Bill Pinkney

William Deltoris Pinkney III (September 15, 1935 – August 31, 2023) was an American sailor and executive. In 1992, he became the first African American to sail around the world solo via the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn.

Early life William Deltoris Pinkney III was born on September 15, 1935, named after his father and maternal grandfather, and was raised in Douglas, south of Champaign, Illinois,

His parents, Marion Henderson and William Pinkney Sr., divorced when he was young. As a child, he was one of the few Black students at his school and was unhappily targeted by peers and teachers, but found escape in a 1940 book about a Polynesian youth who makes a solo voyage that changes his life, Call it Courage by Armstrong Sperry. He attended Tilden Technical High School and graduated in 1954.

Navy and later career Pinkney joined the United States Navy in 1956, serving as a hospital corpsman. He left the navy in 1964 and moved to Puerto Rico for a few years, where he learned to sail.

After returning to the mainland in 1961, Pinkney worked as a marketing manager for Revlon and the Johnson Products Company. Pinkney was persuaded by Robin Knox-Johnston, who, in 1969, had become the first man to complete a solo nonstop circumnavigation, to travel the southern capes instead and to become the first Black man to do it. He departed from Boston on August 5, 1990, sailing first to Bermuda, then along the eastern South American coastline, across the Atlantic Ocean to Cape Town, South Africa, across the Indian Ocean to Hobart, Tasmania, across the South Pacific Ocean, around Cape Horn, and up the eastern South American coastline, finally ending up back in Boston.

On June 9, 1992, he arrived at the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston Harbor where he was greeted by over 1,000 school students and 100 officers from the Navy, Coast Guard, and National Park Service. He also wrote a children's book about his experiences called Captain Bill Pinkney's Journey.

In 2022, he published a second children's book, Sailing Commitment Around The World By Bill Pinkney, illustrated by Pamela C. Rice who, along with Pinkney, was in the first all-Black Crew to compete in the Mackinac Race.

Amistad replica

As a trustee of the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut, Pinkney oversaw the building of the replica of the Amistad, He is survived by his wife, Migdalia Vachier Pinkney, as well as his sister Naomi Pinkney, his daughter Angela Walton, and two grandchildren. In 1999, he was named one of the Chicagoans of the Year by Chicago magazine.

Pinkney is a member of the National Sailing Hall of Fame.

Pinkney received honorary degrees from Becker College, Southern Connecticut State University, and Massachusetts Maritime Academy.

Captain William "Bill" Pinkney graduated from the Southern California Maritime Institute (now known as the Los Angeles Maritime Institute).