View Single Post
Old 01-04-2019, 11:57 PM   #38
Icelander
 
Icelander's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
Default Historical Background on Penemue and J.R. Kessler

Quote:
Originally Posted by a humble lich View Post
If you want a smaller old warship consider the Australian Bathurst-class corvette. They were 186 ft long, and wikipedia says that after the war a large number were sold to civilian operators. They only had a speed of 15 knots, but that might be higher once you take out all of the weaponry. They had a compliment of 85 people and since they were involved in convoy escort, I assume that they were at sea for extended periods of time. However, the wiki article does say conditions for the enlisted sailors were not good, but that could probably be improved with a much smaller crew as a private yacht.
Hmmm... some historical background on J.R. Kessler and the era in his life when he built the Penemue.

Kessler may be, in fact, almost certainly is, somewhat of an unreliable narrator. He spins a rousing yarn, but he probably didn't spend most of the 20th century having more exciting adventures around the world than Indiana Jones while meeting more famous historical characters than Forrest Gump.

He may have been born to poor immigrants in Galveston, Texas, as he maintains, but the truth is probably more middle class. In any case, he inherited no great wealth and is probably truthful when he says he started work young, as many people did in the Great Depression. Deck hand on a rum runner during Prohibition seems an unlikely occupation for a boy and young teen, but it's not completely outside the realm of possibility.

Kessler may or may not have fought in the Spanish Civil War, though he almost certainly didn't befriend Hemingway around that time and as for his exploits as a matador, those seem to have been lifted from Hemingway's writing and a couple of famous short stories by other writers, seasoned with alcohol-fueled anecdotes of puerile partying that Kessler may have actually experienced, whereever he was living at the time, as he was in his late teens at the time.

The evidence for his next years is a lot easier to come by. It's pretty much beyond dispute that Kessler actually did join the French Foreign Legion and fought with Free French forces throughout WWII. There are photographs, uniforms, mementoes and one PC even met, back in the 80s, a couple of retired Legionnaires who remember him well. Of course, that one PC is a retired Legionnaire, though, obviously, from a later era in the Legion's illustrious history (1979-1986, invalidated out by a wound suffered in Mali).

Kessler seems to have spent the years 1939-1954 wearing French uniform. And while he may have joined up as a more or less penniless young man, it seems that military life suited him and, through various murky means, Kessler was making a lot more money than his meager salary. Kessler might have started small, as the scrounger and fixer in his unit who ran an ongoing poker game, but over the course of the war, he moved on to a booming liquour business with customers in various Allied units and branched out into black market art in France and Italy, archeological treasures in Italy, Egypt and Northern Africa and any number of fixes, scams and smuggling operations.

Individual anecdotes of colourful criminality and mendacity as a scoundrel in uniform in this era are almost certainly embellished, but the PCs can find innnumerable mentions in the memoirs of any number of WWII veterans of the smooth-talking Free French corporal who could get you anything for the right price, complete with unmistakable description or anecdotes that ring true to those who know Kessler even in his advanced age.

Even so, success as a black market fixer in uniform doesn't yield 'build a yacht' money, at least not a yacht fit for a robber baron or oil sheikh. When Kessler got out of the Foreign Legion and returned home to Galveston in 1954, he bought a boat, not a superyacht, and seems to have been well-off, not ultra rich, as he returned to civilian life.

Kessler did, however, really start to build his fortune in those days. He actually did run a casino in Cuba in the mid-50s, as well as invest more money than he ought to have had in a Houston bank and a number of oil fields, though it's impossible to confirm whether his silent partners truly were the Maceo brothers and their heirs.

Kessler was rich from a variety of successful investments by 1960 and by the mid-60s, he owned rich mines and oil fields on three continents (Africa and the Americas). He also invested in a lot of diverse international companies, construction, import-export, commodities, etc. It was at that time that he decided to celebrate his meteoric rise from small time fixer to mover and shaker by building Penemue.

She wasn't the largest or most expensive yacht ever built, but for the four years it took from design to launch, she was Kessler's favorite project and every minute he could spare from growing his empire, he spent overseeing work on what he wanted to be the finest, most beautiful home on the waves possible. Kessler was obsessed with perfecting her lines, combining function, power and elegance in a sublime piece of naval engineering. He even worked on her himself, when he could spare the time, probably imagining himself as one of Papa's rugged men of the sea.

From the start, Kessler was building his future home, a mobile base and a refuge from the world. And while he probably didn't need the yacht to combine incredible power for her size, speed and the nimble handling of a much smaller vessel with the seaworthiness, endurance, living space, and luxury a long-term home required, Kessler is wilful and he gets what he wants.

At present evaluation of Kessler's personal fortune, the Penemue might not represent more than a mere fraction of 1% of his total assets. At the time it was built, however, Kessler basically put every penny he could spare from investments integral to growing his businesses into building Penemue, and he has not regretted a single dime. The yacht is easily his most prized possession and still, in 2018, is a dream to handle and a pure joy to race with the diesel engines at full power, reaching speeds remarkable in 1960s and still very impressive in 2018.
__________________
Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela!

Last edited by Icelander; 01-05-2019 at 12:02 AM.
Icelander is offline   Reply With Quote