John Fleming Wilson

John Fleming Wilson, (February 22, 1877 – March 5, 1922), was an American author, newspaperman, and prolific writer of short stories and adventure novels, best known for his travel books about sea life. Many of his books and short stories were made into films during the 1910s through the 1930s.

Early life
Wilson was born on February 22, 1877, in Erie, Pennsylvania. He received his education at Parsons College in Iowa, and at Princeton University. He studied classical and modern literature, particularly subjects that related to oceans, bays, rivers, and ports. He spent much of his boyhood at sea. He married Elena Burt in July 1906, in Newport, Oregon. He was later divorced and had no children.

He was a deep-sea sailor, a ship's officer in the merchant marine, wireless operator, and lived for a time in Japan. His study of nautical books and the trips out to sea gave him the opportunity to write sea stories.

Career
Wilson was a schoolteacher from 1900 to 1902 at the Portland Academy. He then worked with a newspaper company from 1902 to 1905. He was the author of several books and contributed to short stories for both American and European magazines.

Newspapers


In 1905, Wilson lived in Honolulu, Hawaii on the writing staff of The Honolulu Advertiser. A number of his stories were published in The Advertiser, in 1907 and 1908. In 1906, he was editor of the San Francisco The Argonaut.

In 1907, he founded the Newport Signal, of Newport, Oregon. He was also associated with The Oregonian and The Pacific Monthly.

In 1907, Wilson corresponded by letters to author and editor Charles Warren Stoddard (1843–1909), when Stoddard was living in Monterey, California.

Carmel


In 1912, Wilson sold the studio to realtor Philip Wilson Sr. (1862–1944) (not a relative) who also owned the Philip Wilson Building downtown, and developed the first and only Carmel Golf Course.

World War I
Wilson served overseas in France with the 7th infantry battalion of the Canadian Army during World War I from 1917 to 1919. He was gassed by German shells. After the war he returned as a patient in a government hospital at Arrowhead Springs, San Bernardino. He then went to Martin's Sanitarium in Venice, California.

Death
Wilson died, from burns caused by a gas heater, on March 5, 1922, at his home in Venice, at the age of 55. His remains were brought to Hemet, California and funeral services were head at the San Jacinto Valley Cemetery in San Jacinto, California.

Legacy
Writer Herbert Heron wrote about Wilson in the Carmel Pine Cone in 1966. He said "His stories of the sea are among the best in the language. He was especially familiar with the Oregon Coast and the treacherous Columbia River mouth. He knew ships of very kind, from tugboats to ocean liners, and he served as an officer on many of them."

Raymond Blathway wrote of him and said: "As a literature he was perhaps the best equipped man I have ever known. But as a technical writer of one of the most complicated professions in the world he holds pre-emience over every other writer in that particular branch of literature. Neither Richard Henry Dana, Herman Melville, William Clark Russell, Conrad, nor Kipling can surpass him in his unrivalled knowledge of the sea and all that pertains to it."