Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ives welcomed the white man to a land where palms and rippling
waves exchanged sibilant whispers across swathes of white sand. It
was a world away from the harsh realities of western so-called civil-
isation, where men stood on bread lines, went on strike for a liv-
ing wage, took part in the mass hysteria of Nazi rallies or the mass-
slaughter of the Spanish Civil War. Herman Melville was one of the
most widely read authors. As well as his most famous book,
Moby
Dick
, he offered the public in
Typee
and
Omoo
a romanticised pic-
ture of South Sea islands life, based on his own early experiences in
Tahiti and the Marquesas. Some went in search of this idyll, the ad-
vance guard of the twentieth century's tourist migrations, like the
two American young men who stopped off in the Society Islands:
They had lost track of time and their upbringing faded away in
Gauguinian euphoria. Others had done the cooking. The girls took care
of their clothes and their sex life. A food surplus meant more pigs and
more pigs meant more feasts.
4
The world that emerged from the 1939-45 conflict was psycho-
logically far removed from that which followed the earlier twenti-
eth century demonstration of mass insanity. There was little eviden-
ce of nostalgic dreamers, footloose adventurers or gentlemen mar-
iners attended by fawning servants. Men and, increasingly, women
still encircled the globe in small craft but the new adventurers were
of a different order. In the 1960s and 70s circumnavigation took on
a new identity; it became a sport. That brought a new raison d'eôtre
to the business of sailing round the world. For all sportsmen and
women the biggest questions demanding answers are those arising
from their own physical, mental and spiritual limitations. Thus, it
was no longer sufficient to battle against the realities of wind and
wave and perilous shores. The mariner had to set himself new chal-
lenges - non-stop voyages, solo voyages, speed records.
