NOTED SAILOR DEAD

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25273, 27 August 1947, Page 7

NOTED SAILOR DEAD

FORMER WINDJAMMER ‘ MASTER CAPTAIN GUSTAF ERIKSON ' LONDON, August 25. The famous windjammer master, uaptain Gustaf Erikson, the last man Sown a fleet of sailing vessels, has ed at Mariehamn in the Aland Islands. He was 74. He owned 40 fourmasted barques in his lifetime. His ships included the Herzogin Cecilia (4350 tons) and the Pamir, now in the hands of the New Zealand Government Born in Mariehamn, he was sent to sea at the age of 10 as cabin boy in one of the small, but sturdy sailing craft trading from the Baltic. At 1£ he was promoted to the post of cook, and then to that of deck hand. In a few years he passed through the various grades until he qualified as master. For 17 years he commanded sailing vesseis of all the bigger types carrying cargoes of timber from Norway to Australia, coal from Australia to Chile, and nitrates from Chile to Europe. ~ An enthusiast for the preservation of .he sailing vessel, he held that such jhips were the only ones which gave •he sailor a proper training. There jothing. he considered, like the battering; experienced in working round Cape Hom which could give a young seaman the basic idea ot navigation. He married a Hull woman and world'wit^'Mm. She , His passion for the sailing ship then led him to acquire as many as possible I efore the steamship drove them from ?ea i H ln 20 Z. ears^ he ’“d 8 fleet of 21. including the finest tall-masted , J le „ rc J' a n t men afloat, principally engaged in the Australian grain trade. Among them was the Herzogin Cecilia regarded as the most beautiful ship in the world, which was fitted with wire. llght ' and central heating, o I^n §{ a . four-masted barque WC JJ and the ArdiU ba J d Russell, built at Glasgow in 1905 in Britain blg SaiUng vessel constructed Captain Erikson boasted that in all the penis of the years during which he was a master mariner he had never ■Jost a ship.