Alan Villiers

Alan Villiers: Voyager of the Winds
by Kate Lance
with a foreword by Sir Robin Knox-Johnston

News: Alan Villiers by Kate Lance has won the 2009 Mountbatten Maritime Award for Best Literary Contribution.

 Click image to enlargeExclusive! Watch an excerpt from Alan Villiers’ film The Cape Horn Road.

Alan Villiers – prolific writer, journalist, photographer, film-maker and, above all, voyager and adventurer – was born in Melbourne in 1903. From boyhood he had an intense and overriding passion for sail and in 1920 first went to sea on square-rigged ships. A thrilling race and a female stowaway aboard the Herzogin Cecilie, a four-masted barque voyaging from Australia to Great Britain, gave him the basis for a bestseller, Falmouth for Orders.

Other voyages and successes followed, with Villiers becoming increasingly determined to document the passing way of life on square-riggers. In 1934, he bought his own ship, the Joseph Conrad, and embarked on a round-the-world voyage with a crew of young cadets, teaching them the fast-disappearing skills of seamanship. When the Second World War brought a halt to his adventures, he continued to teach while taking a significant part in the Allies’ sea operations.

Villiers’ maritime writings, films and lectures had made him famous, and he became a media star of the 1950s and 60s, sailing movie ships for Hollywood and captaining the Mayflower II across the Atlantic. His work for the Society of Nautical Research and as a trustee of the National Maritime Museum, along with his contributions to ship-preservation efforts around the world, have left a lasting legacy that complements his beautiful photographs and inspiring stories.

Using Villiers’ own journals and private notebooks, Kate Lance takes a close-up look at the complex, often conflicted man behind countless classic seafaring books and articles. She skillfully interweaves Villiers’ personal story with that of commercial sail, exploring issues such as the presence of women on square-rigged ships, the Allied sea operations during the Second World War and the politics of ship preservation and reconstruction. Most importantly, however, she takes the reader on a captivating, fulfilling journey with one of the most accomplished adventurers of the 20th century.

Kate Lance Kate Lance grew up at Lake Macquarie near Newcastle, Australia. She holds Arts and Science degrees and a PhD in Astronomy.

In 1988 she became a Unix system administrator and has worked in Internet technical services ever since. In 2000 the charmed life of a pearling lugger inspired her to write Redbill: From Pearls to Peace, which won the Western Australian Premier’s Book Award 2004 for Non-Fiction. She has two adult sons and two whippets and lives near the water in Melbourne, once home to the young Alan Villiers.

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Table of Contents

Foreword
Introduction
Author’s Note
Chapter 1: Hell and Melbourne
Chapter 2: This Was Sailing!
Chapter 3: What Could a Girl Like Me Do?
Chapter 4: He Is Dead
Chapter 5: Daphne at Sea
Chapter 6: Apprentice Girl
Chapter 7: An Exquisite Moment
Chapter 8: There Cannot Be Two Voyages Such As This
Chapter 9: Adrift in Arabia
Chapter 10: Aircraftwoman Wills
Chapter 11: The Terrific Business of Moving Armies
Chapter 12: Sail’s Time Is Up
Chapter 13: Mayflower and Marcel B
Chapter 14: Return to Cape Horn
Chapter 15: Voyage into the Unknown
Acknowledgements
Appendix A:
   Production of Four-Masted Iron and Steel Merchant Vessels
Appendix B: Metric Conversion Table
Notes
Bibliography
Books by Alan Villiers in Chronological Order
Articles by Alan Villiers for the National Geographic
Magazine in Chronological Order
Photo Credits
Index