FIDDLER’S GREEN William “Bill” Pinkney (1935–2023)
T
PHOTO BY JONATHAN ATKIN, SHIPSHOOTER.COM
he maritime world lost a champion and a pioneer with the death of former NMHS trustee Bill Pinkney in August. For many Americans—especially for thousands of American schoolchildren—Pinkney provided an introduction not only to sailing, but to the tools needed to succeed in every aspect of life.
Bill Pinkney achieved fame as a man who sailed alone around the world while documenting his voyage and his struggles to conquer the external trials of weather and equipment failures and the internal ones of fear, uncertainty, loneliness, and exhaustion. He emphasized to the children who followed his voyage in their classrooms and communicated with him via ship-to-shore radio that it was education that made his trip possible. Not a day went by, he told his audience, that he didn’t need or use what he had learned in school to solve the problems he confronted at sea. In radio calls and video messages, he told them about the kinds of problems in math, geography, science, and history that he was using to get to the next landfall and to understand the people he met when he got there. Although he dedicated his life to sailing and education, it was the example Pinkney set that demonstrated the truth of his words. He grew up in Chicago, raised by a single mother who worked as a maid. Although he originally aspired to be an artist, his mother advised him that the only people who made money in that trade were “dead white men.” Disqualified on both counts, Pinkney 12
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joined the Navy after high school, where recruiters tried to steer him into being a steward’s mate. That was a career that would keep him with “his own kind.” Pinkney insisted, instead, on becoming a medical corpsman. It was in the Navy that Pinkney fell in love with the sea and sailing. It was a love he nurtured through an eventful career as a film industry makeup artist and, subsequently, as a cosmetics industry executive who specialized in developing products for African-American women. While advancing in his career, Pinkney never strayed far from the water. It wasn’t until his early fifties, however, that his love of boats and helping young people acquire that same passion became his life’s mission, when he decided to sail around the world— alone. It took a few years to generate the support he needed to finance his voyage, and in August 1990 he set sail from Boston in his boat, Commitment, bound for the Southern Ocean and a course that would take him around the world. The voyage took nearly two years to complete, but when Bill Pinkney arrived back in Boston in June 1992, he was met by thousands of schoolchildren who had followed every leg of his arduous circumnavigation—learning math, science, and history and the power of commitment to one’s goals. Although he often told his audiences that the sea cared nothing for your skin color, the fact that he was the first Black person to single-handedly sail around the world gave him a platform to spread his message of education and fortitude—a message that he spread as a public speaker and mentor for the rest of his life. As the first captain of the Amistad, a replica commemorating the ship remembered for a slave revolt and subsequent trial challenging slavery in the courts, Pinkney brought all of the strands of his life’s work into one role—taking a group of American educators on a voyage to West Africa to develop a curriculum about the slave trade. Captain Pinkney accepted the NMHS Karl Kortum American Ship Trust Award for Amistad in 2001. We have lost a guide and a mentor, but his passing reminds us of the duty we all have to carry on his commitment to sailing, education, and history to the generations that he inspired. Fair winds, Captain Pinkney. —Richard P. O’Regan
COURTESY MIGDALIA PINKNEY
Bill Pinkney—all smiles upon his triumphant return from his solo world voyage, 1992.