Passionate and prolific Petaluma artist Hans Skalagard loves tall-masted sailing ships, and not in the idealized and imaginary way that a young boy might.
This talkative old salt knows ships as only a tried seaman and progeny of generations of Vikings could. The magnificent oil paintings that fill his and wife Mignon's little ranch home and that grace galleries and private collections around the world honor the ships through accuracy and detail that presents them as they really are, or were.
"That's the only five-mast full-rigged ship that ever was," Skalagard, 86, said in his Scandinavian-tinged English while standing in the living room before his painting of the German windjammer, the Preussen.
He rattled off her impressive measurements: 408 feet long, 200-foot-tall masts, 11,000 tons displacement and 60,000 square feet of canvas in her sails.
Since 1943, when Skalagard created his first nautical painting while serving as a World War II merchant marine, he has produced about 3,500 oils that nearly exude the scent of salt spray and the song of creaking timbers.
He paints pictures of great ships - square-riggers, mostly, but also the USS Constitution and other fighting ships, galleons, down Easters, clippers, American Cup racers, even cruise ships. He portrays them not only because he loves them but to stimulate and sustain public interest in their historical significance.
"Every piece of ground was discovered by sailing ships," he effused. "The square-rigger ruled the earth for 600 years."
Even today, he continued, "This country could not last for two months without (the goods moved by) ships."
As a kid, he didn't chose a seafaring life any more than he chose the color of his hair or his lanky build. Taking work on a ship was simply the life that came to a male born with Viking blood on the North Atlantic's Faroe Islands, a self-governing protectorate of Denmark located about midway between Scotland and Iceland.
"It's at 62 degrees north, about the same latitude as Fairbanks, Alaska," Skalagard said.
He was just 13 when he went to sea in 1937 as an apprentice on a four-masted square-rigged bark that hauled fish cod in the Arctic Ocean. He learned the ropes, literally, and worked up the ratings.
The last sailing ship on which he toiled was the Glasgow-built Olivebank, whose crew of 24 moved 45,000 square feet of canvas sail on four masts. "You sure had to work for a living - miles of rigging," Skalagard said.
Not long after he transferred from the Olivebank to a tanker, the old sailing ship struck a mine in the North Sea and sank on Sept. 8, 1939 - just nine days after Hitler's army swarmed Poland and five days after Britain declared war on Germany.
America had entered the war when Skalagard came to Boston in 1942 and went to work moving war supplies and equipment as a merchant marine. "I made 33 crossings of the North Atlantic," he recalled. Three times, ships were sunk from beneath him by German submarines.
Skalagard took up painting in his free time on board, and after the war continued to work on merchant ships. He came to San Francisco in 1954 and there met Mignon, who'd lived in the city all her life. They married in 1955, the same year Skalagard became a U.S. citizen.
"My first 10 years of marriage, I was gone eight-and-a-half years at sea," he said. Through those years, Mignon split her time between San Francisco and Sonoma County. Her sister owned a cabin in Rio Nido and her father lived on the Petaluma chicken ranch that is now the Skalagards' home.
Hans Skalagard had sailed for more than 31 years when he walked off his final ship in 1968. By then he'd served aboard more than 50 ships.
Before leaving the sea he and Mignon had opened an art gallery - Skalagard's Square-Rigger - in Carmel in 1965. "Actually, Clint Eastwood had a little office right next door," Mignon said.
For 33 years, the couple sold Skalagard's paintings - many to admirals, diplomats, corporate CEOs and serious collectors. They traveled extensively on his frequent speaking engagements and exhibits.
He and Mignon closed the gallery in 1997 and moved onto her family's Petaluma ranch. Their one child, Karen Salweig, and her family live on the property, too.
Every morning, former sailor Skalagard still rises early and takes up the brush. His next scheduled show will feature 15 of his Pacific Coast lumber schooners and will open at the Petaluma Historical Museum in August. He's scheduled to show other paintings in Vallejo next year.
As he paints, Skalagard is swept back to the decks and bellies of the great ships he knew so well. "The ships are my life and they'll continue to be until there is no more life," he said.
"When they finish with me," he said, "they'll throw me back out to sea."
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