Frederick Pease Harlow

Frederick Pease Harlow (December 12, 1856 - September 10, 1952) was an American sailor and author.

He was born on 12 December 1856 in Mt. Morris, Illinois, the youngest of six children of an educator and Methodist minister, William Thompson Harlow, and his wife, Frances Ann Winsor. In 1866 his family returned to Duxbury, where he watched the landing of the French Atlantic Cable Company. He went to school in Bristol, Rhode Island, and he graduated from high school in Newport. Then he shipped on the Akbar during two years on a trip to Australia, but he left the sea and went to Chicago. He went to Kansas City where he was an express messenger for some time on the railroad, and then he was express agent in La Junta, Colorado, where he injured his leg by a package thrown into his car. He got a position in the Wells Fargo Express Co. and he was sent to Seattle as agent for the Northern Pacific Express Co. When he left it, during the rest of his life, he studied expert book keeping. During the First World War he was accountant for the Washington Shipping Corporation. Between 1928 and 1931 he made four ship models, Akbar, Conquest, Glory of the Seas, and Great Admiral.[1]

He took a three year trip around the World and wrote The Making of a Sailor (Salem Research Society, 1928), the narrative of his two inaugural voyages, coastwise on New England in 1872 and afterwards to the Far East in the Boston ship Akbar; and Chanteying Aboard American Ships (Barre, Mass.: Barre Press, 1962), based on his lifetime of deepwater experience, prepared and posthumously published at the insistence and under the guidance of Ernest Dodge of the Peabody Museum of Salem, Mass.

On 14 February 1898 he was married to Gertrude Gilleland and they had one daughter, Frances Winsor Harlow. He died on 10 September 1952.[1]