John Rousmaniere

John Pierce Rousmaniere, whose surname is pronounced "Room-an-ear", was born on 10 March 1944 in Louisville, Kentucky. He was the eldest of the eight children of James Ayer Rousmaniere, of Boston and New York, and Jessie Broaddus Pierce Rousmaniere, of Louisville and Brownsville, Texas, the daughter of a U.S. Army general. Among his ancestors were a Frenchman who fought on the American side in the Revolution and the Easton family, co-founders of Newport, Rhode Island.

He spent his early years in Cincinnati, Ohio, and moved with his family to Oyster Bay on Long Island at the age of 11. He graduated from St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, in 1962, and from Columbia University with a bachelor's degree in 1967 and a master's degree in 1968; his master's thesis was a history of New York settlement houses. Much later, in 1988, he earned a Master of Divinity degree at Union Theological Seminary in New York.

After service as an Army infantry officer, trained at Officer Candidate School and qualified as a paratrooper, Rousmaniere taught history as an assistant professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He then worked as an editor at Yachting and Natural History magazines before becoming a freelance writer in 1978.

In August 1979 he was sailing aboard the 48-foot sloop Toscana in the Fastnet Race when a Force 10 storm struck the fleet of more than 300 boats, killing 15 sailors and sinking five yachts. His account of the race, Fastnet, Force 10 (1980), became a bestseller and has remained essential reading for offshore sailors. It was followed in 2002 by After the Storm: True Stories of Disaster and Recovery at Sea. His sailing manual, The Annapolis Book of Seamanship, first published by Simon & Schuster in 1983, reached its fourth edition in 2014 and inspired an instructional video series that he hosted.

He wrote widely on yachting history, including The Golden Pastime: A New History of Yachting (1986), The Low Black Schooner: Yacht America (1986), A Berth to Bermuda: 100 Years of the World's Classic Ocean Race (2006) and The New York Yacht Club: A History, 1844 to 2008 (2009). Outside sailing he wrote histories of the law firm Davis Polk and Wardwell, the Equitable Life Assurance Society, the Union League Club of New York and The Evergreens Cemetery in Brooklyn, and he contributed 40 essays to The Encyclopedia of New York City. He edited the autobiography of the yacht designer Olin J. Stephens II, co-wrote the documentary The Compleat Beatles, and scripted sailing television coverage, including the 2002 to 2003 Louis Vuitton Cup.

Rousmaniere became a leading authority on boating safety. He organised or took part in more than 100 safety at sea seminars, equipment tests and accident studies, co-organised the 2005 Crew Overboard Rescue Seminar in Sausalito, and in 2011 served on US Sailing independent review panels into two fatal accidents, one at Annapolis and one in the Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac. He was media chair of the Newport Bermuda Race from 2010 to 2016 and chaired the 1980 U.S. Olympic sailing trials.

Rousmaniere raised his two sons in Stamford, Connecticut, before moving to Manhattan in 2005. While studying at Union Theological Seminary he met his wife, Leah Ruth Robinson Rousmaniere, a development officer, mystery novelist and historian who wrote the history of the Seamen's Church Institute of New York and New Jersey. He sailed more than 40,000 miles offshore, including nine Newport Bermuda Races, two Fastnet Races and three transatlantic passages, and he was a member of the Century Association, the Cruising Club of America and the New York Yacht Club, where he chaired the library committee and led a monthly maritime book group.

John Rousmaniere died on 8 August 2026 in Westwood, Massachusetts, at the age of 82. The cause was Alzheimer's disease. His death was reported by the Newport Bermuda Race, Bernews and The New York Times, which described him as the writer who documented a sailing disaster and helped make the sport safer.

Rousmaniere's books, above all Fastnet, Force 10 and The Annapolis Book of Seamanship, have been a standard source of instruction and inspiration for sailors for more than 40 years. His work on safety seminars, rescue techniques and accident inquiries helped change how the sailing community prepares for heavy weather and crew overboard emergencies, and his histories preserved much of the record of American yachting. He was elected to the National Sailing Hall of Fame in 2020 and inducted into the Bermuda Race Roll of Honour in 2024.