Boating New Zealand — January 2018

130 Boating New Zealand

Since the Pacific was first discovered by Europeans

they had marvelled at the Pacific peoples’ ability to

find their way across their vast ocean. This mystery

intrigued Lewis and he sailed Isbjorn to Micronesia

looking for navigators of the old ways.

The locals recognized him as one of their own,

took him on their canoe voyages and taught him

their navigational lore. Their navigation skills had

never been lost but had been in continuous use up

to the present day, unrecognised by Europeans. He

recorded all this in his books We, the Navigators and

The Voyaging Stars.

While it was the Pacific that got Lewis on the

track of academia, it was the Antarctic and the

Southern Ocean that were to test the mettle of his

passion for adventure. His book Ice Bird chronicles

the first solo circumnavigation of Antarctica and

is perhaps one of the more harrowing accounts of

survival there has ever been.

Ice Bird managed to capsize deep in the

Southern Ocean, losing her rig and having her steel cabin

stove-in. Nothing was heard from Lewis for 13 weeks but,

against all probability, frostbitten and exhausted, he brought

Ice Bird into Palmer Base on the Antarctic Peninsula under a

jury rig. The image taken of David’s face on arrival says it all.

This book became a best-seller and

an instant cure for anyone foolish

enough to contemplate a voyage

to Antarctica.

Lewis went through girlfriends

like he went through boats and in

later years priding himself on never

having the right boat for the job,

but going anyway and getting his

crew home when it all went wrong.

He left us with 11 excellent books

and he did it all in the last half of

his life, showing us something well

beyond the cliché of grey power.

Honest and likeable until the

end, David Lewis said of himself:

“My errors have been not of

passivity, but of commission, of

doing, of daring to undertake

fresh ventures.”

Perhaps philanthropist, friend and sailor Dick Smith

captured him best when he was quoted in his obituary in the

Sydney Morning Herald: “David Lewis was the most wonderfully

fantastic scallywag I have ever met. His love for the ocean can only

be balanced by the love of beautiful women for him.” BNZ

FAR LEFT Ice Bird

in Antarctica.

LEFT A fairly frugal

existence aboard Ice Bird.

BELOW Lewis on his climb

to the summit of Mount

Rainier.

BOTTOM In

1999, Antarctica.