Mohamed Zainuddin Juvale

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Mohamed Zainuddin Juvale, popularly known as Captain Fakir Mohamed Zainuddin Juvale, was an Indian naval captain and a pioneer from the Konkan region in Maharashtra. He was born on 10 January 1890 into a Konkani Muslim family and had only primary education. He began as a khalasi (sailor) on a merchant ship and rose through the ranks to become a captain, reportedly the only Indian to achieve this feat at the time. After retirement, he founded the Kokan Nautical School in 1923 at Dongri, Mumbai—the first nautical school in India—to train Konkan youths for the sea. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1981. In 1998, the Shipping Corporation of India named a supply ship M. V. Capt FM Juvale in his honour. He documented his life in Marathi in the autobiography The Ebbs and Flows of My Marine Life.