C. B. Sheldon

Christopher B. Sheldon, whose 92-foot, twin-masted sailing ship Albatross sank in a freak storm in 1961, a disaster that inspired the 1996 movie " White Squall, " died Oct. 5 in Stamford, Conn. He was 76 and lived in Norwalk, Conn.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, Anne Ramsey, his companion, said.

Dr. Sheldon was shepherding high school students on the ship, used as his floating classroom, when a horrific squall welled up and abruptly sank it. Jeff Bridges portrays Dr. Sheldon in the movie about the sinking, in which his wife, Alice, and five others were lost.

About 8:30 a.m. on May 2, 1961, the Albatross was gliding through a slight mist in calm seas 180 miles west of Key West, Fla., on the way to Nassau, the Bahamas. Suddenly, a single bolt of lightning flashed across the sky, and a blast of wind smacked the ship.

" It was as if a giant hand took hold of us, " Dr. Sheldon said in a 1996 interview with People magazine. " In 15 seconds the Albatross was on its side. In 60 seconds it filled with water. And then it was gone the ocean was calm. "

Four students, the ship ' s cook and Alice Sheldon had vanished. Dr. Sheldon, 11 students and an English and math teacher scrambled into lifeboats. They were rescued a day later by a Dutch freighter.

When the storm hit, Dr. Sheldon did not have time to take down the sail. It all became such a blur that he could not remember flying home.

" He did the best he could, " Dick Langford, the teacher who survived, said after the sinking. " He was just a bad-luck skipper. "

Christopher Barrows Sheldon was born in Manhattan on Oct. 12, 1926. He attended private schools and graduated from the University of San Marcos in Lima, Peru. He earned a bachelor of divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary but was never ordained.

He next earned a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Madrid.

He sailed from the age of 15 and was taken on by Irving Johnson, the explorer and captain of the vessel Yankee, as a crew member on an around-the-world voyage from 1956 to 1958. After the first mate fell ill, Dr. Sheldon got the job.

Dr. Sheldon took pictures on the trip for National Geographic . In a stop at Pitcairn Island, he happened to find an anchor while diving. It had belonged to the HMS Bounty, and his discovery was featured in the magazine.

In May 1959, he married Alice N. Strahan, a doctor who had served as medical officer on the Yankee. Together they founded the Ocean Academy as a floating prep school in 1959. He held that the sea was " a great molder of character. " Students paid $3,250 for an academic year of study, including Spanish and celestial navigation, taught by Dr. Sheldon.

Dr. Sheldon bought the boat in 1959. He picked up his third group of students on Sept. 20, 1960, in Bermuda. At the beginning of the trip, Dr. Sheldon had been worried about Hurricane Donna, but that turned out to be little more than a rainstorm.

There is no way to predict a squall, a short, sharp storm of wind. Sailors use the term " white squall " because of the whitecaps that sometimes precede such a storm, which meteorologists call a microburst.

When the white squall hit the Albatross, the six people who were below deck could not escape.

After the survivors dispersed, they did not see one another until some gathered to help make the movie, directed by Ridley Scott.

Dr. Sheldon said he found the movie therapeutic because it brought him together with both his colleagues and his feelings.

The screenplay was based on a 1963 book about the incident, " The Last Voyage of the Albatross, " written by Chuck Gieg, one of the students who survived. Other survivors included William P. Bunting, son of Mary I. Bunting, the president of Radcliffe College.

After the accident, Bunting told Sargent Shriver, the first director of the Peace Corps, about Dr. Sheldon, and he offered him a job. He became director of operations for the Peace Corps in Colombia, a distraction he welcomed.

In 1965, he again developed sea fever and bought a 130-foot boat, the Verona, for use as a floating school. On his second voyage, the boat caught fire near the West Coast of Central Africa. The fire destroyed the vessel, but all aboard escaped.

In 1967, Dr. Sheldon was recruited by the Peace Corps to take charge of its training center in Puerto Rico. In later years, he operated a mail-order business and served on the board and as treasurer of the Institute of General Semantics, which is based on the language theories of the philosopher Alfred Korzybski.

In addition to Ramsey, he is survived by a brother, John, of South Bristol, Maine.