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Nils Werngren

svensk flagga in Swedish

Nils werngren
Nils Werngren in later years

Nils Werngren

1815 - 1897
Sea captain and round-the-world sailor.

Why not start early ... already at the age of twelve, Nils Werngren went to sea as a ship's boy. For safety's sake, with his own father as captain. Over the years, there were other ships and other captains, the voyages became longer and his knowledge and experience increased. He was, among other things, involved in the war between Texas and Mexico - as an involuntary!

In 1839 he returned to his birthplace, Malmö. Here he graduated as a skipper and received his first command..

At the same time, another Scanian, a shipowner named C.F. Liljewalch, was in Stockholm, and had problems. An adventurer named Captain Ringman had managed to fool the Stockholm Stock Exchange into believing that he had made a fortune in the South Seas and in Australia. The brigantine Mary Ann was then purchased and equipped, which, with a cargo of tools, building materials and oats, would become the first ship under the Swedish flag to sail to Australia.

However, problems arose when Ringman's credits in England were not in order and Nils Werngren was given command of the ship to sort out the mess. Werngren sailed the Mary Ann to England. Here they received information from Sidney that Ringman was a "great scoundrel and fraudster". As they could not agree, the shipping company in Stockholm decided that Werngren should sail to Australia to sell the cargo at the greatest possible profit.

He sailed with a minimum crew from the Isle of Wight on December 16, 1839. Three months later he anchored off Sidney.

Here they only had vague ideas about where Sweden was located and there was no signal to indicate that a Swedish ship was approaching, so Captain Werngren went into port under an ”unknown flag”.

He quickly sold his cargo and established contacts for continued trade between Sweden and Australia. For his continued journey he now needed a cargo, which came to be coal to be deposited in Chile. It took 75 days to sail to Valparaiso where the coal was unloaded. A new cargo was taken in at Huasco, this time copper ore.

segelfartyg
The only picture that exists of Mary-Ann, Sweden's first circumnavigator.

Now they set their sights on England, rounded Cape Horn at Christmas time and after four months entered the port of Swansea. Here the ore was unloaded and a new cargo of salt was brought on board for Sweden..

On May 3, 1841, they arrived in Stockholm. The newspapers of the time only wrote a small notice about this:
”On May 3, 1841 C.F. Liljewalch, under the command of Werngren arrived from Swansea with 1050 barrels of salt”

That was it, no flag games, no rockets, no interviews. Captain Werngren had, as the first Swedish ship, then sailed 34,393 nautical miles around the world in 316 days with the Mary Ann.

Werngren later made many circumnavigations of the world over the years. Some of these can be read in two books. (See below.) If you want to know more about the adventures along the way, we recommend these. Here we have only described the journey itself.

Werngren returned to Malmö and was a steamship captain for many years. He eventually became a wealthy man and devoted much time to the education and welfare of sailors.

He became an honorary member of the Malmö Maritime Association and sat on several boards..

Curiosities:
When Wiesbadener Yacht-Club in 2001 arranged Wiesbaden's 25th stadsmästerskap i segling, Rudi Schäfer won first price in the H-Boot-class with his boat ”Nils Werngren”!
Nils Werngren - gravesite

Gravplats på Gamla kyrkogårdene (IDstory) som är granne med Gustav Adolfs Torge (IDstory).

Referenser

Publicerades: 2005.06 Uppdaterades: 2024.11.20

Kategorier 20 Historiska personer 45 2 flags Malmö 44 Om IDstories




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