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Alan Villiers
Alan John Villiers (23 September 1903 - 3 March 1982) was an author, adventurer, photographer and mariner.
Born in Melbourne, Australia, Villiers first went to sea at age 15 and sailed on board tr...view moreAlan John Villiers (23 September 1903 - 3 March 1982) was an author, adventurer, photographer and mariner.
Born in Melbourne, Australia, Villiers first went to sea at age 15 and sailed on board traditionally rigged vessels, including the full-rigged ship Joseph Conrad. He commanded square-rigged ships for films, including Moby Dick and Billy Budd. He also commanded the Mayflower II on its voyage from the United Kingdom to the United States.
Villiers served as the Chairman of the Society for Nautical Research, a Trustee of the National Maritime Museum, and Governor of the Cutty Sark Preservation Society. He was awarded the British Distinguished Service Cross as a Commander in the Royal Naval Reserve during the Second World War.
He is the author of 44 books, including his 1951 bestseller The Quest of the Schooner Argus: A Voyage to the Grand Banks and Greenland on a Modern Four-Masted Fishing Schooner. The book is an account of his experience sailing on the Argus, a cod fishing four-masted schooner that belonged to Portuguese Ambassador to the U.S. and Villiers’ close friend, Pedro Teotónio Pereira. It became a great success in North America and Europe and was later published in sixteen languages. The voyage made news on the BBC, in the main London newspapers, the National Geographic Magazine, and the New York Times, and the Portuguese government made Villiers a Commendador of the Portuguese Order of St. James of the Sword for outstanding services to literature in March 1951.
In 2010, the Society for Nautical Research, the Naval Review, and the Britannia Naval Research Association jointly established the annual Alan Villiers Memorial Lecture at St Edmund Hall, Oxford.
Villiers passed away in 1982 at the age of 78.view less