Biography:
CAPTAIN IRVING AND ELECTA "EXY" JOHNSON
See Also:
Twin Brigantine Project Description
Why We Needed the Twin Brigantines
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The voyages of Captain Irving (1905-1991) and Electa ‘Exy’
(1909-2004) Johnson aboard Yankee are well known, especially
their seven times around the world with youth crew. They were pioneers
of sail training, inspiring generations of sailors, tall ships and sail
training programs, notably the twin brigantines named after them sailing
with the Los Angeles Maritime Institute.
Irving McClure Johnson was born on the family farm in Hadley, Massachusetts
and began training himself for a sailor’s life as a teenager.
In 1929, he sailed around Cape Horn on the 4-masted bark Peking,
a stormy voyage he documented in a now classic film, “Around Cape
Horn.”
Irving and Exy met on a trans-Atlantic voyage aboard Wanderbird,
recounted in his book “Shamrock V’s Wild Voyage Home.”
Originally from Rochester, New York, Exy had graduated from Smith College
in 1929, then attended University of California, Berkeley for a year.
After their marriage in 1932, they shared a life of sailing adventures
with handpicked crews of young amateurs, in their vessels named Yankee.
Over the years, their voyages were featured in books they authored,
and in National Geographic magazines and TV specials like “Irving
Johnson, High Seas Adventurer,” a video made in 1984. Their archives
are at Mystic Seaport, Connecticut.
With Gloucester MA as homeport for Yankee from 1934-1958,
they alternated between 18-month circumnavigations and summers of week-long
sailing trips with Mariner Girl Scouts along the Atlantic coast. Their
world voyage crew was generally composed of four young women, 16 teenage
boys, a doctor, a mate and a cook, with Irving as ‘Skipper’
and Exy his extraordinary wife-mate.
Their first vessel, the schooner Yankee, made the voyage three
times and was sold in 1941 just prior to W.W.II. During the war, in
command of a US Navy survey ship, Capt. Johnson applied his cruising
experience to making hydrographic charts of the Pacific Ocean.
In 1946 the Johnsons purchased the German North Sea Pilot Boat, Duhnen.
After her conversion to a brigantine in Brixham, England, they resumed
world sailing, completing four additional circumnavigations. “Yankee's
People and Places” by Irving and Electa Johnson and Lydia Edes
Jewell (a crewmember) details the sixth voyage of the Brigantine Yankee.
In 1958, the Johnsons built ketch Yankee for cruising Europe.
Designed by Irving Johnson and Olin Stephens and built by Scheepswerf
Westhaven, of Zaandam Holland, the Johnsons cruised her with new and
former shipmates throughout Europe’s canals, waterways and seas.
‘Yankee Sails Across Europe” and “Yankee Sails the
Nile” are their books about these travels.
Together Skipper and Exy raised an extended family of shipmates –
world voyagers from seven circumnavigations, canal cruisers from 26
times across Europe, sailors from transatlantic and Nile expeditions
and thousands of Mariner Girl Scouts. Capt. Johnson’s winter lectures
touched even more thousands of armchair sailors. Irving’s sea
skills and great physical strength were superbly complimented by Exy’s
people skills and linguistic strengths. This remarkable couple had a
natural way of welcoming a group of strangers, bringing out their strengths
and making a cohesive crew in confined quarters amid the challenging
complexity of adventure sailing.
