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The Eight Sailing/Mountain-Exploration Books
H. W. Tilman -- mountaineer, sailor and one of the great explorers of this century -- was a prolific and stylish writer. His mountain activities are recorded in H. W. The Seven Mountain-Travel Books, an earlier omnibus, and this companion volume deals with his equally enthralling sailing adventures. When he bought the pilot cutter "Mischief" in 1954, it was not with the intention of retiring from mountaineering, but to use the sea for access to remote mountains in high latitudes. Over the next twenty-two years "Mischief" and her successors saw regular service in distant waters, and their owner developed a whole new technique and tradition of amphibious mountaineering. His seafaring technique, like that of his mountaineering, was based on simplicity, using well-tried methods and navigational equipment that was essentially the same as that used by James Cook. He maintained that the only worthwhile innovations made in small ships in the last hundred years were the Diesel engine and Terylene rope. His seamanship was characterized by the same intelligence, cool judgment and masterly skill that had made his mountaineering exploits famous. He became an excellent navigator, with an approach more like that of a merchant sailing ship's master than a modern racing yachtsman's. The object was to arrive, not to win a race, and his ships and crews were carefully nursed through severe conditions without strain or fuss. The eight books collected haere are humorous, learned, devastatingly candid, and packed with information. They recount voyages to the Southern Oceans where he visited Patagonia, the Crozets, Kerguelen, Heard Island and the South Shetlands. No less important were his many trips to Greenland as well as forays to Sptizbergen, Baffin Island and other areas above the Arctic Circle. The mountaineering highlights of his seafaring career were the crossing of the Patagonian ice cap, the crossing of Bylot Island, and the ascent of Big Ben on Heard Island, where although Tilman was not in the summit party, he contributed more than any of them to the success of the expedition. Not all of his voyages were successful or enjoyable. A valued crew member was lost overboard during one venture. There were the sad losses of his cutters, "Mischief" and "Sea Breeze," and other occasions when crew members, unable to match Tilman's persistence, decided to desert or mutiny. Most of his crews were made of sterner stuff. They were rewarded with good fellowship and humor, the opportunity of learning seamanship and mountaineering from a great teacher, and a chance to see what may be done in rough waters and heavy ice in a little, old, unstrengthened ship. Some managed to join him on more than one voyage, including the resourceful Simon Richardson, in whose boat "En Avant," Tilman, Richardson and their crew disappeared after leaving Rio de Janeiro for Port Stanley in November 1977. What happened is a mystery but the passage to South America had been a happy one. The loss of six enterprising young men was tragic, but for Tilman at least, it was a sad but curiously fitting end, one last voyage in the best of good company.
956 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1987
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 6, 2016
A compilation of 8 separate sailing books by the maestro himself, Bill Tilman, one of the great explorers of the 20th century. The sequence is roughly chronological except for one early expedition around Africa that gets lumped in to a later book. The general sequence gives a great overview of this ex-mountaineer's last years on the high seas.
Tilman's laconic understatement, Edwardian sense of virtue and privation, his unblinking honesty, and his inveterate Romanticism all shine through in these books.
Occasionally Tilman repeats himself in these books, which is not surprising given the fact that he was often sailing a similar boat with a similar type of ad hoc crew in similar circumstances to similar places. He also treats descriptions of his crews in summary fashion at the beginning of each voyage as a matter of obligation to the reader--and mentions them as needed from the logs of the voyage. They don't figure much, or emerge much as individuals, in his retelling although they obviously are major figures in the actual events of the voyages--such as the doomed trip to Antarctica where he lost one man overboard and took on three obviously terrible crew members in South America, or the trip to Greenland in SeaBreeze where he had a "decent enough" crew until they effectively mutinied and turned him back.
Be prepared for plenty of references to "Lecky", the "Pilot", all sorts of antiquated British Imperial cultural references relatable to the blimps of Kipling's generation, the occasional connoisseurship of bananas, and a growing disdain for the changed world of post-WW2 with its Cold War polarization and dangers, its long-haired Beatles fans, its officious bureaucrats, and its loss of gentility and the Romantic notion of authenticity.
The later expeditions feel increasingly pathetic, tragic even, as Tilman is obviously a decrepit, historical anachronism still pursuing with single-minded zeal his boyish desire to explore, into an era when real exploration was closed to all but spacefarers at the apex of immense nationally subsidized programmes.
While he limits himself to sailing, and with oldest forms of navigation possible, the men who longed to live in that world were falling away around him. The places he found himself attempting to go were mapped my air, accessible with little drama by military transport, and not as Romantic a find as the real blank spots he pioneered as a young man in the Himalaya. The only real attraction to these polar destinations was the cache of remoteness, and to these remote, forlorn places Tilman went with shoestring, self-funded expeditions with makeshift crews largely composed of deadbeats in craft of questionable seaworthiness. As a man of undaunted courage and endless resolve these books are a great testament to the man.
Highlights for me were the expedition to Patagonia and the crossing of the ice cap there, the expedition to Heard Island on the Patenella, the first trip to the Crozets and Kerguelin, the crossing of Bylot island, the more or less endless disaster of the trip to Antarctica, and the "happy" second trip in the SeaBreeze to Greenland. Most of the trips to Greenland, except for the loss of Mischief at Jan Mayen become indistinguishable from one another in my mind.
Tilman's laconic understatement, Edwardian sense of virtue and privation, his unblinking honesty, and his inveterate Romanticism all shine through in these books.
Occasionally Tilman repeats himself in these books, which is not surprising given the fact that he was often sailing a similar boat with a similar type of ad hoc crew in similar circumstances to similar places. He also treats descriptions of his crews in summary fashion at the beginning of each voyage as a matter of obligation to the reader--and mentions them as needed from the logs of the voyage. They don't figure much, or emerge much as individuals, in his retelling although they obviously are major figures in the actual events of the voyages--such as the doomed trip to Antarctica where he lost one man overboard and took on three obviously terrible crew members in South America, or the trip to Greenland in SeaBreeze where he had a "decent enough" crew until they effectively mutinied and turned him back.
Be prepared for plenty of references to "Lecky", the "Pilot", all sorts of antiquated British Imperial cultural references relatable to the blimps of Kipling's generation, the occasional connoisseurship of bananas, and a growing disdain for the changed world of post-WW2 with its Cold War polarization and dangers, its long-haired Beatles fans, its officious bureaucrats, and its loss of gentility and the Romantic notion of authenticity.
The later expeditions feel increasingly pathetic, tragic even, as Tilman is obviously a decrepit, historical anachronism still pursuing with single-minded zeal his boyish desire to explore, into an era when real exploration was closed to all but spacefarers at the apex of immense nationally subsidized programmes.
While he limits himself to sailing, and with oldest forms of navigation possible, the men who longed to live in that world were falling away around him. The places he found himself attempting to go were mapped my air, accessible with little drama by military transport, and not as Romantic a find as the real blank spots he pioneered as a young man in the Himalaya. The only real attraction to these polar destinations was the cache of remoteness, and to these remote, forlorn places Tilman went with shoestring, self-funded expeditions with makeshift crews largely composed of deadbeats in craft of questionable seaworthiness. As a man of undaunted courage and endless resolve these books are a great testament to the man.
Highlights for me were the expedition to Patagonia and the crossing of the ice cap there, the expedition to Heard Island on the Patenella, the first trip to the Crozets and Kerguelin, the crossing of Bylot island, the more or less endless disaster of the trip to Antarctica, and the "happy" second trip in the SeaBreeze to Greenland. Most of the trips to Greenland, except for the loss of Mischief at Jan Mayen become indistinguishable from one another in my mind.
January 26, 2015
A compilation of 8 separate sailing books by the maestro himself, Bill Tilman, one of the great explorers of the 20th century. The sequence is roughly chronological except for one early expedition around Africa that gets lumped in to a later book. The general sequence gives a great overview of this ex-mountaineer's days. Tilman's laconic understatement, Edwardian sense of virtue and privation, his unblinking honesty, and his inveterate Romanticism all shine through in these books.
Occasionally Tilman repeats himself in these books, which is not surprising given the fact that he was often sailing a similar boat with a similar type of ad hoc crew in similar circumstances to similar places. He also treats descriptions of his crews in summary fashion at the beginning of each voyage as a matter of obligation to the reader--and mentions them as needed from the logs of the voyage. They don't figure much, or emerge much as individuals, in his retelling although they obviously are major figures in the actual events of the voyages--such as the doomed trip to Antarctica where he lost one man overboard and took on three obviously terrible crew members in South America, or the trip to Greenland in SeaBreeze where he had a "decent enough" crew until they effectively mutinied and turned him back.
Be prepared for plenty of references to "Lecky", the "Pilot", all sorts of antiquated British Imperial cultural references relatable to the blimps of Kipling's generation, the occasional connoisseurship of bananas, and a growing disdain for the changed world of post-WW2 with its Cold War polarization and dangers, its long-haired Beatles fans, its officious bureaucrats, and its loss of gentility and the Romantic notion of authenticity.
The later expeditions feel increasingly pathetic, tragic even, as Tilman is obviously a decrepit, historical anachronism still pursuing with single-minded zeal his boyish desire to explore, into an era when real exploration was closed to all but spacefarers at the apex of immense nationally subsidized programmes.
While he limits himself to sailing, and with oldest forms of navigation possible, the men who longed to live in that world were falling away around him. The places he found himself attempting to go were mapped my air, accessible with little drama by military transport, and not as Romantic a find as the real blank spots he pioneered as a young man in the Himalaya. The only real attraction to these polar destinations was the cache of remoteness, and to these remote, forlorn places Tilman went with shoestring, self-funded expeditions with makeshift crews largely composed of deadbeats in craft of questionable seaworthiness. As a man of undaunted courage and endless resolve these books are a great testament to the man.
Highlights for me were the expedition to Patagonia and the crossing of the ice cap there, the expedition to Heard Island on the Patenella, the first trip to the Crozets and Kerguelin, the crossing of Bylot island, the more or less endless disaster of the trip to Antarctica, and the "happy" second trip in the SeaBreeze to Greenland. Most of the trips to Greenland, except for the loss of Mischief at Jan Mayen become indistinguishable from one another in my mind.
Occasionally Tilman repeats himself in these books, which is not surprising given the fact that he was often sailing a similar boat with a similar type of ad hoc crew in similar circumstances to similar places. He also treats descriptions of his crews in summary fashion at the beginning of each voyage as a matter of obligation to the reader--and mentions them as needed from the logs of the voyage. They don't figure much, or emerge much as individuals, in his retelling although they obviously are major figures in the actual events of the voyages--such as the doomed trip to Antarctica where he lost one man overboard and took on three obviously terrible crew members in South America, or the trip to Greenland in SeaBreeze where he had a "decent enough" crew until they effectively mutinied and turned him back.
Be prepared for plenty of references to "Lecky", the "Pilot", all sorts of antiquated British Imperial cultural references relatable to the blimps of Kipling's generation, the occasional connoisseurship of bananas, and a growing disdain for the changed world of post-WW2 with its Cold War polarization and dangers, its long-haired Beatles fans, its officious bureaucrats, and its loss of gentility and the Romantic notion of authenticity.
The later expeditions feel increasingly pathetic, tragic even, as Tilman is obviously a decrepit, historical anachronism still pursuing with single-minded zeal his boyish desire to explore, into an era when real exploration was closed to all but spacefarers at the apex of immense nationally subsidized programmes.
While he limits himself to sailing, and with oldest forms of navigation possible, the men who longed to live in that world were falling away around him. The places he found himself attempting to go were mapped my air, accessible with little drama by military transport, and not as Romantic a find as the real blank spots he pioneered as a young man in the Himalaya. The only real attraction to these polar destinations was the cache of remoteness, and to these remote, forlorn places Tilman went with shoestring, self-funded expeditions with makeshift crews largely composed of deadbeats in craft of questionable seaworthiness. As a man of undaunted courage and endless resolve these books are a great testament to the man.
Highlights for me were the expedition to Patagonia and the crossing of the ice cap there, the expedition to Heard Island on the Patenella, the first trip to the Crozets and Kerguelin, the crossing of Bylot island, the more or less endless disaster of the trip to Antarctica, and the "happy" second trip in the SeaBreeze to Greenland. Most of the trips to Greenland, except for the loss of Mischief at Jan Mayen become indistinguishable from one another in my mind.
September 26, 2015
Great adventure stories. This is mountaineering with stamina.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews