Peter Mærsk Møller ( ; 22 September 1836 – 9 February 1927) was a Danish sea captain and the father of

Arnold Peter Møller Arnold Peter Møller (2 October 1876 – 12 June 1965), better known as A. P. Møller, was a Danish shipping magnate, businessman who was the founder of the A.P. Moller-Maersk Group in 1904. Biography A. P. Møller was the son of captain Pe ...

, founder of the

Maersk (), usually known simply as Maersk ( ), is a Danish Freight transport, shipping and logistics company founded in 1904 by Arnold Peter Møller and his father Peter Mærsk Møller. Maersk's business activities include Port operator, port operat ...

corporation, and grandfather of

Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Arnold Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller (; 13 July 1913 – 16 April 2012) was a Danish shipping magnate. He was a longtime figure at A.P. Moller–Maersk Group, which was founded by his father. Personal life Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller was born in He ...

, who made Maersk the largest container ship operator and supply vessel operator in the world.

Career

He passed his merchant officer's examination at Flensborg Navigation School and became a captain in 1861. His first assignment was the ship ''Prima'' in 1862. After the

Second Schleswig War The Second Schleswig War (; or German Danish War), also sometimes known as the Dano-Prussian War or Prusso-Danish War, was the second military conflict over the Schleswig–Holstein question of the nineteenth century. The war began on 1 Februar ...

in 1864, Rømø, as Flensborg, passed under

Prussia Prussia (; ; Old Prussian: ''Prūsija'') was a Germans, German state centred on the North European Plain that originated from the 1525 secularization of the Prussia (region), Prussian part of the State of the Teutonic Order. For centuries, ...

n rule (and from 1871 German territory; Rømø remained so until 1920, and Flensborg – now Flensburg – still is a German city), so Captain Mærsk Møller moved to

Dragør Dragør () is the main town of Dragør Municipality, (Denmark), which includes the village of Store Magleby. The city hall and seat of the municipal council lies on Kirkevej 7 (postal code 2791 Dragør) in Store Magleby, which has enough space ...

, only a few kilometres to the east of Copenhagen. He was the first in Denmark to suggest steam ships instead of sailing ships. He did so in 1884, as he moved from

Svendborg Svendborg () is a town on the island of Funen in south-central Denmark, and the seat of Svendborg Municipality. With a population of 27,616 (1 January 2025), Svendborg is Funen's second largest city.Fyn Proto-oncogene tyrosine-protein kinase Fyn (p59-FYN, Slk, Syn, MGC45350, Gene ID 2534) is an enzyme that in humans is encoded by the ''FYN'' gene. Fyn is a 59-kDa member of the Src family of kinases typically associated with T-cell and neurona ...

. In 1904, Peter Mærsk Møller, with the fifth of his nine sons, Arnold Peter Møller, founded ''Dampskibsselskabet Svendborg i 1904'' ("The Steam Ship Company of Svendborg 1904")."Fra lille dampskibsselskab til Danmarks største virksomhed"
''DR'', 13 December 2005. Accessed 26 November 2015. Eight years later, the success of this enterprise encouraged A.P. Møller to start his own: ''Dampskibsselskabet af 1912'', which eventually became the

business conglomerate.

References

1836 births 1927 deaths People from Tønder Municipality {{Denmark-bio-stub