The Captain's Journal: Captain Hans Mateboer Sails Again

Hans Mateboer is an actual deep sea captain, who spends half the year on board cruise ships sailing all over the world. Originally from the Netherlands, his interest in water, ships and the sea was only natural. It however was accelerated by the numerous books he read as a child, about ships, the oceans and the people involved. This finally evolved in him going to nautical school and joining a shipping line. After sailing on freighters, tankers, bulk carriers and just about any other type of ship plying the oceans, he finally ended up on cruise ships where he decided to stay. He made it to Captain and was involved in the building of four new ships. His close involvement with the start up of Disney Cruise Line and the operations of that company gave him a great insight in the behavior of children, especially whilst at sea. He noticed that similar to himself when young, they have an insatiable appetite for learning new things. Sadly, ships nowadays, are not part of everyday life anymore as they once were, but children are simply fascinated by them.

Coming from a family where it is quite normal to write, (an uncle held the record at 42 books), to publish newspaper articles regularly and to be involved in language, it seemed normal for him to do the same. However, after writing for a local paper for a few years, he met his wife and decided to move to the United States and the regular articles stopped. It was not until three years after his move that he got in touch with Cruise Industry News, a trade magazine, and together with them, he decided to brush up his writing skills. The articles published became a success and resulted in a book called The Captain's Log.

However, the thought to make a difference for people at an early age, kept nagging at him and he started to develop the idea of publishing a good solid responsible children's book. It took more than 18 months of fine tuning to finally get it right, and the result was a happy cruise ship, called Peter.

Peter became the darling of thousands of children, and captain Mateboer decided to continue the series with first an adventure in Alaska and now in his third book, Peter is in the Caribbean and has to deal with Pirates.