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Channel Crossing: One Man's Voyage Around And Across the English Channel: One Man's Voyage Across and Around the English Channel

Channel Crossing: One Man's Voyage Around And Across the English Channel: One Man's Voyage Across and Around the English Channel

by SebastianSmith (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2001

    $3.29
Synopsis

The story of a voyage across and around the English Channel. Stirred by the news of the decommissioning of Britain's last lighthouse keeper, Sebastian Smith quit his press agency desk-job in the spring of 1999 to explore the vanishing way of life of those who live on or by the Channel. Gripped by the stories he hears and the people he encounters, he finds himself seduced by the lure of the sea and determines to make his own journey across the Channel, teaching himself how to pilot and sail in a tiny sea-going dinghy.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 256
 Edition: First Edition
 Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
Published: 03 May 2001
ISBN 10: 0241140773
ISBN 13: 9780241140772

Media Reviews
Since the days of Francis Chichester, arduous one-man sea voyages have become something of a clich , and certainly a new book needs to present something different to grab our attention. Sebastian Smith pulls off the trick pretty comprehensively with his account of a voyage around and across the English Channel. While the book (and the trip itself) suggests a self-publicising stunt, such thoughts are quickly banished by the authority and gusto with which Smith conveys his adventure. When Smith saw a news report that Britain's last lighthouse keepers were to be replaced by computers, he abandoned his press agency job to take a final look at the people who live on and by the Channel. From this, he decided to make his own epic journey across the Channel, teaching himself to pilot and sail a small sea-going dinghy. It's the sense of muddling through, and taking on something that many of us feel (with the right wind behind us) we could accomplish, that makes this such a diverting read, and the synthesis of lonely adventure and historic detail is seamlessly brought off.
Author Bio
Sebastian Smith has been a correspondent in Washington, Moscow and London for the Agence France-Press news agency. He won two prizes for his reporting of the war in Chechnya, including France's highest journalistic award, the Albert Londres. His first book, Allah's Mountains: Politics and War in the Russian Caucasus, was published in 1998 and has been widely praised. He lives in North London.