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David Fleming on Robin Knox-Johnston, A World of My Own, map, Slightly Foxed 77

Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea

Stirring tales of true-life adventure are, I suspect, most enjoyed by the unadventurous. Those of us content with a quiet and fairly uneventful life take great delight in reading books by those other impossibly intrepid souls who canoe their way up the Amazon, set off with nothing but a rucksack to explore India by train, or march away into the frozen Antarctic wastes dragging a heavy sledge behind them.

Despite never having hoisted a sail (and having no desire to do so), my own particular vicarious pleasure is reading stories by sailors who have made single-handed voyages round the world. A spate of such books appeared in the late Sixties and early Seventies, most of them by British adventurers who, having seen Everest conquered and the Poles reached, turned instinctively to the world’s great oceans for fresh challenges. Robin Knox-Johnston’s A World of My Own (1969) is one of the best of these autobiographical accounts.

Prior to Francis Chichester’s voyage, and his subsequent account of it in Gipsy Moth Circles the World (1967), the attention of sailors had been focused on the transatlantic crossing. Chichester opened up a new field of endeavour in both sailing and literary terms, soon to be followed by Alec Rose, but in their circumnavigations both sailors stopped off at Australia. The single-handed, non-stop circumnavigation of the world had yet to be achieved and this is where Knox-Johnston enters the story. Twenty-nine years old, and an officer in the Merchant Navy, he was also intensely patriotic and anxious that the French, who could boast some superb sailors, should not be the first to succeed. A trophy put up by the Sunday Times was an added incentive and the race was on.

Leaving Falmouth on 14 June 1968 in his ketch Suhaili, Knox-Johnston headed off into open water to sail the route tak

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Stirring tales of true-life adventure are, I suspect, most enjoyed by the unadventurous. Those of us content with a quiet and fairly uneventful life take great delight in reading books by those other impossibly intrepid souls who canoe their way up the Amazon, set off with nothing but a rucksack to explore India by train, or march away into the frozen Antarctic wastes dragging a heavy sledge behind them.

Despite never having hoisted a sail (and having no desire to do so), my own particular vicarious pleasure is reading stories by sailors who have made single-handed voyages round the world. A spate of such books appeared in the late Sixties and early Seventies, most of them by British adventurers who, having seen Everest conquered and the Poles reached, turned instinctively to the world’s great oceans for fresh challenges. Robin Knox-Johnston’s A World of My Own (1969) is one of the best of these autobiographical accounts. Prior to Francis Chichester’s voyage, and his subsequent account of it in Gipsy Moth Circles the World (1967), the attention of sailors had been focused on the transatlantic crossing. Chichester opened up a new field of endeavour in both sailing and literary terms, soon to be followed by Alec Rose, but in their circumnavigations both sailors stopped off at Australia. The single-handed, non-stop circumnavigation of the world had yet to be achieved and this is where Knox-Johnston enters the story. Twenty-nine years old, and an officer in the Merchant Navy, he was also intensely patriotic and anxious that the French, who could boast some superb sailors, should not be the first to succeed. A trophy put up by the Sunday Times was an added incentive and the race was on. Leaving Falmouth on 14 June 1968 in his ketch Suhaili, Knox-Johnston headed off into open water to sail the route taken by the great clipper ships of the past. Determined by winds and currents and wholly oceanic, avoiding man-made canals, it took him south through the Atlantic, past the tip of Africa and on into the Southern Ocean – arguably the most frightening, desolate and lonely place on Earth where vast waters roar unimpeded round the foot of the world. Once past Australia, he headed for the notoriously stormy Cape Horn before turning north-east and into the Atlantic. He was to sail more than 30,000 nautical miles and spend 313 days alone at sea. Knox-Johnston is the ideal travel companion for the armchair sailor. With clarity, good humour and modesty he takes us through an extraordinary series of adventures and describes in fascinating detail the daily routine of a traveller alone at sea. As with any book about sailing A World of My Own contains technical details to do with the raising and lowering of sails and craft maintenance, but the general reader should not be put off. I can’t tell the difference between a swivel snap shackle and a wire splicing spike, and I don’t know what it means to whip ‘the thimble in the port storm jib sheet eye’ or how serious it is to have a ‘mass of sail in the oggin’. But it doesn’t matter. There’s a kind of poetry in this welter of detail that adds to the reading experience, and eventually even the most determined landlubber will pick up some knowledge about the intricacies of self-steering gear or how to use a sextant. As I read I soon came to realize that courage is not the only quality needed to complete such a voyage. Self-reliance and practical skills are just as important. Constantly making, mending and improvising, you need the skills not just of a sailor, but those of a joiner, metal worker, navigator, radio mechanic, cook, barber and, if you are unlucky, doctor and dentist too. In one of his journal entries he writes:
After four gales my hands are worn and cut about badly and I am aware of my fingers on account of the pain from skin tears and broken fingernails. I have bruises all over from being thrown about. My skin itches from constant chafing with wet clothes, and I forget when I last had a proper wash so I feel dirty. I feel altogether mentally and physically exhausted and I’ve been in the Southern Ocean only a week. It seems years since I gybed to turn east and yet it was only last Tuesday night, not six days, and I have another 150 days of it yet.
The hardships faced by lone sailors make for compelling reading, but the more ordinary aspects of their lives are just as fascinating. What food to take on a round-the-world voyage? Knox-Johnston had to choose stores in some haste. His potatoes and onions soon rotted, and the 1,500 tins loaded on to Suhaili were not varied enough, causing him to lose interest in food (unlike Alec Rose, and later Chay Blyth, who both took pleasure in their meals at sea). The trip was far from plain sailing. As well as rotten onions there were problems early on with the fresh-water tank, radio transmitter and self-steering equipment. And Suhaili took quite a bashing in rough seas. There was every reason for him to give up at Australia. But of course he went on – real-life adventure, like history, is written by those who have succeeded. Not all his time was spent hoisting sails. A voracious reader, he took fifty-two books with him, a mini-library comprising nautical texts and classics of world literature (including two of the longest, War and Peace and Clarissa) as well as biographical works by the likes of Boswell and Rousseau. A full list is given in the appendix to A World of My Own, along with details of all the other stores and equipment necessary for a long ocean voyage. As his stock of unread books declined poetry became more important and he began to memorize works from the Golden Treasury of English Verse. A World of My Own conveys a sense of isolation rarely experienced by today’s sailors. Digital communications had yet to be invented and the faulty radio transmitter meant he was out of touch with humanity for months at a time. At one point, somewhere in the South Atlantic, he notes:
Memories of home seem like a dream now, the only reality is my small cabin and the endless empty sea around it. I no longer get excited thinking of home; I mentally shrug the thought of it all off just as I would the memory of the plot in a book. It’s nice to think about, but it does not really exist.
Like other single-handed sailors he relied on the natural world for company, particularly on seabirds such as the albatross and storm petrels encountered in waters far from land. He welcomed visits from dolphins, but the appearance of whales made him apprehensive – they could so easily have caused him to capsize. And though appreciative of nature, the ever-practical Knox-Johnston was not averse to shooting a shark when one was persistently circling the boat and so preventing him from getting into the water to make emergency repairs to a leaking hull. As I read on I find myself pausing to picture Suhaili pitching and tossing in wild seas as night falls and the wind blows stronger. In my mind’s eye I see cold dawn waves breaking over the boat and filling every nook and cranny with icy waters fresh from the glacial south; and I picture the sparkling blue ocean at the Equator as the boat turns northwards, heading for home on favourable winds. Knox-Johnston’s book is not only a first-hand record of a significant chapter in the history of human fortitude, it’s a source of inspiration that is guaranteed to raise your spirits.

Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 77 © David Fleming 2023


About the contributor

Though dreaming of the sea, David Fleming will be confining his nautical adventures to the local boating pond – if he can find someone to do the rowing.

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