Amazing Sailing Stories

In his childhood Dick Durham explored the creeks and rivers of Essex, Kent and Suffolk in a collection of dinghies and dayboats. When he left school he signed on as mate of the Thames sailing barge Cambria, and served on the last working Thames barge before beginning his writing career on Fleet Street, writing for national newspapers and sailing magazines.

Part One – Survival: Voyage of Desperation; Three Months Adrift in a Rubber Dinghy; The True Story of Moby Dick; Psychopaths in the Fo’c’sle; Once is More Than Enough; The Greatest Sea Voyage of All Time?; Decoy Ship; Death Did Not Deter Her; Bligh: A Flawed Real Life ‘Master and Commander’; Drifting Alone Across the Ocean in a Punctured Life-Raft; Part Two – Calm: A Ship Swallowed by a Cave; Orchestra from Hell; Death at the Helm; Sunk by a Leviathan in Thick Fog; The Silent Creeks; Part Three – Storm: Fastnet 79: The Killer Storm; A Chop-Stick Fortune in the South Seas; Fatal Delivery Trip; Anchoring a Tall Ship in a Puddle; Three Times Capsized Sailing Round Antarctica; Part Four – Human Error: UK Border Patrol of Yesteryear; Man Overboard in the Middle of the Pacific; Pilot Error Causes Shipwreck and Death; Family Day-Trip Becomes Rescue at Sea; The Curse of Ill-Gotten Gains; Sailing to the Wrong Hemisphere; Hanging by a Thread from a Shipwreck; Part Five – Adventure: A Real Life Monster of the Deep; Treasure Island; No Way Back: By Raft Across the Pacific; The Queen’s Pirate; Shoal Waters Run Deep; From Honeymoon to Shipwreck; A Bitter-Sweet Taste of the Racing Life; Dayboat Capsize, Gales and Dismasting; Record of Records; Part Six – Tragedy: The Last Tragic Voyage of Francis Chichester; Sailing into Madness; After the Wave; The Mysterious Voyage of the Mary Celeste; The Mysterious Voyage of John Franklin; The Raft of the Medusa; The Riddle of Erskine Childers; Part Seven – Rescue: Frozen to the Rigging; Good Samaritan of the Southern Ocean; Mystery Fire at Sea; Sea Dark, Sky Crying; The Four Rescues of a Solo Atlantic Yachtsman; Part Eight – Deliverance; The Exploding Whale; Downhill Racer; The First Man to Sail Round the World Alone; Not Quite the Fastest Ship; The First Man to Sail Round the World Non-Stop and Alone; Deliverance Trip; The Ship that Sailed Herself; Round the World in 1000 Breakages; DIY Ocean Racer; The Dead Lay in Her Wake; The Terror of a Lee-Shore; The Smallest Boat to Sail Round the World; Bibliography