Lodestar books gb (46 risultati)

Paperback. Condizione: New. HEARD ISLAND, an improbably remote speck in the far Southern Ocean, lies four thousand kilometres to the south-west of Australia - with Antarctica its nearest continent. By 1964 it had been the object of a number of expeditions, but none reaching the summit of its 9000-foot volcanic peak "Big Ben'. In that year Warwick Deacock resolved to rectify this omission, and assembled a party of nine with impressive credentials embracing mountaineering, exploration, science and medicine, plus his own organisation and leadership skills as a former Major in the British Army. But first they had to get there. Heard had no airstrip and was on no steamer route; the only way was by sea in their own vessel. Approached from Australia, the island lay in the teeth of the 'Roaring Forties'and 'Furious Fifties'. One name, only, came to mind as the skipper to navigate them safely to their destination, and safely home - the veteran mountaineer turned high-latitude sailor H. W. 'Bill' Tilman, already renowned for his 'sailing to climb' expeditions to Patagonia, Greenland and Arctic Canada, and the sub-Antarctic archipelagos of Crozet and Kerguelen, to the north-west of Heard Island. He readily 'signed on' to Warwick Deacock's team of proven individuals and their well-found sailing vessel Patanela. In this first-hand account, as fresh today as on its first publication fifty years ago, Philip Temple invites us all on this superbly conducted, happy and successful expedition, aided by many previously unpublished photographs by Warwick Deacock. 'The Skipper' - a man not free with his praise - described the enterprise as 'a complete thing'. photographs, maps, drawings.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. In a post-exploration world, two relatively ordinary blokes, serving Royal Marines, decided they wanted an extraordinary 21st century adventure. In this refreshingly honest account they re-live the highs and lows of sailing and rowing a tiny open boat, completely unsupported, through one of the most iconic wilderness waterways on the planet - the Northwest Passage across the top of Canada. They describe battling with an Arctic storm miles from land and being caught in the worst sea ice for more than a decade. At one point they are forced to drag Arctic Mariner, their seventeen-foot boat, across ten miles of broken pack ice to reach open water. Their story is enriched by the Inuit people and the incredible wildlife they met along the way, including all-too-close encounters with both grizzly and polar bears. And they relate with honesty how the isolation and stresses of the high Arctic shaped the bond between their two very different personalities. This is neither an expose of global warming, nor a detailed study of Inuit culture. It is not particularly long on the historical quest for the Northwest Passage. It is quite simply the tale of two blokes, up north. b/w photographs, maps, drawings.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. Martin O'Scannall loves the old, the eccentric, the offbeat - the quirky if you like; the wandering off into byways, the exploration of half-forgotten snippets of history. And Galicia, his home for the past decade or more, is ideal territory for indulging that taste. Galicia is a time warp: rain-swept, isolated, savage and gentle by turns, as far a cry from the blazing Costas as it is possible to imagine. This book is a conversation with the past, conducted in a very old, engineless gaff cutter, armed with the Admiralty Pilot, a gallant crew, and a sense of the ridiculous. We encounter, but in unexpected ways, the likes of Drake, Nelson, the ill-fated HMS Serpent, Celtic myth and legend, and the reminiscences of those who have gone before, all interspersed with the business of managing an old yacht in the old way: Walker log, paper charts and all. Beginning, as he says it has to be, with the dreaded storm at sea. …

Paperback. Condizione: New. Martin O'Scannall loves the old, the eccentric, the offbeat - the quirky if you like; the wandering off into byways, the exploration of half-forgotten snippets of history. And Galicia, his home for the past decade or more, is ideal territory for indulging that taste. Galicia is a time warp: rain-swept, isolated, savage and gentle by turns, as far a cry from the blazing Costas as it is possible to imagine. This book is a conversation with the past, conducted in a very old, engineless gaff cutter, armed with the Admiralty Pilot, a gallant crew, and a sense of the ridiculous. We encounter, but in unexpected ways, the likes of Drake, Nelson, the ill-fated HMS Serpent, Celtic myth and legend, and the reminiscences of those who have gone before, all interspersed with the business of managing an old yacht in the old way: Walker log, paper charts and all. Beginning, as he says it has to be, with the dreaded storm at sea. …

Paperback. Condizione: New. Deep in southern latitudes, in a desolate corner of Cumberland Bay on the east coast of the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia, hard by the rotting quays of the abandoned whaling station of Grytviken and almost within a stone's throw of the grave of Sir Ernest Shackleton, lie three forsaken steam ships: rusting remnants of our industrial past, unique survivals from a vanished age of steam at sea. One of these ships is 'Viola', the sole surviving Hull steam trawler from the huge fleet which put 'fish and chips' on Britain's plates more than a hundred years ago. In this absorbing account, maritime historians Robb Robinson and Ian Hart describe her ancestry and origins in the Victorian and Edwardian North Sea fishery - vividly depicting life for her crew in the most dangerous industry of its time; they record her Great War service as a U-boat hunter - one of the many merchant vessels largely unsung for their contribution, and often sacrifice, in wartime; and they recount her subsequent career hunting whales off West Africa, then later sealing and exploration work in the South Atlantic, before her final abandonment in South Georgia.Here she became quarry for the infamous Argentine scrap metal expedition of 1982, in the initiating action of the Falklands War. This improbable yet true story of a humble working vessel and those involved with her is a highly readable work of social, as well as maritime, history.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. Deep in southern latitudes, in a desolate corner of Cumberland Bay on the east coast of the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia, hard by the rotting quays of the abandoned whaling station of Grytviken and almost within a stone's throw of the grave of Sir Ernest Shackleton, lie three forsaken steam ships: rusting remnants of our industrial past, unique survivals from a vanished age of steam at sea. One of these ships is 'Viola', the sole surviving Hull steam trawler from the huge fleet which put 'fish and chips' on Britain's plates more than a hundred years ago. In this absorbing account, maritime historians Robb Robinson and Ian Hart describe her ancestry and origins in the Victorian and Edwardian North Sea fishery - vividly depicting life for her crew in the most dangerous industry of its time; they record her Great War service as a U-boat hunter - one of the many merchant vessels largely unsung for their contribution, and often sacrifice, in wartime; and they recount her subsequent career hunting whales off West Africa, then later sealing and exploration work in the South Atlantic, before her final abandonment in South Georgia.Here she became quarry for the infamous Argentine scrap metal expedition of 1982, in the initiating action of the Falklands War. This improbable yet true story of a humble working vessel and those involved with her is a highly readable work of social, as well as maritime, history.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. Sailing six thousand miles in eighty days, Allcard makes the classic southern route trade-wind crossing westward, and not without incident-severe gales, thief-catching in Spain, avoiding a seductive blonde in Gibraltar, encountering sharks and shoals of flying fish, and narrowly escaping falling overboard to his death when knocked out by gear falling from aloft. Allcard's plan to dodge the worst of the hurricane season on his return voyage is not accommodated by the elements. Through gales and headwinds, and one terrible storm, he takes seventy-four days to reach the Azores from New York, arriving minus his mizzen mast, desperately exhausted, injured, and hungry. The next leg, to Casablanca, is enlivened by a female stowaway, before he makes a safe return to England. Whether describing the pleasures or the trials, the phosphorescent nights or the storms, the operation of his ship or his own introspections, Edward Allcard eloquently conveys his deep appreciation of the sea, and the escape from modern civilisation it offers him.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. Sailing six thousand miles in eighty days, Allcard makes the classic southern route trade-wind crossing westward, and not without incident-severe gales, thief-catching in Spain, avoiding a seductive blonde in Gibraltar, encountering sharks and shoals of flying fish, and narrowly escaping falling overboard to his death when knocked out by gear falling from aloft. Allcard's plan to dodge the worst of the hurricane season on his return voyage is not accommodated by the elements. Through gales and headwinds, and one terrible storm, he takes seventy-four days to reach the Azores from New York, arriving minus his mizzen mast, desperately exhausted, injured, and hungry. The next leg, to Casablanca, is enlivened by a female stowaway, before he makes a safe return to England. Whether describing the pleasures or the trials, the phosphorescent nights or the storms, the operation of his ship or his own introspections, Edward Allcard eloquently conveys his deep appreciation of the sea, and the escape from modern civilisation it offers him.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. In the late 1920s Norwegian Erling Tambs and his wife Julie set out from Oslo with their Colin Archer pilot boat Teddy, little in the way of navigational equipment, and not much else. The Cruise of the Teddy is Erling's charming and modest account of how, with great fortitude, resourcefulness and good humour they reached New Zealand via the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, with many delightful human encounters along the way, to arrive with one more in the family than they started with.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. Open boat cruising has never been more popular, in the doing or the reading of it; magazines, websites, associations and events around the world attest to this, and of course the countless sailors who just 'get on with it' in their own unassuming manner. Two such, some ­fifty years ago, long before today's explosion of activity, were Ken Duxbury and his wife B; Ken's three books recounting their adventures in the eighteen-foot Drascombe Lugger ­'Lugworm' delighted many on their first appearance, yet they became unavailable for years. 'Lugworm on the Loose' describes how Ken and B quit the 'rat race' and explored the Greek islands ­under sail. 'Lugworm Homeward Bound' recounts their voyage home from Greece to England. 'Lugworm Island Hopping' has Ken and B ­exploring the Scilly Isles and the Hebrides. The light touch of Ken's writing belies the sheer ambition, resourcefulness and seamanship which infuse these exploits. And beyond pure sailing narrative, his books convey the unique engagement with land and people which is achieved by approaching under sail in a small boat.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. Having recorded in pen and ink the -"Fishing Boats of Scotland" which she loves, Gloria Wilson here focusses her attention on the -Peterhead yard of Richard Irvin and Sons, and the wooden, cruiser sterned fishing boats for which it became renowned in the second half of the twentieth century. Almost one hundred of her own photographs accompany her account of the boats and the people who made up a distinctive and now disappearing maritime culture. As Paul Gartside writes in his Foreword: "Gloria Wilson truly belongs in the tradition of the folklorists-individuals moved initially by the discovery of beauty in the commonplace who are then compelled to understand and record what they find. One hopes her example will spur others to similar effort, for the capturing of culture and local knowledge before it slips away is always a noble pursuit.".…

Paperback. Condizione: New. Having recorded in pen and ink the -"Fishing Boats of Scotland" which she loves, Gloria Wilson here focusses her attention on the -Peterhead yard of Richard Irvin and Sons, and the wooden, cruiser sterned fishing boats for which it became renowned in the second half of the twentieth century. Almost one hundred of her own photographs accompany her account of the boats and the people who made up a distinctive and now disappearing maritime culture. As Paul Gartside writes in his Foreword: "Gloria Wilson truly belongs in the tradition of the folklorists-individuals moved initially by the discovery of beauty in the commonplace who are then compelled to understand and record what they find. One hopes her example will spur others to similar effort, for the capturing of culture and local knowledge before it slips away is always a noble pursuit.".…

Paperback. Condizione: New. First published to huge acclaim during the war it describes, Very Ordinary Seaman relates-with humanity, humour and the authority of experience-lower-deck life in the British navy, from basic training to service on a destroyer protecting a convoy to Arctic Russia, a mission which came under heavy attack by air and sea, and from which many did not return."When Very Ordinary Seaman first appeared in the spring of 1944, V.?S.?Pritchett of the New Statesman described it as `One of the best pieces of documentary writing that I have come across during the war.' Elizabeth Bowen wrote in The Tatler, `the last chapters of Very Ordinary Seaman did leave me breathless; and also, feeling that we have known too little.' John Betjeman wrote, `This is so sincere and truthful, so much both, that you are held all the time. You become part of the community life of the ship, so that despite the dangers, boredom and discomfort you step ashore reluctantly.' By any standards this was a remarkable performance for a writer who was wearing the uniform of an ordinary seaman and sitting in a busy, overcrowded naval office `facing a blank wall and typing myself dry.'" - from Brian Lavery's Introduction.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. First published to huge acclaim during the war it describes, Very Ordinary Seaman relates-with humanity, humour and the authority of experience-lower-deck life in the British navy, from basic training to service on a destroyer protecting a convoy to Arctic Russia, a mission which came under heavy attack by air and sea, and from which many did not return."When Very Ordinary Seaman first appeared in the spring of 1944, V.?S.?Pritchett of the New Statesman described it as `One of the best pieces of documentary writing that I have come across during the war.' Elizabeth Bowen wrote in The Tatler, `the last chapters of Very Ordinary Seaman did leave me breathless; and also, feeling that we have known too little.' John Betjeman wrote, `This is so sincere and truthful, so much both, that you are held all the time. You become part of the community life of the ship, so that despite the dangers, boredom and discomfort you step ashore reluctantly.' By any standards this was a remarkable performance for a writer who was wearing the uniform of an ordinary seaman and sitting in a busy, overcrowded naval office `facing a blank wall and typing myself dry.'" - from Brian Lavery's Introduction.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. Fishing boats, particularly those along the eastern seaboard of Britain, from Whitby northwards, have always been fundamental to my existence writes Gloria Wilson in her Introduction. I touch upon my own story, give some account of how I have arrived at the happy and somewhat unconformable circumstance of being a writer and illustrator within the commercial fishing and boat building communities.Nevertheless, the boats themselves form the mainstay, the connective narrative throughout the book.I have chosen those which, for me, are the most likeable and pleasing, predominantly the classic, cruiser-sterned wooden-hulled seine netters and dual-purpose craft which are splendid sea boats and have such beautiful hull forms.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. Fishing boats, particularly those along the eastern seaboard of Britain, from Whitby northwards, have always been fundamental to my existence writes Gloria Wilson in her Introduction. I touch upon my own story, give some account of how I have arrived at the happy and somewhat unconformable circumstance of being a writer and illustrator within the commercial fishing and boat building communities.Nevertheless, the boats themselves form the mainstay, the connective narrative throughout the book.I have chosen those which, for me, are the most likeable and pleasing, predominantly the classic, cruiser-sterned wooden-hulled seine netters and dual-purpose craft which are splendid sea boats and have such beautiful hull forms.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. When Adrian Hayter set out single-handed from Lymington, England on his thirty-two-foot Albert Strange-designed yawl Sheila II, local betting was seven to one that he would get no further than the English Channel.His destination was New Zealand, and the odds were definitely against him. In 1949 perhaps only eight people had sailed solo around the world, and single-handed long-distance sailing voyages were rare. Adrian, then thirty-four, was a soldier, not a sailor.In the previous decade he had been a close observer of the Partition of India and fought as a soldier in the Second World War and the Malayan Emergency. The latter, Britain's brutal reaction to the Communist uprising of 1948, had driven his decision to sail halfway around the world, single-handed.More than sixty years later, and in the thirtieth anniversary year of Adrian's death, Lodestar Books is republishing the story of that voyage, Sheila in the Wind, first published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1959. As a sailor, Adrian recounts his foray into celestial navigation, a back-street appendix operation in India, armed escort by Indonesian authorities at sea, and eating barnacles off the hull to avoid starvation. As a writer he is trying to make sense of the humanitarian disasters that brought him to this voyage. Sheila in the Wind is more than a report of a 13,000-mile adventure; it's a story of the human spirit.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. In photographs, artworks, and words Gloria Wilson celebrates the rugged fishing village where she was brought up, and from which she set her course to a career recording, both visually and verbally, the North Sea fishery she loves. She writes:In this intriguing place I have found a heady mix of seafaring activities, shorelines, inimitable fisher people, stalwart boats, notable marine artists, cats, dark seas and dashing spray, thick sepulchral fogs, the clutter of translucent fishing paraphernalia, folklore and local custom, and many architectural specialities, together with touches of joy, humour, absurdity, and melancholy, all set within a townscape and topography of distinctive and outstanding quality. Staithes has always been a working village, rugged and unpretentious, without attitude. Things have an elegance which results from useful function.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. Dr Thomas Harrison Butler was a skilled, yet amateur, designer responsible for some hundreds of classic English cruising yachts which still grace our seas. Cruising Yachts, his design manifesto, first appeared in 1945-the year of his death-and last appeared in print in 1995. This long overdue Fifth Edition has been produced in collaboration with the Harrison Butler Association, and is a complete re-setting of the original text, drawings and mono photographs, documenting in detail HB's approach to the design and equipping of a yacht, providing an annotated catalogue of notable designs, and including a biographical portrait by HB's daughter, the late Joan Jardine-Brown. New for this edition are a modern gallery of colour photographs of HB yachts, and a thoughtful and illuminating Foreword by Ed Burnett, one of today's foremost designers of yachts in the classic English idiom.…

Hardback. Condizione: New. David Hillyard, founder of the famous firm of boatbuilders in Littlehampton, was born in the late nineteenth century, at the height of the Big Boat era. His family were stalwarts of ­Rowhedge in Essex, where the aristocratic owners of the enormous cutters dicing in the Solent sent their skippers to pick their racing crews of hard-bitten fishermen. Yachts, in those days, were for the very rich, but the men who sailed them were often the reverse. Perhaps it was a consciousness of this divide that led ­Hillyard-a devout Christian, descended from a long line of fishermen-to build boats that were robust, practical, and within the means of those lacking the advantage of dukedoms or armaments factories.This account of David Hillyard's voyage from apprentice boatbuilder to founder of a boatbuilding dynasty will be deeply interesting not only to owners of his boats and enthusiasts of traditional boatbuilding, but to anyone interested in the story of messing about in boats as practised in Britain. It also provides fascinating insights into the development of a small but significant corner of the relationship between the people of these islands and the seas that surround us.…

Hardback. Condizione: New. David Hillyard, founder of the famous firm of boatbuilders in Littlehampton, was born in the late nineteenth century, at the height of the Big Boat era. His family were stalwarts of ­Rowhedge in Essex, where the aristocratic owners of the enormous cutters dicing in the Solent sent their skippers to pick their racing crews of hard-bitten fishermen. Yachts, in those days, were for the very rich, but the men who sailed them were often the reverse. Perhaps it was a consciousness of this divide that led ­Hillyard-a devout Christian, descended from a long line of fishermen-to build boats that were robust, practical, and within the means of those lacking the advantage of dukedoms or armaments factories.This account of David Hillyard's voyage from apprentice boatbuilder to founder of a boatbuilding dynasty will be deeply interesting not only to owners of his boats and enthusiasts of traditional boatbuilding, but to anyone interested in the story of messing about in boats as practised in Britain. It also provides fascinating insights into the development of a small but significant corner of the relationship between the people of these islands and the seas that surround us.…

Hardback. Condizione: New. This book is about the generation of small boat sailors in Britain whose main achievements took place between 1945 and the mid 1960s. These included circumnavigations of the world as well as Atlantic crossings, and a variety of distances and destinations between. Some voyages were full of drama, others were simply (or perhaps not so simply) supremely competent feats of seamanship.All in one way or another pushed boundaries, even if few records were broken or indeed aimed at. In most cases the voyages were carried out without the glare of ­media attention, but to devotees of small boat sailing the names of the crews and boats still resonate powerfully: Eric and Susan Hiscock (Wanderer III), Peter and Anne Pye (Moonraker), ­Adlard Coles (Cohoe), Edward Allcard (­Temptress and Sea Wanderer), Humphrey Barton ­(Vertue XXXV), Stanley Smith, Colin Smith, and Charles Violet (Nova Espero), George and ­Isabel Millar (Truant, Serica, Amokura), Ann ­Davison (Felicity Ann), Patrick Ellam and Colin Mudie (Sopranino), Miles and Beryl Smeeton (Tzu Hang), John Guzzwell (Trekka).The experiences of these sailors conjure up a particular moment in the history of small boat voyaging. Most were born in the first two decades of the twentieth century and learned their sailing between the wars. Though several served in the Navy or related services, the war brought them a sudden enforced abstinence from pleasure sailing which stoked an appetite for a new start once the war was over.…

Hardback. Condizione: New. This book is about the generation of small boat sailors in Britain whose main achievements took place between 1945 and the mid 1960s. These included circumnavigations of the world as well as Atlantic crossings, and a variety of distances and destinations between. Some voyages were full of drama, others were simply (or perhaps not so simply) supremely competent feats of seamanship.All in one way or another pushed boundaries, even if few records were broken or indeed aimed at. In most cases the voyages were carried out without the glare of ­media attention, but to devotees of small boat sailing the names of the crews and boats still resonate powerfully: Eric and Susan Hiscock (Wanderer III), Peter and Anne Pye (Moonraker), ­Adlard Coles (Cohoe), Edward Allcard (­Temptress and Sea Wanderer), Humphrey Barton ­(Vertue XXXV), Stanley Smith, Colin Smith, and Charles Violet (Nova Espero), George and ­Isabel Millar (Truant, Serica, Amokura), Ann ­Davison (Felicity Ann), Patrick Ellam and Colin Mudie (Sopranino), Miles and Beryl Smeeton (Tzu Hang), John Guzzwell (Trekka).The experiences of these sailors conjure up a particular moment in the history of small boat voyaging. Most were born in the first two decades of the twentieth century and learned their sailing between the wars. Though several served in the Navy or related services, the war brought them a sudden enforced abstinence from pleasure sailing which stoked an appetite for a new start once the war was over.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. Martin O'Scannall loves the old, the eccentric, the offbeat - the quirky if you like; the wandering off into byways, the exploration of half-forgotten snippets of history. And Galicia, his home for the past decade or more, is ideal territory for indulging that taste. Galicia is a time warp: rain-swept, isolated, savage and gentle by turns, as far a cry from the blazing Costas as it is possible to imagine. This book is a conversation with the past, conducted in a very old, engineless gaff cutter, armed with the Admiralty Pilot, a gallant crew, and a sense of the ridiculous. We encounter, but in unexpected ways, the likes of Drake, Nelson, the ill-fated HMS Serpent, Celtic myth and legend, and the reminiscences of those who have gone before, all interspersed with the business of managing an old yacht in the old way: Walker log, paper charts and all. Beginning, as he says it has to be, with the dreaded storm at sea. …

Paperback. Condizione: New. Deep in southern latitudes, in a desolate corner of Cumberland Bay on the east coast of the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia, hard by the rotting quays of the abandoned whaling station of Grytviken and almost within a stone's throw of the grave of Sir Ernest Shackleton, lie three forsaken steam ships: rusting remnants of our industrial past, unique survivals from a vanished age of steam at sea. One of these ships is 'Viola', the sole surviving Hull steam trawler from the huge fleet which put 'fish and chips' on Britain's plates more than a hundred years ago. In this absorbing account, maritime historians Robb Robinson and Ian Hart describe her ancestry and origins in the Victorian and Edwardian North Sea fishery - vividly depicting life for her crew in the most dangerous industry of its time; they record her Great War service as a U-boat hunter - one of the many merchant vessels largely unsung for their contribution, and often sacrifice, in wartime; and they recount her subsequent career hunting whales off West Africa, then later sealing and exploration work in the South Atlantic, before her final abandonment in South Georgia.Here she became quarry for the infamous Argentine scrap metal expedition of 1982, in the initiating action of the Falklands War. This improbable yet true story of a humble working vessel and those involved with her is a highly readable work of social, as well as maritime, history.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. Sailing six thousand miles in eighty days, Allcard makes the classic southern route trade-wind crossing westward, and not without incident-severe gales, thief-catching in Spain, avoiding a seductive blonde in Gibraltar, encountering sharks and shoals of flying fish, and narrowly escaping falling overboard to his death when knocked out by gear falling from aloft. Allcard's plan to dodge the worst of the hurricane season on his return voyage is not accommodated by the elements. Through gales and headwinds, and one terrible storm, he takes seventy-four days to reach the Azores from New York, arriving minus his mizzen mast, desperately exhausted, injured, and hungry. The next leg, to Casablanca, is enlivened by a female stowaway, before he makes a safe return to England. Whether describing the pleasures or the trials, the phosphorescent nights or the storms, the operation of his ship or his own introspections, Edward Allcard eloquently conveys his deep appreciation of the sea, and the escape from modern civilisation it offers him.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. Having recorded in pen and ink the -"Fishing Boats of Scotland" which she loves, Gloria Wilson here focusses her attention on the -Peterhead yard of Richard Irvin and Sons, and the wooden, cruiser sterned fishing boats for which it became renowned in the second half of the twentieth century. Almost one hundred of her own photographs accompany her account of the boats and the people who made up a distinctive and now disappearing maritime culture. As Paul Gartside writes in his Foreword: "Gloria Wilson truly belongs in the tradition of the folklorists-individuals moved initially by the discovery of beauty in the commonplace who are then compelled to understand and record what they find. One hopes her example will spur others to similar effort, for the capturing of culture and local knowledge before it slips away is always a noble pursuit.".…

Paperback. Condizione: New. First published to huge acclaim during the war it describes, Very Ordinary Seaman relates-with humanity, humour and the authority of experience-lower-deck life in the British navy, from basic training to service on a destroyer protecting a convoy to Arctic Russia, a mission which came under heavy attack by air and sea, and from which many did not return."When Very Ordinary Seaman first appeared in the spring of 1944, V.?S.?Pritchett of the New Statesman described it as `One of the best pieces of documentary writing that I have come across during the war.' Elizabeth Bowen wrote in The Tatler, `the last chapters of Very Ordinary Seaman did leave me breathless; and also, feeling that we have known too little.' John Betjeman wrote, `This is so sincere and truthful, so much both, that you are held all the time. You become part of the community life of the ship, so that despite the dangers, boredom and discomfort you step ashore reluctantly.' By any standards this was a remarkable performance for a writer who was wearing the uniform of an ordinary seaman and sitting in a busy, overcrowded naval office `facing a blank wall and typing myself dry.'" - from Brian Lavery's Introduction.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. Fishing boats, particularly those along the eastern seaboard of Britain, from Whitby northwards, have always been fundamental to my existence writes Gloria Wilson in her Introduction. I touch upon my own story, give some account of how I have arrived at the happy and somewhat unconformable circumstance of being a writer and illustrator within the commercial fishing and boat building communities.Nevertheless, the boats themselves form the mainstay, the connective narrative throughout the book.I have chosen those which, for me, are the most likeable and pleasing, predominantly the classic, cruiser-sterned wooden-hulled seine netters and dual-purpose craft which are splendid sea boats and have such beautiful hull forms.…

Hardback. Condizione: New. David Hillyard, founder of the famous firm of boatbuilders in Littlehampton, was born in the late nineteenth century, at the height of the Big Boat era. His family were stalwarts of ­Rowhedge in Essex, where the aristocratic owners of the enormous cutters dicing in the Solent sent their skippers to pick their racing crews of hard-bitten fishermen. Yachts, in those days, were for the very rich, but the men who sailed them were often the reverse. Perhaps it was a consciousness of this divide that led ­Hillyard-a devout Christian, descended from a long line of fishermen-to build boats that were robust, practical, and within the means of those lacking the advantage of dukedoms or armaments factories.This account of David Hillyard's voyage from apprentice boatbuilder to founder of a boatbuilding dynasty will be deeply interesting not only to owners of his boats and enthusiasts of traditional boatbuilding, but to anyone interested in the story of messing about in boats as practised in Britain. It also provides fascinating insights into the development of a small but significant corner of the relationship between the people of these islands and the seas that surround us.…