Expert on the Buffalo Ship Scene

Jack Messmer was born in 1950 at Erie, PA, and moved to Buffalo in 1961. He graduated from Canisius College in 1973 with a B.A. in science education, after which he worked for 34 years as a science teacher. Always fascinated by the lakes, he took up the sport of scuba diving in 1969 and has said diving on wrecks resulted in a desire to know more about their history. He began reading books, then early Buffalo newspapers, gathering information about shipwrecks on the lakes, particularly Lake Erie. He is a founding member of the Lower Lakes Marine Historical Society (now the Buffalo Harbor Museum). He is a director, the editor of the Harbormaster newsletter for more than 30 years and docent at the Buffalo Harbor Museum. He has been a longtime member of the Marine Historical Society of Detroit, Great Lakes Historical Society and Toronto Marine Historical Society. Messmer is author of numerous articles about Great Lakes shipwrecks, and co-author of three books relating to Buffalo’s waterfront, Waterview Guide to Buffalo Harbor (1989), Fire and Water, Disasters on Buffalo Harbor and the Surrounding Area (2015) and Boats Built at Buffalo and Surrounding Areas (2018). He lives with Janice, his wife of more than 50 years, in Lancaster, NY.