ALAN VILLERS: Voyager of the Winds
By Kate Lance, 2009
Published by the British National Maritime Museum
and in Australia by the UNSW Press
Alan Villiers was not simply a voyager. At a pivotal moment in maritime history he worked aloft as a seaman and abaft as a master, observing and recording an age-old body of wisdom. The result was an extraordinary memorial: to the greatest sailing ships ever launched and to the talented man who loved them.
Melbourne-born Alan Villiers was only in his mid-forties when he wrote his autobiography, but by then he had already lived a life that made it well worth reading. He went to sea on square-riggers in 1920, and at twenty-five sailed on a four-masted barque around Cape Horn: a thrilling race and a female stowaway gave him his first best-seller.
By the mid-1930s his writings, films and lectures had made him famous, then after the agonising failure of a love affair he set off to sail around the globe for two years, in the exquisite full-rigged ship Joseph Conrad. His public rationale was always the urgency of recording the disappearing ways of sail; Villiers never mentioned the private depressions, loneliness and self-doubt that also drove him.
During World War II he commanded landing ship squadrons in Europe and Asia, then became a media star of the '50s and '60s. He inspired ship-lovers world-wide to preserve their historic vessels and produced over forty maritime books, but he remained far better-known in America and Europe than in his own land. He never updated his autobiography, and Voyager of the Winds is the first study of his life as a whole - the myth-making, the achievements, and the consequences.
"Kate Lance's extensive research, using Villiers' own journals and papers, will help those who did not know him to a better understanding of this remarkable man. Young people reading this book will realise that there was a time, not so long ago, when true adventure still existed - but you needed to be a man like Alan Villiers to take advantage of it."
- Sir Robin Knox-Johnston
Redbill: From Pearls to Peace
By Kate Lance, 2004
Published by the Fremantle Arts Centre Press
Redbill is the true story of a wooden boat's voyage through a century of history, beginning as a pearlshell-diving lugger in the early years of twentieth century Australia.
She was once owned by the notorious Captain Gregory, a master pearler who was not only the inspiration for the dashing hero in a handful of novels, but also a subject of bitter rumours of betrayal; a man famous for his buccaneering ways and his friendships with Asian people in the days of strict racial separation. For two decades Gregory calmly deceived governments with his Japanese-crafted fleet of illicit phantoms that, one-by-one, took over the identities of his official pearling vessels; and Redbill became one of those phantoms.
Over the years Redbill was rebuilt and repaired many times. She was threatened in wartime, abandoned as worthless, sunken, negelected and often forgotten, yet somehow she always survived; perhaps because she had an almost uncanny ability to inspire the kind of love and hard labour it took to return her to seaworthiness. She went to work on behalf of Greenpeace, raised funds for refugees from East Timor, filmed a TV documentary on teenagers sailing through Bass Strait, and helped reunite a young Aboriginal man with his long-lost family.
Redbill took on an epic voyage around the coast of Australia to return to Broome, where she encountered her greatest challenge yet. Over the decades the lugger had survived many terrible storms, but this time, alone, she had to face Rosita, the most powerful tropical cyclone to strike Broome in ninety years...
Winner of the Western Australian Premier's Book Award 2004 for Non-Fiction
"Built in 1903 for the Broome pearling industry, Redbill went on to an eventful life that spanned nearly a century and some major historical events ... At various times it was crewed by troubled teenagers, crocodile farmers, ecologists and others who all fell under its spell. One of those captivated was Lance, who chronicles with warmth and affection its remarkable adventures." - Judges' Comments
