This Independence Day story tells about a guy with a nickname, which use to be more in vogue and which most Americans tended to like.
Especially when it came to crime, baseball or the presidency. They still stick in music.
Think Billy the Kid, Babe Ruth, The Say Hey Kid, Honest Abe or Father of Our County; also, The King, The Godfather of Soul, Madonna and Queen B.
This fellow’s name was Alfred Johnson. His nickname was “Centennial” and he was an unlikely hero in a dory story.
He was an immigrant, which most Americans tended to like, depending on prevailing attitudes and whether you were one yourself or a generation or two removed from being one.
Capt. Alfred “Centennial” Johnson, born in Denmark and buried in Gloucester, lived more than 50 years there, fishing in 37 of them but none more significant than 1876.
On the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the dour and meticulous Dane ventured to sea, fishing for a record — egged on by a barroom dare — the first solo trans-Atlantic crossing from west to east.
He finally embarked from Gloucester Harbor at 4:15 p.m. on June 15, after delays due to heavy weather. Those who had gathered to see him off no doubt wondered whether they were bidding a final adieu.
Over the next 66 days, Johnson and Centennial would survive three storms and a capsizing in the Irish Sea before landing in Abercastle, Wales.
A Welsh slate plaque, dedicated in 2003, marks the spot where the sailing dory bumped against the rocky shore.
The 29-year-old Johnson not only made history but ignited a trend, a craze of Atlantic crossings, including the first from the other direction, east to west, the first husband and wife crossing, and a crossing in the smallest boat.
Back in the red, white and blue Centennial, its name painted on the port and starboard bow, Johnson, navigating with a compass, stayed true to his planned destination.
After Welsh folks discovered him, a bedraggled and emaciated sailor washed upon their shore, they took him in for food, drink, rest and well wishes.
Johnson soon resumed his journey to Liverpool where he was celebrated.
He didn’t get the reception that aviator Charles “Lucky Lindy” got in 1927 when he became the first pilot to cross the Atlantic, solo, from New York to Paris.
But Johnson was admired and earned enough in appearances to pay his and his dory’s passage home to the U.S. on the steamer Greece.
Ironically, this same vessel had pulled alongside Johnson on his crossing and offered to take him aboard.
Johnson had traveled the shipping lanes from the U.S. to Great Britain, and, on several occasions, ship captains and mates, unaware of his undertaking, mistook him for a man in a lifeboat.
The skipper in one eastbound vessel, upon learning of Johnson’s voyage, offered to take him and the Centennial farther along closer to his destination and lower him and the dory back to the sea, no one wiser for the lift.
Each offer, Johnson declined, impelled to complete the voyage or die trying. He did accept bread and grog and rum after his stores were spoiled by seawater from storm damage.
Fifteen years earlier, Johnson had gone to sea as a 14-year-old, afflicted with wanderlust having heard stories of the world from seafarers in port in Denmark.
He arrived in Gloucester after more than a decade working oceangoing ships.
In Gloucester, he made his living setting and retrieving trawls for halibut and cod in the foggy North Atlantic, and knew the 20-foot Grand Banks dory well.
It was then, in those lonely hours at sea, that he contemplated the Atlantic crossing and imagined each exigency and contingency. He saved $200 to have the Centennial built.
The clinching moment came on a dare leveled in a Gloucester tavern, according to Rob Morris, author of “Alfred Centennial Johnson: The Story of the First Solo Atlantic Crossing from West to East in 1876.”
In the Morris account, Gloucester Harbor had frozen over and fishermen, including a fellow named Willie Walker, were in a local tavern debating the merits of local vessels when Johnson, who was a quiet sort, saw an opportunity to declare his intentions.
After Johnson said he would rather sail a rowboat across the ocean than board, in calm conditions, the particular vessel under discussion, a dare came from one of their number for Johnson to have at it.
When the laughter died down, Johnson said he intended to sail across the Atlantic from America to England to commemorate the Declaration of Independence.
Johnson had Gloucester boat builders — Archie McKenzie and John Black of Higgins & Gifford — install a deck with two hatches and room for a mattress below, and watertight compartments.
Also, a hinged, fold-down mast, at the base of which he could attach a lifeline, a 45-foot rope looped around his waist.
He slept during the day and kept watch at night, with a lantern posted, to avoid ships in the sea lanes. Icebergs posed danger, as well.
At about the halfway point in the voyage a howling storm churned and a towering wave hit the Centennial broadsides, overturning it and tossing Johnson to the ocean.
Johnson felt for his rope and pulled himself to the hull, to which he clung and, after 20 minutes, used another mighty wave to right the Centennial. He bailed out the open spaces betwenn the watertight compartments.
He lost his provisions but passing vessels tossed him drink and bread.
In 400 years, Gloucester has lost thousands of lives at sea, many of them from fishing schooners.
One storm in 1862 claimed 15 Gloucester schooners and 120 men. In 1879, three years after Johnson’s crossing, 249 fishermen lost their lives in a single day.
Later in life, reflecting on the journey, Johnson deemed himself, like everyone had said he was — “a damn fool.”
After the history-making voyage, Johnson returned home and continued to fish for a while.
He got married at age 53 in 1900 to Amelia Neilson. The couple had a daughter, Mildred, born in 1901.
Amelia died in 1920 at age 49 and Johnson on Dec. 16, 1927, at age 81.
He had a stroke the week before and was found semiconscious in his Riggs Street apartment. The couple are buried in Oak Grove Cemetery.
In his 26 years as a skipper, Johnson is said to have never lost a man at sea.