Introduction by Peter Stark

On Sale: Apr 29, 2009
Page Count: 256 pages
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN-13: 9780786740055

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In 1949, a young Dartmouth student named William Stark left his study-abroad program in Zurich for a berth as an Ordinary Seaman on a Finnish windjammer that would carry 60,000 sacks of barley 12,000 miles in 128 days from Australia to Europe, around Cape Horn. This is Stark’s engrossing memoir of the end of a long tradition of young men going to sea in the Great Age of Sail, and the final rounding by a commercial sailing ship of fearsome Cape Horn — the veritable Mount Everest of sailing. Stark vividly chronicles the Pamir’s journey through the world’s stormiest seas as he worked brutal four-hour watches on decks awash with the huge swells of the Southern Ocean, and scrambled up ice-coated rigging to manhandle sails on masts that were up to twenty stories high. Stark experienced the shipboard life of the seventeenth century in 1949 on a vessel longer than a football field. Contrasting the romance and realities of life on the sea, and poignantly evoking the passionate love affair he left behind, Stark wrote a thrilling narrative that brings closure to the era of Cape Horn merchant sailors that began more than three centuries before. Pages of memorable photographs are included.

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William F. Stark

About the Author

William F. Stark was a Dartmouth student studying in Switzerland when he left for the windjammer Pamir in Australia. En route to meet the ship, he had a passionate love affair with Yvette, a beautiful young Frenchwoman, whom he was forced to bid adieu. Stark committed suicide in 2003, just weeks after arrangements for his book’s publication were made. His son, Peter Stark, contributes to Outside magazine and has written numerous other books. His Introduction and In Memoriam in The Last Time Around Cape Horn book honor his father’s courage and adventurous life. He lives in Montana.

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