Wayward Sailor

Tristan Jones, author, sailor, and adventurer, is an icon in the sailing world. Before his death in Thailand in 1995, he wrote sixteen books, including two novels, one treatise on the art of sailing, and thirteen nonfiction narratives of his sailing adventures. His autobiographical adventures sold 6,000-9,000 each in hardcover in the UK (according to his UK publisher, Bodley Head) and 7,500-15,000 each in hardcover in the U.S. (according to his U.S. agent, Richard Curtis). Various editions including paperback have remained more or less continuously in print since the mid-1970s, and all are still in print today. They have been much translated, and new German-language hardcover editions are appearing in 2000-2002. His books warrant an entire section to themselves in the catalog of America's leading wholesaler of nautical books, wherein his writing is variously called "rollicking," "lyrical," "powerful," "salty and realistic," "astonishing," "a testament to human tenacity," "hilarious, ribald, and profound by turns," "memorable," and "inspiring." All these adjectives are accurate. During the course of Tristan Jones' seventy-one years, he claimed an impressive list of records and achievements. Between 1953 and 1995, he told his readers, he sailed more than 400,000 miles, of which better than 180,000 were solo. His boating records included the first circumnavigation of Iceland, the farthest north ever achieved by a sailboat, the longest sojourn in Arctic ice, the first boat to sail through the Panama Canal, farthest up the Amazon River, and the first to sail on the lowest and highest bodies of water in the world: Israel's Dead Sea and Bolivia's Lake Titicaca. Then there was the first crossing of the South American continent and the first to sail in the Mato Grosso of Brazil, among others. With these qualifications, his lively and witty prose, and his ability to regale large audiences, he lectured to capacity crowds throughout Europe and America to promote his books and raise money for further adventures. Every student of sailing literature knows that the hard-living Welshman lost his left leg at the hip in 1982 due to a life-threatening occlusion; how he then undertook further voyages across the Atlantic, across the European river system, and ultimately to Thailand to demonstrate to the physically handicapped that anything is possible; how he lost his other leg to gangrene in 1991, yet soldiered on four more years, fighting illness and declaiming and scheming to the end. But most of what we thought we knew about Tristan Jones is wrong. In this meticulously researched and fascinating biography, we learn that Tristan Jones was an invention of his own imagination. That his real name was Arthur Jones. That he was not Welsh. That he was born not on his father's ship at sea but in Liverpool, England - and in 1929, not 1924. That he grew up in orphanages, with little formal education. That he served in the British Navy, but not, as he claimed, in World War II. At age 40, embarrassed by his lack of accomplishment, his ignorance of literature, and the absence of culture in his life, he created his new persona as professional sailor/adventurer/author, and then spent the next thirty years elaborating that identity and making it real. Encouraged by the publication of his first few sailing articles in the UK and the USA - most of them reasonably accurate recountings of segments of his voyages - he submitted his first book-length manuscript, The Incredible Voyage, for publication, representing as fact what was in reality a mixture of fact and fiction. Inspired in part by Jack London, he went on publishing his tales, embroidering his voyages and inventing an early life that never existed. He was a consummate sailor. A self-educated bard, he was a marvelous writer. The bantam adventurer started bar brawls, made enemies, and won admirers all over the world. He was indeed extraordinary - more extraordinary in truth than he claimed to be. He conducted his affairs as if no one but him mattered, yet, as one reviewer put it, "his vivid and sympathetic descriptions of the lives of people he met along the way, especially the poor and persecuted, are as unforgettable as his condemnations of societies which create such terrible poverty and oppression and destroy the environment to satisfy the greed of the rich and powerful." Like his hero Joshua Slocum, Jones was an uneducated sailor who wrote vividly. Like Jack London, he made unforgettable fiction of real-life drama - but in his case, called it the truth. He was also part Eric Hoffer, socialist champion of the poor and downtrodden, even as he appealed for money to well-heeled patrons all over the world. And at the end of his life, when he knew he was beyond harm, he acknowledged his homosexuality and wrote two gay novels. Wayward Sailor is the result of two years of research that has taken Anthony Dalton all over the world and introduced him to Jones's closest friends, personal letters, and the diaries of key associates. What began as a tribute to an outstanding nautical writer became, of necessity, an expose, but is in the end a tribute of a much more profound nature. As the unmasking of a sailing icon, it will generate its own publicity and sell thousands of copies from the Sailing sections of bookstores. But as a voyage into the soul of an adventurer and an exploration of self-determination triumphing over fate, it is a general nonfiction read that can sell tens of thousands.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Introduction 1. The Early Years 2. Tristan's Navy 3. With Cresswell and Banjo 4. Barbara's Long Cruise 5. Israel and Hostile Shores 6. Indian Ocean Saga 7. The Amazon and a New Banjo 8. Tristan Meets Sea Dart 9. Cruising to Peru 10. Reaching for the Stars 11. A New Life 12. Cold Facts, Arctic Fiction 13. Blending Fiction with Fact 14. Down but Not Out 15. Once More, Down to the Sea 16. A Heart of Oak 17. Cold Rivers, Warm Seas 18. Exploring Thailand 19. The Strange Death of Thomas Ettenhuber 20. Another Devastating Blow 21. Wounded Pride 22. The Saga of Gabriel 23. The Sound of a Different Drum 24. The End of a Long Voyage 25. Afterword Notes Selected Bibliography Annotated Tristan Jones Bibliography Index Photographs appear following page 206

About the Author :
A native of Gravesend, England (b. 1940) who holds dual British/Canadian citizenship, Anthony Dalton is a photojournalist, expedition organizer, and adventurer. Between 1969 and 1979 he organized and led long-range expeditions in the Sahara, West Africa, and the deserts of the Middle East (including Afghanistan), including camel treks in Mauritania, Algeria, and Mali. In 1980 he organized, led, and filmed (for a Canadian Broadcasting documentary) an expedition to view the salt mines of Taoudenit and the camel caravans that transport the salt to Timbuktu. He has conducted a near-fatal solo voyage by small boat around the west and north coasts of Arctic Alaska, made river expeditions in conjunction with Bangladeshi naturalists into the Sundarbans jungle in search of the Royal Bengal tiger, and paddled across the rivers of Arctic Canada, a journey part of which was filmed for the Discovery Channel. He has appeared as a guest on television and radio in Canada and New Zealand and has lectured in these countries as well as in England. His work has been published in Choice, Geographical, Global Adventurer, Saga, Wanderlust, and other magazines in Great Britain; in Sail, Sailing, WoodenBoat, Yachting, Hemispheres, and other North American magazines; and in magazines in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society (UK) and the Explorers Club (USA). HOMETOWN: Delta, British Columbia