Barques, Sparks & Sharks: An Orcadian at Sea

Len Wilson’s maritime memoir, Barques, Sparks & Sharks, includes over 100 personal photos and images, beautifully enhancing these swashbuckling tales from bygone days of maritime life.

Dodging the KGB in Murmansk, the vigilantes of Lake Maracaibo, and downing bowls of kava in Fiji, Len Wilson recounts his globe-trotting adventures as a Morse-coding ‘sparks’, serving on the swankiest passenger liner to the rustiest tramp steamer. Like his Viking forebears, Len clocks up a stomach-churning quarter of a million miles as a radio officer, criss-crossing the equator at least ten times by the age of twenty-two. He recounts eight epic voyages before the dawn of container ships and long distance air travel – a lost world of seafaring adventure is brought back to life. We span the globe from the Clyde to Khorramshahr, dropping in on Caracas, Karachi and Calabar as we trace a life Len and his ancestors have pursued down the centuries, helping to connect and create our kaleidoscopic world.

Paperback.