Alan Villiers

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Alan Villiers
Victoria, Australia
Died3 March 1982(1982-03-03) (aged 78)
Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
Occupationjournalist, sailor, author
LanguageEnglish
NationalityAustralian
CitizenshipAustralian / British
Years active1928-1965
Notable worksWhalers of the Midnight Sun
Notable awardsChildren's Book of the Year Award: Older Readers 1950

Alan John Villiers, DSC (23 September 1903 – 3 March 1982) was a writer, adventurer, photographer and mariner.

Born in Melbourne, Australia, Villiers first went to sea at age 15 and sailed on board traditionally rigged vessels, including the full-rigged ship Joseph Conrad. He commanded square-rigged ships for films, including Moby Dick and Billy Budd. He also commanded the Mayflower II on its voyage from the United Kingdom to the United States.[1]

Villiers wrote 44 books, and served as the Chairman (1960–70) and President (1970-74) of the

British Distinguished Service Cross as a Commander in the Royal Naval Reserve during the Second World War
.

Early history

Alan John Villiers was the second son of Australian poet and union leader Leon Joseph Villiers. The young Villiers grew up on the docks watching the merchant ships come in and out of the Port of Melbourne. Leaving home at the age of 15, he joined the barque Rothesay Bay as an apprentice. The Rothesay Bay operated in the Tasman Sea, trading between Australia and New Zealand.

An accident on board the barque Lawhill beached Villiers in 1922, by then a seasoned Able seaman. He sought employment as a journalist at the Hobart Mercury newspaper in Tasmania while he recovered from his wounds.[citation needed]

Writer and adventurer

Soon Villiers was back at sea when the great explorer and whaler Carl Anton Larsen and his whaling factory ship, the Sir James Clark Ross came to port with five whale chasers in tow in late 1923. His accounts of the trip were published as Whaling in the Frozen South. Named for the Antarctica explorer James Clark Ross, the Ross was the largest whale factory ship in the world, weighing in at 12,000 tons. She was headed for the southern Ross Sea, the last whale stronghold left. Villiers writes: "We had caught 228, most of them blues, the biggest over 100 feet long. These yielded 17,000 barrels of oil; we had hoped for at least 40,000, with luck 60,000."

Villiers' passage on board the Herzogin Cecilie in 1927 would result in his publication of Falmouth for Orders. Through it he met Captain Ruben de Cloux, who later became his partner in the barque Parma.

He wrote By Way of Cape Horn after his experiences crewing the full-rigged Grace Harwar from Australia to Ireland in 1929. Villiers had a desire to document the great sailing ships before it was too late, and Grace Harwar was one of the last working full-riggers. With a small ill-paid crew and no need for

barnacles and algae
growing along her waterline. The voyage took 138 days and was filmed as The Cape Horn Road; Villiers took photographs, serving as a record of that period in full-rigged working ships.

Ship owner and circumnavigator

Villiers reunited with Ruben de Cloux in 1931, becoming a partner with him in the four-masted barque

broaching in a gale. In 1933, the ship won in 83 days. Villiers sailed as a passenger on both voyages.[2]

After selling his shares back to de Cloux, Villiers purchased the Georg Stage in 1934. A

scrapyard, Villiers renamed her the Joseph Conrad, after the writer and seaman Joseph Conrad
.

A sail training pioneer, Villiers circumnavigated the globe with an amateur crew. He used the environment of the sea to build character and discipline in his young crew and, with his contemporaries Irving and Exy Johnson, he helped form the modern concept of sail training.[citation needed]

Returning almost two years later, Villiers sold the Joseph Conrad to George Huntington Hartford. He published two books of his adventures, Cruise of the "Conrad" and Stormalong. The Joseph Conrad is maintained and operated as a museum ship at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut, USA.

In 1938, Alan Villiers embarked as a passenger on an Arab

Rufiji Delta
, and depicted the way of life of Arab sailors and their navigation techniques in a book called Sons of Sindbad, illustrated with his own photographs.

World War II

A LCI(L) during the Invasion of Sicily - 1943

With the outbreak of

Distinguished Service Cross
.

Later years

Married in 1940 to his second wife Nancie, Villiers settled in

National Geographic Magazine
throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

Villiers produced a travel lecture film, Last of the Great Sea Dogs, which ran at the Dorothy Chandler pavilion in 1976. The film contains 16mm colour, filmography of his adventures. There is a digital restored master of the performance with an audio track, narrated by Villiers.

In 1951, the

Order of St. James of the Sword for outstanding services to literature in March 1951.[4]

In 1978, Villiers weighed in that

Marin County, California.[5][clarification needed
]

In 2010, the Society for Nautical Research, the Naval Review, and the Britannia Naval Research Association jointly established the annual Alan Villiers Memorial Lecture at St Edmund Hall, Oxford.[6]

In popular culture

Civilization VI includes a quote from Villiers: "There is little man has made that approaches anything in nature, but a sailing ship does."[7]

Bibliography

Books

Articles

References

  1. ^ "Alan Villiers". Oxford Index. Retrieved 13 July 2013.
  2. ISBN 978-0-948065-95-8
    .
  3. ^ Publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons; First American Edition (January 19, 1951)
  4. ^ "CIDADÃOS ESTRANGEIROS AGRACIADOS COM ORDENS PORTUGUESAS" (in Portuguese). Presidência da República Portuguesa. Retrieved 3 December 2014.
  5. ^ Drake Navigators Guild (1978), Summaries of Statements before the State Historical Resources Commission: Francis Drake in California Hearings, 21-23 October 1978
  6. ^ "The 1st annual Alan Villiers Memorial Lecture" (PDF). The Naval Review (Press release). 29 September 2010.
  7. ^ Lowrey, Bret (22 October 2016). "Civilization VI Quotes". The Daily Signal. Retrieved 5 November 2016.

External links

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