[3] Michael Jebsen was born into a Protestant family[4] in Apenrade, a flourishing bilingual trading port in a sheltered location on the eastern side of Schleswig, still an independent duchy, but increasingly coveted by the rulers of adjacent Denmark and nearby Prussia.
After several trips to South America he disembarked at London and then returned home early in 1853 to attend a navigation school in Loit-Skovby run by a retired ship's captain called Peter Boysen.
In his linguistically divided home town of Apenrade the Jebsen family were part of the German-speaking community, and in an age of growing nationalist sentiment the cultural distinctions which might have gone unnoticed a few years earlier were gaining in practical significance.
In 1861 Captain Michael Jebsen acquired Hamburg citizenship, one visible sign of which was that ships under his command were no longer required to fly the Dannebrog (Danish flag).
[2] Clara gave birth to their son, Jacob, in December 1870, albeit on dry land, while they were docked at Port Townsend on the coast of what later became Washington state.
His duties in charge of the shipping and forwarding business based in Vlissingen (later Rotterdam) meant moving with his family to the Netherlands for a few years.
On 23 November 1878 he registered a new company in Rotterdam, "Partenreederei M. Jebsen", in connection with his purchase of a steam ship which quickly proved to be only the first of several such acquisitions.
He was a member of several Reichstag committees, including those concerned with disease control, the slave trade, emigration, accident insurance and various aspects of shipping.
This would be demonstrated in 1920 when plebiscites were held as a result of which north Schleswig was transferred to Denmark[8] (while south Schlesig remains part of Germany).
Michael Jebsen took a lead in the campaign to fund and construct an appropriate meeting place for the German speakers on the Knivsberg projection a couple of kilometers inland, to the north of Apenrade.
His special focus was on the erection of a Bismarck memorial tower at the highest point of the outcrop, and the foundation stone of the construction was duly set in place in 1895.
Two months later, in a ceremony that was very much quieter than must have been envisaged on 28 May 1899 when he couple announced their engagement, his daughter Johanne[2] married her cousin, Heinrich Jessen, consolidating family connections that underpinned the Hong Kong-based Jebsen Group.