National Maritime Museum Publishing

Sons of Sindbad
The Photographs
Alan Villiers

New Publication by the National Maritime Museum

Pages: 224pp
Price: £30
ISBN: 0-948065-73-7
Publication: 19 October 2006

• Unpublished photos of Villiers’ journey of 1938, described from his original account
• Selected and introduced by William Facey, Yacoub Al-Hijji and Grace Pundyk
  

A contemporary of Wilfred Thesiger, Alan Villiers was a renowned sailor, writer, and photographer and travelled widely throughout the Middle East. A new book from the National Maritime Museum – Sons of Sindbad, The Photographs – illustrates Villiers’ 1938 journey, as a lone Western crewman on an Arab trading dhow, down the East African coast and round the Arabian Gulf.

Although the story of Western Arabian exploration has been dominated by the likes of T. E. Lawrence, Freya Stark and Thesiger, Alan Villiers is now recognized as one of the greatest Arabian travel writers – a Thesiger of the Arabian Sea. Villiers travelled to Arabia to photograph and record a nautical and cultural tradition that even then was disappearing. However, as originally published in 1940, his account included few of the many photographs he took. This book now makes over 200 available, depicting the experiences and hardships of the Arab seamen and pearl divers, with descriptions largely drawn from Villiers’ text. His powerful images and words form a fine tribute to their skills and endurance, and a fitting valediction to the age of sail before the onset of oil and modernization.

Villiers’ original book is a ground-breaking account. Sons of Sindbad: The Photographs translates it into a striking visual memoir of a vanished way of life in Arabia, through Villiers’ superb photography.

William Facey has spent his career as a museum consultant, writer and publisher on the Arabian Peninsula. His deep interest in the Arabian sub-continent and his books have established him as a well-known writer on the region. Long fascinated by the early photography of Arabia and by its maritime history, he has recently studied the backgrounds, personalities and motives of various Western travellers there. He is currently director of Arabian Publishing Ltd., London.

Alan Villiers (1903–82) was a recognized maritime adventurer of the twentieth century, combining seafaring skills, writing ability and pioneering photojournalism, and made a name for himself with resulting bestsellers such as Falmouth for Orders (1929), which follows his voyage on one of the last grain races round Cape Horn from Australia to Britain. He served on the committees for a number of maritime bodies and, as a Trustee of the National Maritime Museum, played a fundamental role in establishing its historic photograph collection. Overall he published more than forty books and innumerable articles and was well known around the world as a lecturer and broadcaster.

For review copies, press images, or to arrange interviews, please contact:
the National Maritime Museum Press Office on Tel: 020 8312 6732 or Email: press@rmg.co.uk