Bill Pinkney was the first Black sailor to single-handedly circle the globe under the five southernmost capes, a voyage that included navigating the hazardous waves and the gusty winds off Cape Horn at the south end of South America.

“What he did, I thought, was that he took down his personal barriers, and he said that even though he grew up on the South Side, that didn’t stop him from thinking about going around the world and all that entailed — getting the boat, getting the experience, getting radio equipment and publicizing it,” said Jerry Thomas, chairman of the Chicago Maritime Museum.

Pinkney, 87, died Aug. 31 in an Atlanta hospital after suffering injuries from a fall down stairs while visiting Atlanta, said his former wife, Ina Pinkney. He had been a resident of Fajardo, Puerto Rico, and previously lived in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood.

Born in Chicago, Pinkney grew up near 33rd Street and Indiana Avenue in a single-parent household that depended on welfare. After graduating as one of four Blacks in Tilden Technical High School’s class of 1954, he joined the Navy, where he served as a hospital corpsman and an X-ray technician.

While in the Navy, Pinkney lived in Puerto Rico for a time, and after leaving active duty, he worked as a bartender, elevator repairman and limbo dancer. He moved to New York City in 1961 and worked as an X-ray technician.

Seeking a more creative pursuit, Pinkney trained as a freelance makeup artist, working on a variety of TV commercials and movies, including “South of Hell Mountain,” a 1971 Western starring future soap opera actress Anna Stuart.

In 1973, New York City-based Revlon Inc. hired him as marketing director for a line of cosmetics pitched to African Americans. After some success in increasing those cosmetics’ sales, Pinkney was recruited in 1977 to join Chicago-based Johnson Products as a director of cosmetics.

He subsequently worked for several years as director of program services in the city of Chicago’s Department of Human Services.

Pinkney’s interest in sailing started after he was discharged from the Navy in 1964. He initially navigated small cargo boats around the Caribbean islands. Once he left his city job, he decided on a bigger goal: sailing around the world.

“I was the right age and not tied to anything,” he told the Tribune in 1992.

Pinkney initially intended to sail around the world via the Panama and Suez canals. However, after another Black sailor, Teddy Seymour, accomplished that feat, he decided to sail around the southern capes.

On Aug. 9, 1990, Pinkney set sail from Boston in his 47-foot sloop, Commitment. The cost of his 32,000-mile trek, more than $1 million, was donated by a group of four businessmen from Chicago and Boston.

Armed with a satellite phone, an array of prepared foods, a stack of books and a Sony Walkman, Pinkney traveled from Boston to Bermuda and then to the British Virgin Islands, Brazil, Cape Town, South Africa, and across the Indian Ocean to Tasmania. After that, he sailed across the South Pacific around Cape Horn to Uruguay before turning north again to Bermuda.

During his voyage, Pinkney experienced some harrowing moments, but no brushes with total disaster.

“I have not had any near-death experiences, thank goodness,” he told the Tribune in 1992. “I was caught in a lightning storm between Argentina and Uruguay. For four hours, the lightning was hitting like mad all around me. I was the tallest thing.”

Pinkney’s journey was followed closely by schoolchildren in Chicago and Boston, with whom he communicated during his trip both in person and via shortwave radio. Ultimately, he was in touch with children from more than 150 schools.

“Perseverance is a very important thing,” he told the Tribune in 1992. “Kids quit too soon now. They assume if someone tells them they are a failure, they go along with it. I am saying, ‘Tell them to stick it in a flat hat.’ You are only failure if you believe it — and don’t believe it.”

After completing his circumnavigation of the globe in June 1992, he traveled by sailboat to Chicago and docked at Navy Pier, where he was met by an honor guard of junior ROTC cadets from Tilden High School and Sea Scouts from Montrose Harbor. He also was greeted by Clemente High School’s steel drum band and the Chicago Housing Authority’s chorus.

“I had a whole wall of pictures of school kids across from my navigation station,” Pinkney told the Tribune in 1992. “With all those people thinking about me and praying for me, there was no way that I could not make it.”

Pinkney also explained to an audience at Operation PUSH’s headquarters in June 1992 that he went on his journey “to disprove the statistical information I was given as a young man.”

“I’m 57, but when I was 25, the odds were good that I’d be in jail, on drugs or dead. The thing is, I didn’t believe that,” he said.

Pinkney went on to work as a motivational speaker, and frequently spoke at schools. He also was the subject of “The Incredible Voyage of Bill Pinkney,” a 1994 TV documentary that was narrated by his friend Bill Cosby, which won a Peabody Award, and he wrote a children’s book “Captain Bill Pinkney’s Journey,” which was published in 1994. He also wrote an autobiography, “As Long As It Takes,” which was published in 2006.

Pinkney was involved in teaching about the horrors involved with the Africa slave trade. In 1999, he set out with a group of teachers and a crew on a vessel called Sortilege to retrace the Middle Passage slave trade routes.

From 2000 until 2003, Pinkney was the first captain of a replica of the 1839 Amistad slave transport vessel, which was restored and launched at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut. He took the Amistad on an expedition to West Africa and South America with nine teachers aboard as part of a plan to develop a curriculum on the Atlantic slave trade for the University of Nebraska.

Pinkney was inducted into the National Sailing Hall of Fame in 2021. Last year, he was honored with the 2022 America and the Sea Award by the Mystic Seaport Museum, where he served as a trustee.

“There’s no excuse for not making your dream come true,” Pinkney told the Tribune in 1992. “All you have to do is be willing to pay the price and work at it. Whether you’re female or Black — or anything — you can’t let anybody else set your goals for you. You’ve got to get your butt in gear.”

Two previous marriages ended in divorce. Pinkney is survived by his wife of 20 years, Migdalia Vachier Pinkney; a daughter, Angela Walton; a sister, Naomi; and two grandchildren.

Information on services is not yet available.

Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.

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