Harbours and Heroes

Harbours and Heroes is the story of a love affair with sailing which gradually developed into a vivid exploration of the history of Europe through its coastlines. From early on in his sailing career Rodney Lord found himself learning not only from experience but also from giant figures of the past—men like the diarist Samuel Pepys, or Robert Fitzroy, the inventor of weather forecasting and saviour of countless lives. In this compelling travel memoir, we start to appreciate not only the journey but the arrival, and begin to relish the encounters with these local heroes, with their triumphs and tragedies. The pleasure of travelling, says the novelist Marcel Proust, is to make the contrast between departure and arrival as profound as possible so that one can marvel at the link between two distinct personalities of place. There’s nothing more intense than travelling across the sea in a small boat, entirely dependent on your own skill and experience to ensure you arrive surely and safely, to savour the difference between where you embarked and where you step ashore.