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 Pet ...

, founder of the

Maersk (), also known simply as Maersk (), is a Danish shipping company, active in ocean and inland freight transportation and associated services, such as supply chain management and port operation. Maersk was the largest container shipping line a ...

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 Flensburg (; Danish, Low Saxon: ''Flensborg''; North Frisian: ''Flansborj''; South Jutlandic: ''Flensborre'') is an independent town (''kreisfreie Stadt'') in the north of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. Flensburg is the centre of the ...

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 ( da, Krigen i 1864; german: Deutsch-Dänischer Krieg) 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. T ...

in 1864, Rømø, as Flensborg, passed under

Prussia Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an em ...

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 f ...

, only a few kilometres to the east of

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

. 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 27,300 (1 January 2022), Svendborg is Funen's second largest city.Fyn Funen ( da, Fyn, ), with an area of , is the third-largest island of Denmark, after Zealand and Vendsyssel-Thy. It is the 165th-largest island in the world. It is located in the central part of the country and has a population of 469,947 as ...

. 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