The Dolphin

Ben Lowings

Lodestar Books

£17.00

David Lewis grew up in New Zealand. His childhood included a formative period in Rarotonga where he attended the Polynesian school, identifying as Maori. His later research into Polynesian navigational methods was perhaps his most significant achievement though he’s most frequently remembered for his extraordinary Antarctic survival alone in the dis-masted Ice Bird. Naomi James describes him as her ‘go-to nutter’. Lewis was a GP whose sailing career was changed by the 1960 OSTAR. Many of his subsequent voyages were undertaken with various wives and children, including very small daughters round Cape Horn. Ben Lowings’s interviews with Lewis’s family are fascinating, revealing and feel essentially fair. Understanding the ‘why’ of Lewis remains as challenging as navigation without a compass -- a gallant, possibly doomed, attempt.