NLMS: Talk by Biographer Harry Martin, ‘Captain Nathaniel B. Palmer of Stonington’, 6.17th

Nathaniel B. Palmer

Nineteenth Century Master Mariner

Talk by Biographer Harry Martin

June 17, 1:30 @ JIBBOOM CLUB

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Captain Palmer was arguably America’s most accomplished and famous sailor of the first half of the nineteenth century; a fourteen year old crewman on a blockade runner in the War of 1812; discover of “Palmer Land” in Antarctica in 1820 as captain of his own ship; a gun runner in the West Indies for Simon Bolivar’s 1820 revolution against Spain… Nathaniel was an early family friend of Captain Richard Loper who sailed with him to Antarctica in 1820, designed the schooner Madgie in 1857, and later modified and renamed her Magic to become the first defender of the America’s cup in 1870.

–Rod Johnstone, Cofounder and Designer, J. Boats, Inc, Newport, Rhode Island and Stonington, Connecticut.

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Harry Martin has written the definitive biography of one of the greatest, if not the greatest, sailors of his age: Nathaniel B. Palmer of Stonington, Connecticut …Working with a treasure trove of unpublished letters, Martin has crafted a finely nuanced portrait of not only Palmer, but of the family members and associates who made his legendary accomplishments possible. The scope of Palmer’s life was global, but always there was his beloved home of Stonington. To my mind, this biography’s greatest strength is the effectiveness with which Martin demonstrates the importance of community to the seafarers of the nineteenth century as they experienced and exploited the vast wilderness of the sea.

–Nathaniel Philbrick, author of In the Heart of the Sea, Mayflower, and Second Wind.

Bio: Harry F. Martin graduated from Harvard College and its Law School. He began as a Wall St lawyer, then was an officer in the US International AID program. Harry ran five banks including the Merrill Lynch Bank in London, and an Arab consortium bank in NYC. He became CEO of the shareholder entity owning Cargill, Inc, the largest family company in America, and later served as advisor to global wealthy families. In 2021 Irish Academic Press-Merrion published his Ernie O’Malley, A Life, a biography of a 23-year-old Commandant-General in the Irish Revolutionary Army fighting Britain for its freedom (1916-1921). Available on Amazon. For over four decades Martin has been giving talks to large groups on a variety of literary, historic, and wealthy family subjects including: Brush Up Your Shakespeare, Hemingway & His Four Wives, Generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, and the Rockefeller family.

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