, perhaps Canada’s most infamous and brazen rum-runner. Kerr had developed a reputation on the lakes not unlike Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd and other American gangsters of the times who became almost cult heroes. He was caught by McCune just eight miles from Canadian waters after a high speed chase from a darkened cove near Rochester where Kerr was trying to offload 1200 cases of Canadian whiskey.
Born on February 7, 1891, McCune died on January 22, 1975 at the Veteran’s Hospital in Syracuse. He had risen all the way to the rank of Lt. Commander. McCune and his first wife, Leah Allen, who died in 1955, are buried in the Ellisburg Rural Cemetery. His second wife, Helen Bennett Ostrander, was still alive as of winter, 2010.
This story is excerpted from a copyrighted manuscript by David E. Cook, Fort Niagara Lighthouse.
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