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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