in a tiny ketch

Round the world in a tiny ketch non stop

Twentieth-century man has had more than his fill of mind

shattering exploits. The voyage

to the moon was the natural out come of a 20-year-stretch in which we have seen nuclear ex

plosions, submarine trips under

the Antarctic and supersonic air travel.

But at the same time, man has also taken stock of himself and, revolting against machine-aided achievement, pitted his strength against the elements for no other reason than to show he can still exist without gadgetry.

Man has climbed Everest, explored just about every inch of the globe and created the super-athlete. And he has also sailed around the globe like never before; not in steel ships but in tiny ketches, yachts and trimarans.

10 month "trip'

We have the first man to sail round the world alone and at a great age.

Soon they’ll be going round with hands tied behind back or blind folded. Those days are not here yet, but latest latter-day Odysseus is Robin Knox-Johnston who in his A World Of My Own describes sailing round the world in a tiny ketch without stopping once.

There are of course easier ways of sailing, but Knox wanted to prove that you don’t have to be locked up in a space ship to win honour and respect. Ten months after setting off from Plymouth, Suhaili and Knox sailed back again having become the first man to circumnavigate the globe single-handed and non-stop. In cidentally, his was also one of the smallest boats —44 ft long—to have gone round the world.

Most recent of sea books is a look at an early kind of hero —if he qualifies for that compliment —the whaler. There’s plenty of news today and sighs about the extinction of whales by bloodthirsty mankind.

But spare a thought for the early whaler who went out to combat the world’s largest mammal armed With nothing more than a harpoon and with nothing to look forward to but

a glass of grog and a shilling if he came back alive.

Whaling Around Australia is an excellent book, well illustrated, by Max Colwell. It points out that whaling was Australia’s first industry and for a short time, it’s most profit able. In the days before automation it was an exciting and dangerous sport to catch a whale. And this book catches all those early thrills.

Yes, the early whaler was a hero too. —JSE.

(A World Of My Own. Cassel

Australia Ltd. $4.80.)

Whaling Around Australia. Rigby

Ltd. $3.95.)