While never employed in the maritime profession, the 75-year-old Willow Glen resident celebrates the "days of the sail"—the 16th to 18th centuries—through his detailed pen-and-ink drawings and lively accounts of famous voyages.

"The days of the sail are the most interesting days of man's history," Campbell says. "With nothing more than a compass and celestial navigation, they charted the world."

Like the sailors of yore, Campbell uses few instruments in his trade, relying on books, a pencil and pen to create finely detailed ships and precise nautical charts.

But it's also the human-interest stories from the distant past that capture his imagination. With a certain gleam in Campbell's eye, he gladly talks about spellbinding accounts that have become the stuff of nautical legends.

He recounts the tale of Spanish explorer Ferdinand Magellan and his search for the East's thriving trade routes, miscalculating the distance to Asia, which caused him to lose four of his five ships. The disaster forced him out of desperation to boil the sails and leather on his remaining ship to make broth.

Then there is the intriguing tale that surrounds the oldest-known shipwreck on the West Coast, The San Agustin, which was a Manila galleon that sank at Point Reyes in 1595 and carried trade goods from the East. When explorers wondered why the Ohlone Indians wore jewelry made with Ming dynasty china, the Ohlones said simply, "gifts from the sea."

It's sailing history's larger-than-life quality that has kept Campbell drawing, reading and sharing his maritime fascination with groups for 55 years.

"The legacy I'd like to leave is to show young people the great moments of nautical history," he says.

He is often invited to speak at clubs, schools and museums.

"His history kept us spellbound," says Sons In Retirement President Ivan Klitgaard. "We would absolutely recommend him as a speaker."

Part of Campbell's appeal is his vivid storytelling style. He is particularly fascinated by Sir Francis Drake and the controversy over where the explorer landed in California. Drake's Bay, 40 miles north of San Francisco, is the traditional landing spot, but Campbell specifies San Luis Obispo as a possible site in an article he wrote for Seaway's magazine. Wherever Drake may have landed, he did capture the Spanish ship The Concepcion, which was carrying 80 pounds of gold and 26 tons of silver, making him a hero in England, Campbell says.

"Depending on your nationality, Drake was either the greatest hero or the greatest scoundrel," he says.

Whether hero or pirate, these seafaring men all struggled with the same dangers—shipwrecks, being lost at sea or fighting off the threat of a mutiny—and overcoming challenges are a part of life that Campbell knows well.

As a 13-year-old newspaper delivery boy in Detroit, Mich., his left—and dominant—hand was slammed in an apartment door. When the doctor told his father he needed to amputate the tips of Campbell's fingers, his father insisted they be reattached. His left fingertips crookedly curve to the right, but still allow him to hold a pen and create his detailed nautical drawings.

"I grew up with a complex you wouldn't believe," he says.

Yet his devastating hand injury led to a remarkable determination in redeveloping his fine motor skills. To do so he concentrated on detailed drawing and elaborate penmanship, which today far surpasses any ordinary skill.

Those skills are now displayed in his elaborate ship drawings, a talent that was first launched sometime after 1948 when he moved from Ohio to San Jose.

When he initially relocated to the Bay Area, Campbell worked at the Del Monte cannery making pickle barrels. He soon switched employment and took a position at the San Jose Mercury News assembling the newspapers. There were times when his work required him to stay in San Francisco, and he spent long hours at Fisherman's Wharf, where he enjoyed watching the bustle of people and ships along the piers.

It was the sailors, stevedores, teamsters and fishermen mending nets that captured his eye. When people at the wharf asked for drawings, he would sell them for one dollar. Then one day someone asked him to sign his artwork, and he realized his hobby could become additional income for his family. Signing that drawing had another ramification: a stark reminder that he had overcome a potentially crippling disability. "I always title and sign the drawing in longhand to show I can also write," he says.

Years later, in 1974, he decided to open Cam-Mac Originals Inc., while keeping his newspaper job. He retired from the newspaper in 1993.

He says people have often asked him why he never quit his day job. His response is simple.

"It was steady work and we were not going to make it on artist's wages," he says.

But steady wage or not, his work continues to be purchased.

Mike Attaway, who owns the Scrimshaw Gallery in Sausalito, has been buying Campbell's artworks since the late 1970s.

"His artwork is very precise and clean and not busy like other maritime artists'," Attaway says.

Campbell also promotes himself through artist demonstrations. On one occasion, he decided to entertain people by drawing with both hands simultaneously. He's ambidextrous because of the accident.

"It's a showstopper," he says.

Surprised onlookers invariably ask questions, and Campbell hams up his answers by telling people that he's lazy and that drawing with both hands gets the picture done twice as fast.

"Eight out of 10 people will say, 'Is that so?,'" he says chuckling.

Then there is the issue of what to call his artwork. "Most people will say, 'Oh, you draw ships on maps,'" Campbell says. "But maps are for land and charts are for sea; I don't draw my ships on land."

Although his ships are drawn on charts, the final product is not used as a navigational tool. Campbell has studied cartography to render latitude and longitude and the sea's fathoms accurately on his drawings. He has also used his knowledge and skill to draw historic ships on antique nautical charts dating back to the 19th century. "Sometimes the piece of paper I'm working on will be worth $750," he says. "They get a little upset if you have to white out."

However, many years ago he turned a mistake into his trademark signature. The old-fashioned pens he used splattered on a drawing, so he turned the inkblot into two sea gulls, which he now draws on each piece.

"I tell people they'll get $50 if they can find a Jim Campbell without the sea gulls," he says.

Another time he remedied an ink splatter on a sail by turning the ship into its own silhouette and drew the moon reflecting off the water.

"Artists' secrets," he says grinning.

His approach to his art has been the same for 55 years. Every Tuesday he leaves his home in Willow Glen for his studio in the Santa Cruz Mountains, where he works undisturbed. He stays there until Wednesday afternoon and then comes back over Highway 17. He relies on this uninterrupted time to complete whatever he starts and says that when interrupted, he always begins again from scratch.

"I don't like to come back to unfinished work," he says.

These weekly sojourns to the studio began at age 20 and never wavered even after he married and became a father or throughout his years of employment. "You have to have enthusiasm and drive," Campbell says. "It's something that I wanted to do that could only happen if I exerted myself."

But that doesn't mean he ignores friends and family. He and his wife, Joanne, have had Thursday date nights for years.

His neighbor Julie Harper says, "Jim has touched a lot of people."

Harper tells the story of a Rotary Club member's daughter visiting a family in Kyoto, Japan. Her host father was an avid sailor and to thank the family after the daughter returned, the family asked Campbell to draw the Japanese man's ship. Using a photograph of the ship and information that the Kyoto resident planned to sail in a race from Melbourne, Australia, to Osaka, Japan, Campbell combined the two elements on a nautical chart.

"Jim did a fabulous drawing of the ship on a map with a race from Melbourne to Osaka, which the [Japanese sailor] ended up winning, but he died a year later," Harper says. "I met his widow, and she said it was one of her favorite belongings."

Campbell's experience has also been recognized by the U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard, which commissioned him to draw retiring captains' ships. The U.S. Postal Service has also requested 28 cachets—limited-edition illustrated envelopes—and cancellations—the rubber stamp design that matches a specific cachet—to commemorate the Gold Rush era and California statehood. He has also illustrated Jack London's book The Cruise of the Dazzler, commissioned by the Jack London Museum, and a book on Western U.S. national parks.

Although drawing is a passion, Campbell says his real love is writing, but he's had less luck as a published author.

Campbell has five books in progress that range from nonfiction about ships of the world, to a novel about a young man who was shanghaied from San Francisco to Australia, to a history of the New Almaden mines called From Cinnabar to Quicksilver.

"My problem is that I spend years putting books together and they get bogged down with the publisher," he says.

He has gotten close, though. He did have one book accepted for publication, receiving an advance. He even saw a mock-up, but the book never went to print.

Campbell, however, is determined to persevere in his writing as he has done in his drawings, driven by a desire to pass on his nautical knowledge.

Most people don't know that when George Vancouver discovered the Hawaiian islands in 1792, they were called the Isles of Sandwich, he says. Or that Portugal and Spain divided the Atlantic Ocean in half, giving the eastern portion to Portugal and the western half to Spain in 1494.

It's these little-known facts and the legendary seamen like John Paul Jones, Christopher Columbus and Francis Drake that puts the wind in Campbell's sails.

"Stories like these are my life," he says.

For more information about Cam-Mac Originals Inc., call 408.265.7554. Jim Campbell's nautical drawings are on display at the Willow Glen Coffee Roasting Co., 1383 Lincoln Ave., through the month of August. Jim Campbell will also be doing an art demonstration at University Art, 456 Meridian Ave., on Sept. 11 from 1 to 4 p.m.