During a life spent largely at sea, the Australian writer Alan Villiers (1903-82) both lived and recorded the last days of commercial sail around the world, writing innumerable articles and more than forty books, many of them bestsellers in their day. Combining his gifts as intrepid seaman, writer, photographer, lecturer and adviser on maritime history and traditions, he built up a unique body of work on the world of tall ships that vanished during the first half of the 20th century.
Alan Villiers (1903–82) was a recognized maritime adventurer of the twentieth century, combining seafaring skills, writing ability and pioneering photojournalism, and made a name for himself with resulting bestsellers such as Falmouth for Orders (1929), which follows his voyage on one of the last grain races round Cape Horn from Australia to Britain. He served on the committees for a number of maritime bodies and, as a Trustee of the National Maritime Museum, played a fundamental role in establishing its historic photograph collection. Overall he published more than forty books and innumerable articles and was well known around the world as a lecturer and broadcaster.
"The long overdue reprint of Sons of Sindbad, first published in 1940 ... vividly documents the vanishing universe of sail in the western half of the Indian Ocean on the eve of the Second World War. ... The collaborative introduction ... could hardly be bettered ... as an appraisal of Villiers' life and achievement. ... The authors contend that Villiers was the Thesiger of the Arabian Sea ... a view which few readers are likely to contest." -- Asian Affairs Asian Affairs "For academics who feel guilty about reading fun books when they should be keeping up with the literature in their field by reading serious books, I bring glad tidings. The new reprint of Sons of Sindbad offers the opportunity to mix Villiers' account of a voyage to the East African coast in a Kuwaiti how with a new introduction that places this account in the context of his life and work. The result is a book that is at once a real pleasure to read but also ... one that can be placed in the "serious books" category. ... Even if you own [an] older edition, it would be worth springing for a copy of the new one just for the photos." -- International Journal of Maritime History International Journal of Maritime History "Villiers' position, a westerner connected with the imperial reach of British officials and accepted as part of an Arab crew, afforded him a unique and pioneering point of view. Sons of Sindbad is a first-hand work on Arab seamanship, and it has been widely accepted as an authoritative source on the subject. It is a rich and heady brew of the people, ways of life, politics, governments, trade ancient and modern, cultures and human relations at the western edge of the Indian Ocean. ... In the introduction by William Facey, Yacoub Al-Hijji and Grace Pundyk, finally Villiers' right to be included among the greats of Arabian travel finds its recognition." -- MESA Bulletin 41:2 MESA Bulletin 41:2 "Sons of Sindbad ... provides a graphic record of the Arabian maritime world and its people, of their customs and conversations, and of their social and economic conditions, just as the decline of trade by sail set in. It is a remarkable achievement. Finally, one must commend the publishers for producing [a] very handsome volume." -- Bulletin of the Society for Arabian Studies Bulletin of the Society for Arabian Studies "Now newly reprinted, Alan Villiers' book on the last of the great Arabian sailing ships (1938-39) is ranked as an enduring classic, equal in its merits to Wilfred Thesiger's Arabian Sands." -- The Muslim World Book Review 28:1 The Muslim World Book Review 28:1 "Arabian Publishing are to be congratulated on producing a book of such excellent quality. [The] Introduction combines a biographical account of Villiers' remarkable life with a thoughtful assessment of the place of Sons of Sindbad in the travel literature on Arabia." -- The British-Yemeni Society Journal The British-Yemeni Society Journal "A fascinating and vivid study of a vanished way of life." -- Woodenboat Review Woodenboat Review
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