“CARRY RICKS”

Taranaki Daily News, 14 December 1926, Page 7

“CARRY RICKS”

ROUND THE WORLD AT 82. FAMOUS CHARACTER. London. Nov. 19. To travel round the world on a business trip at the age of 82 is the achievement of Captain Robert Dollar, wealthy shipowner of San Francisco, who has just spent a week at the office of his London agents. Captain Dollar, who is understood to be the original “Gappy Ricks,” the hardy old shipowner depicted in the novel of that name by Mr. Peter B. Kyne, lias made the circle of the globe in his own ships nearly every year for some time. He is accompanied on these voyages by his wife, who is about two years younger than lie is. When he visits Britain he goes to Falkirk, in Scotland, where he was born. His father, a timber yard worker, had fallen out of work when he left in 1857 as a boy of 13 for Canada. When he landed in tlie Dominion he was penniless, but to-day he is a millionaire, and a big power both in the shipping and lumber industries. He is the head of the Dollar Steamship Line. TOWN NAMED AFTER HIM. It is said that he did not learn to read or write till he was 19. His first employment in Canada was as an oddjob boy in a lumber camp, at a salary of £2 'a month. For nearly seven years he lived in lumber camps, but at 40 he was a successful lumberman, owning timber lands and with the town of Dollarville, Michigan, named after him. He entered the shipping business at the age of 53 with a vessel called The Newsboy, and it is claimed that he was the -first shipowner to carry the American flag round the world on regular trips.