Death of a Sailor

As it must to all men, Death came at Sewickley, Pa., last week, to a 69-year-old millionaire who had risen from a small stained glass maker to be the largest plate-glass manufacturer in the world. He was on boards of great banks, Mellon National, Federal Reserve, was director of a Bell Telephone Co., trustee for Pittsburgh's Associated Charities, president of national trade associations. Yet all his life he was a sailor-man at heart, romantic, adventurous. Captain Charles William Brown, son of Jacob B., typical New England Ship Master, went to sea out of his native Newburyport, Mass., at 17. For 12 years he navigated the seven seas, as boy, able seaman, master mariner. He saw mutinies, endured shipwreck, felt the stiff kick of weather in typhoonous China seas. In the home port of old Newburyport one day he met Alice, daughter of Banker Albert W. Greenleaf, aristocratic Massachussets name, courted, married, took his bride to sea, retired three years later from his quarterdeck to manufacture ecclesiastical stained glass for Scandinavian Lutheran churches at Minneapolis, Minn. A few years later he was a magnate in less clerical plate glass.

Captain Brown wrote, published, told salt yarns. My Ditty Bag--dedicated to his "loved and loyal wife who sailed for Australia with me a week after our marriage, and who has been a good shipmate during these many years"--has an exciting chapter "Fishy" ending with a quoted instruction for "landing" the biggest possible swordfish aboard a dory in the open ocean: "Fasten his tail over the gunwale to the afterthwart; put his sword over your shoulder; put your big finger in his eyeball; grab him with your other hand near his tail; when she rolls to leeward pull hard as the boat rolls back, and the 'Cot damn fish he got to come.' "

Last year and the year before Captain Brown sailed round the world. Every year since he left the trade of the sea he has yachted with his brother Jacob Frederick, reputed world's biggest wool merchant, who flies a Boston Yacht Club flag. Up to his last illness he wrote sea yarns for the Atlantic Monthly, The Bellman. Modest, despite his immense knowledge and creditable learning, he had a quaint way of submitting his salty MSS. to University-bred employees, "just to have a glance over the grammar and syntax."