Parents were John and Catherine Matheson, both born in Scotland.∼After an illness of only three days Duncan Matheson, master mariner and shop keeper in turn, died at 3:30 A.M., Friday last, aged 84 years, 1 month and 11 days. Death was caused by lobular pneumonia. The deceased was the son of John and Catherine Matheson and was born in Grand River, C.B., where he lived in childhood. He came to the States at the age of seven-teen years (two years after the death of his father) and made his first fishing trip from a Massachusetts port that season, sailing from Beverly, it is said. The following year found him engaged in the same fishery, but sailing out of Provincetown, and from that time until the close of his life he continued a resident of this town. We have heard it stated that he was the second man of Nova Scotian birth to make home in Provincetown. It is known that he came here about the year 1847 and that for a period of forty years thereafter made annual voyage to the banks of Newfoundland after cod during the summer months, passing the winter months on vessels engaged in foreign and coasting trade. He became master at a comparatively early age and thereafter commanded some of the finest vessels of the Grand Banks fleet fitted at this port. Of Grand Banks Salt Cod fishermen he commanded schooners B.F.Sparks; Charles H. Hodgden, Nellie Swift, Leon S. Swift (the latter craft was built for captaincy), and others and was for years recognized as one of the most successful masters sailing in that fishery out of Provincetown. Sailing in June one year early in the 80s he brought his vessel, the Leon S. Swift , into port, with a full fare of salted cod under hatches, in the phenomenally quick time of exactly two months. The decadence of the Grand Banks codfishery, about 1889, occasioned his retirement from a work in which he had given service for 50 consecutive seasons, but no interruption of his activities . Immediately he engaged in the coasting trade, sailing thereafter for a number of years as a transient master on vessels whose regular skippers desired, or were obliged, to stay ashore for a while, and his employment along this line was fairly steady. Twice during this period of sea-going he experienced great hardship , his vessels: Edith McIntyre and Annie Amsden receiving heavy pummeling from the gales. While he was master of the McIntyre, bound from Baracoa to Philadelphia with cocoanuts, in August, 1893, that craft was overwhelmed and nearly destroyed by a hurricane encountered off Cape Hatteras. One sea that over-rode the schooner carried away both masts and swept the deck clean of all its furnishings, nothing remaining after its passage, except the fore-staysail boom. Upon the subsidence of that hurricane the 64-year-old skipper found himself in charge of a sheer hulk destitute of provisions and small boat and with one man of his crew dying of injuries sustained during the height of the storm. Towed by a tramp steamer that providentially appeared a day or two after the wreck , the McIntyre was brought northward for a while, when the steamer captain announced his inability to longer hold the wrecked vessel, but offered to take off her crew. Capt. Matheson refused to leave his vessel. He asked for the loan, or gift of a yawl, with which to effect escape from his wrecked vessel in the event of her sinking, and, his request being granted, remained with his men , on a dismasted hull , far from land, waiting for aid from some quarter. His pluck and patience were rewarded by the coming of another craft that succeeded in bringing him and his vessel in tow to Boston some time later. About ten years ago the veteran sea captain ended his ocean voyaging. From that time until the day of his prostration by the illness that ended a life remarkable for its industry, he was busily engaged at his little tobacco and candy shop at the town's center. For many years Capt. Matheson's acquaintances have marvelled at his virility. He seemed wondrously immune to the ravages of time. Fresh colored, unwrinkled, possessed of a shock of curly hair, whose mass revealed scarcely a silver thread , and retaining in large measure the agility of his early years, his toughened physique enabled him at the age of 84 to perform work that would tire fifty per cent of fifty- year-old men. He was easily the youngest-looking 84-year-old man Provincetown has known, and his mind was as clear, his memory as retentive as a half century ago. Duncan Matheson, was charitable and loyal to his friends and convictions. His friends were many. Funeral services over his remains were held at 2 p.m.on Sunday last at the home of his son, Capt. John A. Matheson. A large company, including a big delegation from King Hiram's Lodge, A.F.A.M., of which the deceased was a member, attended.

The Advocate, Provincetown, Mass December 18, 1913