Crondahl: Voyage of the Fearless

Victor Gustav Crondahl built a boat with several Swedish friends in Palo Alto California and sailed it up to Juneau.

The builders, Palo Alto.

From left to right: Victor Crondahl, John M. Dahl,

Gus Ryberg, and Felix Brandsten (in the window)

More photos and the story after the jump.

How did Victor end up in Juneau, Alaska? We know he was in Juneau in 1913 because of letters addressed to him in Juneau that were dated 1913. However, he didn't sail to Juneau on the Fearless until 1915.

One of his teammates from the 1912 Olympics was Ernst Brandsten, who came to the U.S. after the Olympics and who coached the U.S. Olympic Diving team and coached at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. Victor has a postcard dated 1 July (?) 1916 from Sweden addressed to him c/o Ernst Brandsten, 329 Hawthorne Street, Palo Alto, Cal., U.S.A. It was with Ernst's brother Felix Brandsten, John M. Dahl, and Gus Ryberg that Victor built the Fearless and sailed to Juneau.

From the International Hall of Swimming: ERNST BRANDSTEN (SWE/USA) 1966 Honor Coach 1912 Olympic competitor for Sweden and 4 time USA Olympic diving coach; His male divers won all 6 medals (springboard, platform) in the 1928 Olympics; invented tapered springboard and movable fulcrum. Ernst Brandsten of Stanford University, USA, like Mike Peppe, could stand on his swimming record alone, but his divers would be mighty unhappy if he did.

Brandsten was active for 51 years as a ski jumper, diver and coach, competing from 1897 through the 1912 Olympics for Sweden where he married his first Olympic diving champion, Greta Johansson.

After Sweden, Ernie shipped out on a windjammer, helped chart the coast of Alaska for the U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey, ended up at Stanford where his college divers, Hall of Famers Pinkston, White and Desjardins dominated the 1920, '24 and '28 Olympics plus everything stateside before, during, between and after those Games.

Brandsten was U.S. Olympic diving coach four times. He is considered the Father of Modern Diving. He invented the tapered springboard and movable fulcrum, developed divers who went on to coach and develop champions as he had. In 1924, Brandsten did something no diving coach before or since has ever accomplished, when his Stanford-trained divers won all six male diving medals, placing 1, 2, 3 in both springboard and tower at the Olympic Games in Amsterdam. Lest it sound like diving alone, Olympic swimmers Norman Ross, Ludy Langer and Hall of Fame water polo player Wally O'Connor were also Ernie's boys.

Victor, sawing

Almost finished

From Pacific Motor Boat, Volume 8, 1915

"After more than three weeks buffeting head winds, which at times attained a velocity of a gale, the auxiliary yawl 'Fearless' arrived in Seattle recently from San Francisco, safe and sound on her way to Ketchikan and Juneau, Alaska. The 'Fearless' is one of the smallest boats that ever made the voyage from San Francisco Bay to Puget Sound. The craft was sailed from San Francisco on May 27 by Capt. Felix Brandsten, John M. Dahl, Gus Ryberg and Victor Crondahl, of San Francisco, and all seamen and yachtsmen of years' experience. The second day out of San Francisco the boat was compelled by terrific head winds to seek shelter, and throughout the voyage north the wind prevailed with such force that she made so many runs for safety that few of the harbors or lighthouses on the coast were without visits from her crew. The party are going north on a prospecting trip."