#bottleship

Bottle Ship

The Bottle Peters Collection, at Ærø Museum (in Denmark) . Peter Jacobsen, better known as Bottle-Peter, was a sailing ship sailor. He learned the art of bottle ship building and made a total of 1,700 bottle ships, with 120 different model ships. It is said that Peter himself drank every single bottle, so it must be said to be quite a haul. Part of the collection is displayed in the middle of Ærøskøbing's old town, more precisely Smedegade (blacksmith street) 22, in a house that was previously both a skipper's house and almshouse, now the world's oldest bottle ship museum and the largest according to the old postcard above.

Smedegade (blacksmith street)

The oldest part of Ærøskøbing dates back to around the year 1100.

Peter Jacobsen was born in 1873 in Kalundborg, the son of a lighthouse keeper. His father was a very skilled craftsman. At his father's request, Peter completed an apprenticeship as an iron foundryman, which he was not particularly enthusiastic about.

After his father's death, he moved to Copenhagen with a friend and, at the age of 16, boarded a Danish schooner. However, his experiences on the ship were not very positive, and after a few more months on Norwegian ships, he returned to Copenhagen and trained as a cook.

In England he met his wife May and married in 1903. They lived in Germany for a while, but in 1918 they returned to Denmark. During this time Peter worked as a freelancer in various fields and in his spare time built several ship models and ships in bottles, which he then presented at exhibitions. In 1942 they moved to Ærøskøbing, when the Tourist Association had made the poorhouse available to them free of charge, on condition that they exhibited and maintained the entire collection there. In April 1943 the exhibition opened its doors and soon reached record numbers of visitors,