The most mountainous of a singularly mountainous country. Throughout 1949 and 1950 H.W. ‘Bill’ Tilman mounted pioneering expeditions to Nepal and its Himalayan mountains, taking advantage of some of the first access to the country for Western travellers in the 20th century. Tilman and his party—including a certain Tenzing Norgay—trekked into the Kathmandu Valley and on to the Langtang region, where the highs and lows began. They first explored the Ganesh Himal, before moving on to the Jugal Himal and the following season embarking on an ambitious trip to Annapurna and Everest. Manaslu was their first objective, but left to ‘better men’, and Annapurna IV very nearly climbed instead but for bad weather which dogged the whole expedition. Needless to say, Tilman was leading some very lightweight expeditions into some seriously heavyweight mountains. After the Annapurna adventure Tilman headed to Everest with—among others—Dr Charles Houston. Approaching from the delights of Namche Bazaar, the party made progress up the flanks of Pumori to gaze as best they could into the Western Cwm, and at the South Col and South-East Ridge approach to the summit of Everest. His observations were both optimistic and pessimistic: ‘One cannot write off the south side as impossible until the approach from the head of the West Cwm to this remarkably airy col has been seen.’ But then of the West Cwm: ‘A trench overhung by these two tremendous walls might easily become a grave for any party which pitched its camp there.’ Nepal Himalaya presents Tilman’s favourite sketches, encounters with endless yetis, trouble with the porters, his obsessive relationship with alcohol and issues with the food. And so Tilman departs Nepal for the last time proper with these retiring words: ‘If a man feels he is failing to achieve this stern standard he should perhaps withdraw from a field of such high endeavour as the Himalaya.’

Bind: paperback

Pages: 280

Dimensions: 156 x 216 mm

Publication Date: 06-04-2017

In climbing mountains or sailing the seas one often has to settle for less than one hoped. ‘For most men, as Epicurus has remarked, rest is stagnation and activity madness. Mad or not, the activity that I have been pursuing for the last twenty years takes the form of voyages to remote, mountainous regions.’ HW ‘Bill’ Tilman’s fourteenth book describes three more of those voyages, ‘the first comparatively humdrum, the second totally disastrous, and the third exceedingly troublesome’. The first voyage describes Tilman’s 1971 attempt to reach East Greenland’s remote and mountainous Scoresby Sound. The largest fjord system in the world was named after the Whitby whaling captain, William Scoresby, who first charted the coastline in 1822. Scoresby’s two volume Account of the Arctic Regions provided much of the historical inspiration for Tilman’s northern voyages and fuelled his fascination with Scoresby Sound and its unclimbed mountains. His first attempt on Scoresby had already cost him his first boat, Mischief, in 1968. The following year, a ‘polite mutiny’ aboard Sea Breeze had forced him to turn back within sight of the entrance to the Sound. With a good crew aboard in 1971, it was particularly frustrating for Tilman to find the boat blocked once more, this time by impenetrable ice off the entrance to the fjord. He refused to give up; his obsession with Scoresby Sound continued in 1972 and after a series of unfortunate events Sea Breeze ended up between a rock and an ice floe with a failed engine and a disastrous outcome. Safely back home in Wales, the inevitable search for a new boat began. ‘One cannot buy a biggish boat as if buying a piece of soap. The act is almost as irrevocable as marriage and should be given as much thought’. The 1902 Pilot Cutter Baroque, after not inconsiderable expense, proved equal to the challenge after Tilman’s first troublesome voyage in her to West Greenland in 1973.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 160

Dimensions: 156 x 260 mm

Publication Date: 06-04-2017

No ship should be without Tabasco sauce. Experience is said to be the name men give to their mistakes and of the experience I gained in Spitzbergen that may well be true. The circumnavigation of Spitzbergen is the first of three voyages described in HW ‘Bill’ Tilman’s fifteenth and final book, a remarkable example of his ability to triumph when supported by a crew game for all challenges. The 1974 voyage of the pilot cutter Baroque takes Tilman to his furthest north; the highest latitude of any of his travels in the northern or southern hemisphere. The account of this achievement makes compelling reading, the crew pulling together to avert potential disaster from a navigational misjudgement. A younger, less experienced crew join Tilman in 1975, this time heading north along Greenland’s west coast until a break in the boom necessitates the abandonment of the objective and an early return. “That one can never be quite confident of reaching any of the places I aim at may be part of their charm, and failure is at least an excuse for making another voyage.” The following year proves to be Tilman’s last voyage in his own boat, his account beginning with a dry nod to his artillery background: “As I begin to describe this voyage, the discrepancy between the target and the fall of shot provokes a wry smile.” Tilman never expected crews to pay, covering all the costs of his voyages personally. He therefore held the quite reasonable view that his crew would pull their weight, show loyalty to the ship and take the rough with the smooth. Sadly, the crew in 1976 fell far short of that expectation, forcing several changes of plan and eventually obliging Tilman to leave Baroque in Iceland. Not for the first time in Tilman’s remarkable 140,000 miles of voyaging is he moved to quote Conrad: “Ships are all right, it’s the men in them.” Tilman set a high standard and led by example; where his companions rose to the challenge, as they did in the majority of his expeditions, the results were often remarkable. Triumph and Tribulation closes this newly extended edition of his literary legacy; a fine testament to a remarkable life.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 202

Dimensions: 156 x 216 mm

Publication Date: 01-06-2017

Harold William ‘Bill’ Tilman (1898-1977) was among the greatest adventurers of his time, a pioneering mountaineer and navigator who held exploration above all else. The son of a Liverpool sugar importer, Tilman joined the army at seventeen and was twice awarded the Military Cross for bravery during WWI. After the war Tilman left for Africa, establishing himself as a coffee grower. He met Eric Shipton and they began their famed mountaineering partnership, traversing Mount Kenya and climbing Kilimanjaro. Turning to the Himalaya, Tilman went on two Mount Everest expeditions, reaching 27,000 feet without oxygen in 1938. In 1936 he made the first ascent of Nanda Devi, the highest mountain climbed until 1950. He was the first European to climb in the remote Assam Himalaya, delved into Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor and explored extensively in Nepal, all the while developing a mountaineering style characterised by its simplicity and emphasis on exploration. It was perhaps logical that Tilman would eventually buy the pilot cutter Mischief, not with the intention of retiring from travelling, but to access remote mountains. For twenty-two years he sailed Mischief and her successors in search of them—to Patagonia, where he made the first easterly crossing of the ice cap, to Baffin Island to make the first ascent of Mount Raleigh, to Greenland, Spitzbergen, and islands in the far Southern Ocean, before disappearing in the South Atlantic in 1977. J.R.L. Anderson’s biography draws on a wealth of personal correspondence between Tilman, a compulsive letter writer, and his immediate family and close friends, crafting the first detailed account of the extraordinary life of this remarkable, but very private individual.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 416

Dimensions: 156 x 216 mm

Publication Date: 28-09-2017

Sailing six thousand miles in eighty days, Allcard makes the classic southern route trade-wind crossing westward, and not without incident-severe gales, thief-catching in Spain, avoiding a seductive blonde in Gibraltar, encountering sharks and shoals of flying fish, and narrowly escaping falling overboard to his death when knocked out by gear falling from aloft. Allcard's plan to dodge the worst of the hurricane season on his return voyage is not accommodated by the elements. Through gales and headwinds, and one terrible storm, he takes seventy-four days to reach the Azores from New York, arriving minus his mizzen mast, desperately exhausted, injured, and hungry. The next leg, to Casablanca, is enlivened by a female stowaway, before he makes a safe return to England. Whether describing the pleasures or the trials, the phosphorescent nights or the storms, the operation of his ship or his own introspections, Edward Allcard eloquently conveys his deep appreciation of the sea, and the escape from modern civilisation it offers him.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 440

Dimensions: 129 x 198 mm

Publication Date: 05-05-2022

Open boat cruising has never been more popular, in the doing or the reading of it; magazines, websites, associations and events around the world attest to this, and of course the countless sailors who just 'get on with it' in their own unassuming manner. Two such, some fifty years ago, long before today's explosion of activity, were Ken Duxbury and his wife B; Ken's three books recounting their adventures in the eighteen-foot Drascombe Lugger 'Lugworm' delighted many on their first appearance, yet they became unavailable for years. 'Lugworm on the Loose' describes how Ken and B quit the 'rat race' and explored the Greek islands under sail. 'Lugworm Homeward Bound' recounts their voyage home from Greece to England. 'Lugworm Island Hopping' has Ken and B exploring the Scilly Isles and the Hebrides. The light touch of Ken's writing belies the sheer ambition, resourcefulness and seamanship which infuse these exploits. And beyond pure sailing narrative, his books convey the unique engagement with land and people which is achieved by approaching under sail in a small boat.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 524

Dimensions: 129 x 198 mm

Publication Date: 05-05-2022

In a post-exploration world, two relatively ordinary blokes, serving Royal Marines, decided they wanted an extraordinary 21st century adventure. In this refreshingly honest account they re-live the highs and lows of sailing and rowing a tiny open boat, completely unsupported, through one of the most iconic wilderness waterways on the planet - the Northwest Passage across the top of Canada. They describe battling with an Arctic storm miles from land and being caught in the worst sea ice for more than a decade. At one point they are forced to drag Arctic Mariner, their seventeen-foot boat, across ten miles of broken pack ice to reach open water. Their story is enriched by the Inuit people and the incredible wildlife they met along the way, including all-too-close encounters with both grizzly and polar bears. And they relate with honesty how the isolation and stresses of the high Arctic shaped the bond between their two very different personalities. This is neither an expose of global warming, nor a detailed study of Inuit culture. It is not particularly long on the historical quest for the Northwest Passage. It is quite simply the tale of two blokes, up north. b/w photographs, maps, drawings

Bind: paperback

Pages: 256

Dimensions: 129 x 198 mm

Publication Date: 05-08-2022

HEARD ISLAND, an improbably remote speck in the far Southern Ocean, lies four thousand kilometres to the south-west of Australia—with Antarctica its nearest continent. By 1964 it had been the object of a number of expeditions, but none reaching the summit of its 9000-foot volcanic peak ‘Big Ben’. In that year Warwick Deacock resolved to rectify this omission, and as-sembled a party of nine with impressive credentials embracing mountaineering, exploration, science and medicine, plus his own organisation and leadership skills as a former Major in the British Army. But first they had to get there. Heard had no airstrip and was on no steamer route; the only way was by sea in their own vessel. Approached from Australia, the island lay in the teeth of the prevailing westerlies of the ‘Roar-ing Forties’and ‘Furious Fifties’. One name, only, came to mind as the skipper to navigate them safely to their destination, and safely home—the veteran mountaineer turned high-latitude sailor H. W. ‘Bill’ Tilman, already renowned for his ‘sailing to climb’ expeditions to Patagonia, Greenland and Arctic Canada, and the sub-Antarctic archipelagos of Crozet and Kerguelen, to the north-west of Heard Island. He readily ‘signed on’ to Warwick Deacock’s team of proven individuals and their well-found sailing vessel Patanela. In this first-hand account, as fresh today as on its first publication fifty years ago, Philip Temple invites us all on this superbly conducted, happy and successful expedition, aided by many previously unpublished photographs by Warwick Deacock. ‘The Skipper’—a man not free with his praise—described the enterprise as ‘a complete thing’. PHILIP TEMPLE was born in Yorkshire in 1939, educated in London, and emigrated to New Zealand in 1957. Prior to this expedition he had climbed extensively in New Zealand and West New Guinea. Since 1972 he has followed a career as an author of both fiction and non-fiction, often writing books about mountains and exploration. He was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2005 for ‘services to literature’ and gained a LittD degree in 2007. He lives in Dunedin, New Zealand.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 232

Dimensions: 216 x 216 mm

Publication Date: 01-08-2016

From the Loft Floor to the Sea is photographer and designer Christian Topf's exhaustive visual and verbal journal of the building of the 68ft Pilot Cutter Pellew, by Luke Powell and his team in Cornwall. This is the largest traditional wooden boat build in the UK for decades - and at 360 large-format colour pages, this is probably the largest and most gorgeous book to illustrate the process. Chris visited the yard at Truro almost every week throughout the build to bring us this mouthwatering production, in which you can almost smell the sawdust, the hot pitch, and the linseed oil.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 360

Dimensions: 215 x 275 mm

Publication Date: 20-10-2021

Whether she is to be rowed or sailed independently, or will be the tender to a larger vessel, nothing feels or looks quite like a traditional clinker-built dinghy, 'done right'. And those two words are the key to a boat which will truly grace the water, charm all who use or see her, and maintain her value. In Details of Dinghy Building Will Stirling painstakingly describes and illustrates the many arcane yet vital tasks which can daunt the beginning boatbuilder. Will has been building clinker dinghies professionally for many years and has made, and learned how to avoid, all the mistakes which lie in wait for the unwary. Take advantage of his experience, and some 'tricks of the trade', and draw inspiration from the many mouthwatering photographs of finished boats which punctuate the book. If you're building a boat, this textual guide and photographic reference will pay for itself many times over in the time, frustration and embarrassment it will save you. If you're not, you'll find it a fascinating verbal and visual window into a time-honoured traditional craft.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 192

Dimensions: 216 x 216 mm

Publication Date: 22-10-2021