Cecil Northrop Biographical Note
During his years as a mariner, Northrop kept extensive diaries (handwritten and typed) where he recorded his impressions of life aboard the ship, foreign ports visited, people he met on his travels, and relationships with friends, family, and love interests. It appears Northrop was compiling some of the manuscripts into essays, and viewed his writing as part of the great sea narrative tradition popularized by Richard Henry Dana in the 1840s.
On February 1, 1927 Northrop married Lucy Stewart of Washington, Pennsylvania, whom he met on one of the cruises. That same year he retired from the seafaring life and become editor of the Dominion-Post newspaper in Morgantown, West Virginia.
In the 1930s Northrop trained as airline pilot and joined the Pennsylvania Airlines. Between 1940-1944 he worked with the Airlines War Training Institute, formed in 1939 to train transport pilots for coming war. Northrop served as chairman of the Celestial Navigation Committee and later as supervisor of pilot training.
From 1945 to 1949 Northrop served as vice-president of Observer Publishing Company in Washington, PA. On May 21, 1949 he died of a heart attack. Northrop was survived by his wife, Lucy, and two children, John L.S. Northrop and William B. Northrop.
Only a small sample of Northrop's manuscripts are presented in this site. For more information see the Cecil Northrop Papers finding aid. His maritime papers are held by the Stephen B. Luce Library of SUNY Maritime College and his aviation papers are held by the Smithsonian.
