OBITUARY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21981, 16 June 1933, Page 9

OBITUARY

CAPTAIN F. L. VICKERMAN The death occcurred at his home at Pangatotara (Nelson) on the morning of June 10 of Captain Frank Lobourue Vickerman, who for nearly 50 years was master of vessels of the Anchor Shipping Company. Captain Vickerman was born 82 years age in the Upper Wairau Valley. His parents settled in Nelson, where his father, the late Dr. Vickerman, who was prominent among early settlers, built a whare on the site of which Nelson College now' stands. As a boy Captain Vickerman was in the court when the death sentence was passed on Burgess and his two mates, the bushrangers who made themselves notorious in the early days of the goldfields on the West Coast. Sullivan, their mate, who turned Queen’s evidence, was ill in Dr Vickerman’s hospital during the trial, and Captain Vickerman always remembered how insistent the inspector of police was in his injunction to Dr Vickerman to “keep him alive” until the trial was over. Captain Vickerman commenced his sea-going career in 1807 on the sailing vessel Cissy with two trips round the world, and after further experience gained his master’s ticket in England. He worked his passage to New Zealand before the mast, and in 1879 joined the Anchor Company as second mate of the Charles Edward. When Captain Vickerman brought his ship, the litoki, into Nelson for the last time in December, 192 G, he wms able to step ashore with the knowledge that no mishap had occurred under his command. Captain Vickonnan’s first command was _ the Murray, and after her he successively commanded the Waverley, the Kennedy, the Alexander, the Regulus, and finally the Titoki. He was a mariner of whom it was said that he “ knew every lump of the coastline and where most of them were under the water.” ' For the past seven years Captain Vickerman had lived in retirement at Pangatotara, and he was in fairly good health until quite recently. He is survived by his wife, two sons, and two daughters, Messrs Francis Vickerman, of Wellington, and Arthur Vickerman, of Motueka, Mrs Knowles, of Pangatotara, and Miss Beatrice Vickerman, who is at .present visiting England. >