Capt. Winslow Knowles, Jr.
(1817-1863) |
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''After
following the seas'' for most of his teenage years,
Winslow Knowles Jr., began commanding ships that served
American East-Coast ports.
Then
tragedy struck. His first wife died in childbirth, and
the son she bore him followed her two months later.
Grief stricken, the captain then arranged for his mother
to take care of their three year old daughter in what
is now the Old Manse Inn, and then he mysteriously left
for the gold fields in California. |
 He
finally returned home, and after a second marriage that brought
him a namesake son, he once again disappeared - this time
into the fabulous and exotic world of the East Indies, where
he commanded ships until his death in Calcutta in 1863.
Ironically,
this portrait of himself (shown above), which he probably
commissioned in 1849, was inherited by his son. It was a portrait
of a father who the son had probably never seen in his lifetime.
Equally
ironic, however, is that this last disappearance - one that
was worthy of a Rudyard Kipling novel - had tremendous historical
implications in the end. Because it was captains like these,
who made the East Indies their homes, that finally broke the
European stranglehold on this part of the world.
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