When the English pirate Henry Every seized treasures from the 1,500-ton GANJ-I-SAWAI owned by India’s Grand Mughal Aurangzeb, off the coast of Surat in September 1695, it was the heist of the 17th century.

The vessel has long held a place in the imagination of Shute fans who embarked on a search for the yacht several years ago, tracking it down to a harbour in Newcastle where its owner lived on board with his parrot.

Three well known books came across my desk this week, rescued from years of likely abandonment on an Op Shop shelf. They are all acknowledged as historical classics in the Sailing genre, but it’s interesting to see how much of the content remains relevant today and how much becomes just quaint outdated anecdotes.

If you are heading to southern Australian waters, there is a fair chance that you will spot a gaff rigged wooden boat sailing or cruising along the shoreline. And when in full sail they are magnificent in their graceful movement through the water.

We remember what we have heard or seen on the water when any number of situations arise on land, and are likely to say, “It is just like being on a boat.” Sailing is a metaphor for everything.

Jonathan, who becomes a father again at the age of 58, realises that he is not going to be around forever for his three-year-old daughter Phoebe. Despite his lack of practical experience, decides to build her a 10ft clinker dinghy in real wood, and in the space of a year. The result is, by turns, moving, funny and perceptive.

No, it’s not a fishing manual or boat survival handbook; it’s more a fable-like story. For the old man, fishing isn’t simply a contest; it has a philosophical meaning.

Lone sailor Bernard Gilboy’s small boat voyage, in 1882, was perhaps the most daring undertaking on the world’s biggest ocean. Yet, when departing San Francisco, the Customs Certificate read, “starts on a voyage of pleasure for Australia.”

When Charles Carruthers accepts an invitation for a yachting and duck-shooting trip to the Frisian Islands from Arthur Davies, an old chum from his Oxford days, he has no idea their holiday will become a daredevil investigation into a German plot to invade Britain.

The Wharram Catamaran has always held a fascination not because its a thing of beauty but because they reek of the promise of adventure. And not a modern day adventure clutching a GPS and Sat Phone, but a 1960’s hippy adventure with free love, tropical islands bare tanned skin, and the rejection of boundaries imposed by a disapproving society.

Anyone who thought the world had four oceans will now have to think again, after the National Geographic Society announced it would recognise a new Southern Ocean in Antarctica, bringing the global total to five.

What makes it different to the previous six books in this column is that it’s an adventure brought on by necessity rather than free choice.  It’s a story that is playing out in some form or another every day of the year in 2021, whether it be in the Mediterranean, the Indian ocean or the Caribbean. Normal people, whose mere existence is under threat, take to a small boat, to escape to a new life. 

So, when I was given a copy of South Sea Vagabonds by Johnny Wray I assumed it was going to be another entertaining but outdated, perhaps pompous account of a privileged white man’s parade through the islands. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The story is brilliant … However what I found difficult to grasp was the genre. Was what I was reading based on documented research or extrapolations from the imagination of my author?

I refuse to call THE ENDLESS SEA a coffee table book. It’s so much more than what that mildly derisive term implies. Once in a while a beautifully designed book such as this, lands on my desk, and …

“I knew there were already plans to electrify the lights. To automate. To relegate man beneath machines. To make us redundant. To take all the purpose out of life. As if richness did not lie in purpose and meaning but in leisure. I was keenly aware that I was in love with a dying life.”