Search results for ""Lodestar Books""

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 & 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.

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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 & 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."

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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.

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Nick Imber's affectionate account of his family's love affair with the barge yacht Nan, who was to give so much pleasure to three generations, across twenty years from the 1950s to the 1970s.

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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.

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Luke Powell has almost single-handedly pioneered a revival in the building of traditional pilot cutters in Great Britain; he also has a flair for storytelling, both when looking back over a rich if unconventional life lived to the full, and when describing the long struggle to win acceptance for the wooden boats on which he established his reputation. Luke’s interest in boats began when clambering over the rotten hulks then mudbound in the backwater creeks of his Suffolk boyhood. Aged nine, he set sail with his family for the Greek islands. From then on the sea was his school. After an apprenticeship as a shipwright restoring Thames barges, he returned to the Mediterranean and the nomadic life of a journeyman boatbuilder. In due course he acquired a French girlfriend – the first of many long-suffering partners in his adventures – and Charmian, a 75-year-old cutter. In 1990, with a baby son on board, he sailed Charmian up the Helford River in Cornwall, little realising that seven years later this would become the home of his boatbuilding business, Working Sail. Luke’s arrival in England coincided with the renewal of interest in traditional boats. Having stumbled on a book about Scillonian pilot cutters, he vowed to build one from scratch. Risking what little money he had on buying timber, he built Eve by himself – almost with his bare hands. Success came gradually, yet to this day remains underpinned by a passionate belief in skills, craftsmanship and values that cannot be quantified in terms of money. Other boats have since been launched into the Helford – Lizzie May, Agnes, Hesper, Ezra, Tallulah, Amelie Rose, Freja – whose names are a rollcall of some of the most admired boats to have recently been built in Britain. Working Sail was first published in 2012; since then Luke and his team have built the 65ft Falmouth pilot cutter Pellew, the process being recorded in Christian Topf’s visual and verbal diary From the Loft Floor to the Sea.

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Long before Western man 'discovered' them, the 'People of the Sea', as many inhabitants of the South Pacific called themselves, had a vibrant, socially sophisticated culture in which travel on water played an essential part. For sixty-five years James Wharram has designed, built, and sailed craft of Polynesian double canoe form, demonstrating that the sea, far from being a barrier between the islands of the South Pacific, is their highway. The ocean voyages of James and his team culminated in their circumnavigation in the stunning 63ft 'Spirit of Gaia', during which they explored the lands and cultures of their vessel's spiritual home - the Polynesian islands. Inspired by the lifetime of creativity and discovery James describes in this book, many modern 'People of the Sea' are sailing the world's oceans, seas, coasts and rivers in craft they have built for themselves to James Wharram designs.

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From the Loft Floor to the Sea is photographer and designer Christian Topf's exhaustive visual and verbal journal of the building of the 68ft Pilot Cutter Pellew, by Luke Powell and his team in Cornwall. This is the largest traditional wooden boat build in the UK for decades – and at 360 large-format colour pages, this is probably the largest and most gorgeous book to illustrate the process. Chris visited the yard at Truro almost every week throughout the build to bring us this mouthwatering production, in which you can almost smell the sawdust, the hot pitch, and the linseed oil.

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Generations of children and their parents have delighted in Arthur Ransome’s `Swallows and Amazons’ books, but one of them stands out from the rest as being of a different order altogether. "We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea" is both larger of theme and tighter of plot; it is a rite-of-passage tale quite unlike the others, and in describing the experiences of its protagonist John it illuminates much of Ransome’s own psychology. "Good Little Ship" is a blend of literary criticism, maritime history and sheer celebration. Peter Willis combines an analysis of a classic of maritime literature (“a book of which Conrad would have been proud” – Hugh Brogan) with the story of the "Nancy Blackett", Ransome’s own boat which appears as the "Goblin" in his story. He describes her life, near-death and restoration, and her renaissance as an ambassador for Ransome and his tales.

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"I wonder if you can help me." "Maybe I could, or maybe I couldn't," was the very Welsh reply. "What is it you are wanting?" "Would you happen to know of any boats for sale?" It was a question the young man had asked many times before, and always with the same result. Nothing suited. There was no shortage of boats, but every time there was a problem, either they were too big or too small or as one honest broker - and yes there is such a thing - remarked, "Don't buy her. She will kill you." It had been a long depressing catalogue of scrabbling about fusty old tore-outs (rotten timber gleaming with suspiciously fresh paint), ugly ducklings, and unspeakable lifeboat conversions. So there was no reason to suppose that this time would be any different. "What kind of boat is it you are looking for?" with barely concealed cupidity; for an outsider with money to burn in the wilds of the Isle of Anglesey was akin to manna from Heaven. "Something like that," said the innocent, pointing out a dainty white cutter on her mooring in Holyhead harbour. "Well," said he "I believe she may just be for sale." He may well have added - but this might just be imagining - "You had better be quick, she is not on the market yet." An Irish horse dealer could not have done it better. * * * * * So began, in 1973, Martin O'Scannall's love affair with 'Sauntress', voted in 2013 one of Classic Boat magazine's Top 250 Boats. Here, in a series of delightful, engaging episodes ranging from Anglesey to Galicia by way of the West Country, the East Coast, the Netherlands, Norway and south-west Ireland, is what it is like to restore and sail - and be possessed by - a modest yet glorious 28ft gaffer dating from the golden age of Edwardian yachting. 'For the Love of Sauntress' is illustrated with a gallery of outrageously beautiful photographs by Oscar Companioni, printed in monochrome and colour; these depict Sauntress in all her present-day glory, and were taken on a single, perfect August evening off the Galician coast during her annual match race with her local rival 'Abur'.

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Whether she is to be rowed or sailed independently, or will be the tender to a larger vessel, nothing feels or looks quite like a traditional clinker-built dinghy, ‘done right’. And those two words are the key to a boat which will truly grace the water, charm all who use or see her, and maintain her value. In Details of Dinghy Building Will Stirling painstakingly describes and illustrates the many arcane yet vital tasks which can daunt the beginning boatbuilder. Will has been building clinker dinghies professionally for many years and has made, and learned how to avoid, all the mistakes which lie in wait for the unwary. Take advantage of his experience, and some ‘tricks of the trade’, and draw ­inspiration from the many mouthwatering photographs of finished boats which punctuate the book. If you’re building a boat, this textual guide and photographic reference will pay for itself many times over in the time, frustration and embarrassment it will save you. If you’re not, you’ll find it a fascinating verbal and visual window into a time-honoured traditional craft.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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In this first biography of David Henry Lewis, Ben Lowings examines his lifetime of adventure forensically yet sympathetically, and unlocks the secrets of his determination. This British-born New Zealander was the first person to sail a catamaran around the world, the first — in Ice Bird — to reach Antarctica solo under sail, and the first to make known to Westerners how ancient navigators reached — and could reach again — the Pacific islands. His many voyages resulted in thirteen books published and translated worldwide; many were bestsellers — We, the Navigators has not been out of print since first publication in 1972. David Lewis’s achievements have been acknowledged with a series of awards, including that of Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. But the price of David Lewis’s adventures had ultimately to be paid by others in the succession of families he created, then broke apart; and many of his actions brought him into conflict with the feelings of friends and contemporaries. We may legitimately ask 'was it really all worth it?' For the first time his six marriages are revealed, through more than a year of original research in Britain, Australia and New Zealand — including interviews with all surviving family members, as well as friends and fellow voyagers. Events thinly-sketched or omitted in his own writings, such as his father’s own failings, are investigated. His kayaking, mountain-climbing and sailing were struggles all the more difficult because of a fractured backbone, shattered elbow and impaired vision. David Lewis’s early years get the comprehensive documentation they deserve — in his own memoir he jumps straight from child to fully-fledged explorer. Inaccuracies are corrected in his tale of kayaking four hundred miles home from school. As playboy medical student, British paratrooper fighting in Normandy, and political activist in Palestine, Jamaica and London, he grappled with academic and colonial prejudice, and fought anti-Semitism and inequality; all is examined. As a general practitioner in the East End’s impure 1950s air he worked where the new National Health Service was most needed. Professional frustrations and marital disappointments were not soothed by weekend sailing. He would join a pioneering single-handed yacht race to America in 1960, leaving his first daughter to find him on board in Plymouth to say farewell only at the last minute. In 1964 he would race again, but this time in a catamaran, and then, with Fiona, his new wife, and their daughters, girdle the earth in it. For the first time, their circumnavigation is described in part from Fiona’s perspective. Media accounts and passages from his many books build up a picture of a consistently experimental, and utterly untypical, middle aged man. Every word in the Antarctic logbook of Ice Bird — scrawled with freezing hands — is closely compared with literary sources, National Geographic articles and his commercially successful book-length account. A new critical appreciation shows the white heat at the core of his being. He has abandoned his children again, and been drugged by ocean solitude. But in the act of writing he is earning his place among humanity. To hell with the frozen hands.

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Inexplicably out of print since the late 1940s, Messing About in Boats is one of the most charming and evocative accounts of work and leisure afloat in the years either side of the Great War. John Muir describes with humanity and humour the perils of boat acquisition and ownership by the impecunious, and the somewhat mixed talents of the Paid Hand. But his account is more than balanced by the interest and pleasure he took in working and sailing in English waters, from the North Sea to the Bristol Channel, in an age long before the marina, GPS and radio.Muir provides two valuable first-hand accounts of work afloat under steam and sail before the War, while he was on half-paid leave between assignments in the Royal Navy: In the North Sea 'boxing' fleet of trawlers which remained on station for weeks on end, where he served in his medical capacity, and later in the Bristol Channel Pilot service, where he crewed on a cutter, delivering the pilot to incoming ships in all weathers.His unfavourable views of the qualities of the Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter as a yacht may surprise its aficionados today, but he relented sufficiently to own two of them, Maud and Freda, which feature in the book.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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