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Alan Villiers | |
|---|---|
 Portrait of Alan Villiers in 1925 | |
| Born | Alan John Villiers (1903-09-23)23 September 1903 |
| Died | 3 March 1982(1982-03-03) (aged 78)[1] |
| Occupation | sailor, journalist, author |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Citizenship | Australian / British |
| Years active | 1928-1965 |
| Notable works | Whalers of the Midnight Sun |
| Notable awards | Children'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 inMelbourne,Australia, Villiers first went to sea at age 15 and sailed on board traditionallyrigged vessels, including thefull-rigged shipJoseph Conrad. He commandedsquare-rigged ships for films, includingMoby Dick andBilly Budd. He also commanded theMayflower II on its voyage from the United Kingdom to the United States.[2]
Villiers wrote 44 books, and served as the Chairman (1960–70) and President (1970-74) of theSociety for Nautical Research, a Trustee of theNational Maritime Museum, and Governor of theCutty Sark Preservation Society. He was awarded theBritish Distinguished Service Cross as aCommander in theRoyal Naval Reserve during theSecond World War.
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 themerchant ships come in and out of thePort of Melbourne. Leaving home at the age of 15, he joined thebarqueRothesay Bay as an apprentice. TheRothesay Bay operated in theTasman Sea, trading between Australia andNew Zealand.
An accident on board the barqueLawhill beached Villiers in 1922, by then a seasonedAble seaman. He sought employment as ajournalist at theHobart Mercury newspaper inTasmania while he recovered from his wounds.[3]
Soon Villiers was back at sea when the great explorer and whalerCarl Anton Larsen and hiswhaling factory ship, theSir James Clark Ross came to port with five whale chasers in tow in late 1923. His accounts of the trip were published asWhaling in the Frozen South. Named for theAntarctica explorerJames Clark Ross, theRoss 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 theHerzogin Cecilie in 1927 would result in his publication ofFalmouth for Orders. Through it he met Captain Ruben de Cloux, who later became his partner in the barqueParma.
He wroteBy Way of Cape Horn after his experiences crewing the full-riggedGrace Harwar from Australia to Ireland in 1929. Villiers had a desire to document the great sailing ships before it was too late, andGrace Harwar was one of the last working full-riggers. With a small ill-paid crew and no need forcoal, such vessels undercutsteam ships, and maybe 20 ships were still involved in the trade. As Villiers first stood on the dock looking atGrace Harwar, a wharf laborer warned "Don't ship out in her! She's a killer."[4] Villiers' friend Ronald Walker was lost on the journey. More than 40 years old at the time, the ship hadbarnacles andalgae growing along her waterline. The voyage took 138 days and was filmed asThe Cape Horn Road; Villiers took photographs, serving as a record of that period in full-rigged working ships.
Villiers reunited with Ruben de Cloux in 1931, becoming a partner with him in the four-masted barqueParma. With de Cloux as captain,Parma won the unofficial "grain race" between the ships of the trade in 1932, arriving in 103 days despitebroaching in a gale. In 1933, the ship won in 83 days. Villiers sailed as a passenger on both voyages.[5]
After selling his shares back to de Cloux, Villiers purchased theGeorg Stage in 1934. Afull-rigged sailing ship of 400 tons, originally built in 1882 by Burmeister & Wain inCopenhagen,Denmark, she was employed as a sailingschool ship by Stiftelsen Georg Stages Minde. Saving her from thescrapyard, Villiers renamed her theJoseph Conrad, after the writer and seamanJoseph Conrad.
Asail training pioneer, Villierscircumnavigated 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 contemporariesIrving and Exy Johnson, he helped form the modern concept of sail training.[citation needed]
Returning almost two years later, Villiers sold theJoseph Conrad to George Huntington Hartford. He published two books of his adventures,Cruise of the "Conrad" andStormalong. TheJoseph Conrad is maintained and operated as amuseum ship atMystic Seaport in Connecticut, USA.
In 1938, Alan Villiers embarked as a passenger on an Arabdhow for a round trip from Oman to theRufiji Delta, and depicted the way of life of Arab sailors and their navigation techniques in a book calledSons of Sindbad, illustrated with his own photographs.
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With the outbreak ofWorld War II, Villiers was commissioned as aLieutenant in theRoyal Naval Volunteer Reserve in 1940. He was assigned to a convoy of 24 LCI(L)'s, orLanding craft, Infantry (Large). Ordered to deliver them across theAtlantic, with a 40 percent loss rate expected, Villiers got all but one safely across. He commanded "flights" of LCI(L)s onD-Day in theBattle of Normandy, theInvasion of Sicily, and theBurma Campaign in the Far East. By the end of the War, Villiers had been promoted toCommander and awarded the BritishDistinguished Service Cross.
Married in 1940 to his second wife Nancie, Villiers settled inOxford, England, and continued to be active in sailing and writing. He was the Captain of theMayflower II in her 1957 maiden voyage across the Atlantic, 337 years after the originalMayflower, and beating her predecessor's time of 67 days by 13 days. From 1963 to 1967 he was involved in an unsuccessful attempt to build a replica ofHM BarkEndeavour.[6] He advised on the 1962 MGM movieMutiny on the Bounty. Villiers was a regular contributor to theNational 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, thePortuguese Ambassador to the United States,Pedro Teotónio Pereira, a sailing enthusiast and later a friend of Villiers, invited him to sail on the schoonerArgus, a cod fishing four-masted schooner, and to record the last commercial activity ever to make use of sails in ocean-crossings. Villiers wroteThe Quest Of The Schooner Argus: A voyage to the Grand Banks and Greenland on a modern four masted fishing schooner.[7] The book was a success in North America and Europe and was later published in sixteen languages. The voyage made news on the BBC, in the main London newspapers, theNational Geographic Magazine, and theNew York Times, and the Portuguese government made Villiers a Commander of the PortugueseOrder of St. James of the Sword for outstanding services to literature in March 1951.[8]
In 1978, Villiers weighed in thatFrancis Drake landed atNew Albion atPoint Reyes inMarin County, California.[9][clarification needed]
In 2010, theSociety for Nautical Research, theNaval Review, and the Britannia Naval Research Association jointly established the annualAlan Villiers Memorial Lecture atSt Edmund Hall, Oxford.[10]
Civilization VI includes a quote from Villiers: "There is little man has made that approaches anything in nature, but a sailing ship does."[11]
