Historian John Kemble Dies at Sea

John Haskell Kemble of Pomona, a maritime historian and professor emeritus at Pomona College, died of a heart attack Monday aboard the cruise ship Canberra en route from New Zealand to Australia. He was 77.

Kemble graduated from Pasadena High School and Stanford University and received his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. He joined the Pomona College faculty in 1936 and retired in 1977.

Kemble was the author of numerous articles on maritime history and wrote two books, “The Panama Route, 1848-1869” and “San Francisco Bay: A Pictorial Maritime History.” He was an instructor in the Office of Naval History and served during World War II on the staff of Adm. Chester Nimitz at Pearl Harbor.