Colin Archer
Colin Archer (born July 22, 1832 in Larvik ; † February 3, 1921 there ) was one of the most important yacht and ship designers. He is particularly known for the seaworthiness of his sailing ships, which are mostly used as lifeboats or pilot boats .
Born in 1832, six years after his Scottish parents moved to Norway , the family lived in Tollerodden, a former customs house in Larvik. As a young man, Archer lived in Australia for a few years , where he built a large farm with his brother James and thus gained financial independence.
In 1861 Colin Archer returned to Norway, where he made a name for himself as a ship designer and boat builder . His ships are characterized by their particular stability and seaworthiness . One of the most famous ships he built is the Fram , with which the Norwegian researchers Fridtjof Nansen , Otto Sverdrup and Roald Amundsen explored the Arctic and Antarctic . His whaler Pollux , built in 1886, served as the Southern Cross of the British Antarctic Expedition 1898–1900 led by Carsten Egeberg Borchgrevink .
The Norwegian Sea Rescue Company Redningsselskapet (RS) named their first series of sailing lifeboats after him as the Colin Archer class . His construction of the RS 1 "Colin Archer" was able to prove its extremely robust construction in Hamningberg . During a violent storm in 1894, the skipper of RS 1 achieved an act of glory by sailing twice from Vardø to Hamningberg and saving a total of 36 people's lives on the steep cross lakes in the harbor bay.
When Colin Archer died at the age of 89, he had built over 200 ships, 70 yachts , 60 pilot boats, 14 lifeboats and 72 other watercraft. His preferred yacht layout is that of the Spitzgatters , as this type with moderate gaff rigging is very seaworthy. Yachts of this type are called Colin-Archer types . One of the ships designed according to Colin Archer's plans is the Sæløer , which was built in Norway in 1917 as a cargo sailor and still sails on the Baltic Sea as a traditional ship with its home port of Kappeln .
The gaff ketch squeegee , completed in November 1896 as Rachel , was on the road on the North and Baltic Seas until 2013.
The Norwegian polar explorers who sailed on his ships occasionally named geographical objects after Colin Archer, e.g. B. Archer Peak on the Antarctic island of Possession Island and the Colin Archer Peninsula on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic .
literature
- Svend Sörensen: Colin Archer. Designer of the Norwegian Spitzgatters . RKE-Verl., Kiel 1989, ISBN 3-924381-16-X .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Hans Georg Prager: Savior without Ruhm Ullstein, Berlin (1999) ISBN 3-548-24618-4
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Archer, Colin |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Norwegian ship designer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 22, 1832 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Larvik |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 3, 1921 |
| Place of death | Larvik |