Frank Samuelsen and George Harbo

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In 1896 Frank Samuelsen (died 1946) and George Harbo (died of pneumonia in 1909) became the first people ever to row across an ocean. Both were recent emigrants from Norway to the United States. Harbo, a surfboat fisherman, and Samuelsen, a merchant seaman, were scraping by, digging clams at Atlantic Highlands on the New Jersey coast, decided that they would make a name for themselves by rowing across the Atlantic Ocean. The inspiration for their scheme was Richard Fox, the publisher of Police Gazette, who had backed previous schemes that today might feature in the Guinness Book of Records. With his support and their meager savings, an 18-foot shiplap (clinker-built) oak rowboat was built with water-resistant cedar sheathing with a couple of watertight flotation compartments and two rowing benches. The boat was fitted with rails to help them right it if capsized, a feature that saved their lives in mid-ocean. With a compass, a sextant, a copy of the Nautical Almanac, oilskins and three sets of oars lashed safely in place, they set out from The Battery in New York City June 6, 1896, and arrived 55 days later in the Isles of Scilly.

The partners cabled their success and loaded their boat on a steamer for the return journey. The steamer ran out of coal off the coast of Cape Cod, and when the Captain ordered all wooden objects aboard broken up and stoked to make steam for the remainder of the trip, Samuelsen and Harbo relaunched their boat "Fox" over the side and rowed back to New York.

Though they never received the fame and fortune on the lecture circuit, or even their prize money from Fox, who was photographed giving them gold medals nevertheless, and though they soon faded again into obscurity, their time record for rowing the North Atlantic has not yet been broken, though single oarsmen have since made the crossing, and ocean rowing has developed into a kind of extreme sport. Samuelsen returned to Norway and farmed; he died in 1946 [1]. Their logbook and a journal dictated by Harbo survive to document their feat, which was worked into a dramatic account by freelance writer David W. Shaw in 1998. In 1985 folk singer Jerry Bryant wrote "The Ballad of Harbo and Samuelsen," which has since been recorded by many other artists including William Pint and Felicia Dale.