The Set of The Sails Author:Alan Villiers The Set of the Sails is the autobiography of a great seaman whose experiences in sailing-ships is unrivalled and whose fame as a writer of books on ships and the sea is worldwide. Alan Villiers from his boyhood days in Melbourne, Australia, was determined not only to go to sea in sailing-ships but also to command one. When he was fifteen he sh... more »ipped as a cadet in the Tasman Sea barque Rothesay Bay, an ancient Scot in the New Zealand timber trade. For the next quarter of a century he wandered over the globe, voyaging whenever he could find a suitable vessel. At the age of seventeen, stranded penniless at Bordeaux, he boarded the Lawhill for Australia; and when she collided with a buoy he was pitched off the yard, striking the rigging all the way in his fall to the deck. He joined a whaling expedition to the Antarctic; he sailed with a film camera in the tragic ship Grace Harwar (whose notorious ill-luck continued, for one man was killed, the second mate went mad and jumped over-board, food ran short, and the ship's company nearly starved); he was in the famous Cape Horn grain-racer Herzogin Cecilie and was part-owner of the record-breaking Parma; he put in a spell with Arab deep-sea dhows; and to crown his life's ambition he bought a Danish training ship which he renamed Joseph Conrad, and sailed her three times round the world. In short, this is a grand book by an enthusiast for the glory of the old sailing-ship, full of dramatic tension and the thrill of combat with the wind and waves.« less