Captain Doyen

DOYEN

Posted By: Tammy (email)
Date: 1/21/2017 at 07:30:35

Captain Doyen

It is not generally known that H. G. Doyen was at one time a sailor on the North Sea. For 14 years his home was on the ocean and for several years though a young man he commanded the schooner "Mike" (accent on the last syllable.) He sailed from Emden to Reije in Russia and return carrying freight. On December 19, 1867, in a northwester his ship was wrecked on the coast of Denmark. Captain Doyen was the last to leave the ship and after all the men were gone he clung to the mast for four hours until he was rescued. The weather was bitter cold and the captain never expected to reach land alive and the strain on his nervous system caused his hair to fall out and that is the reason that he always wears his hat these days. That voyage was his last. He came to America and for several years lived in what is now Golden, Ill., later coming to Grundy county.

--The Grundy Republican (Grundy Center, Iowa), 24 November 1904, sec 2, pg 1