1957 *MAYFLOWER II MAIDEN VOYAGE* PLYMOUTH COVER+SIGNED: ALAN VILLIERS! NOTABLE!

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JUNE 13, 1957 ~MAYFLOWER II MAIDEN VOYAGE~ PLYMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS ... ADVERTISING COVER WITH GRAPHIC "MAYFLOWER" VIGNETTE ... INSERT CARD WITH NOTABLE SIGNED: ALAN VILLIERS" (MASTER OF THE MAYFLOWER II) ... 2 1/2P (SCARLET) SCOTT# 296 "QUEEN ELIZABETH" STAMP ... POSTMARKED: "ARRIVAL OF MAYFLOWER II PLYMOUTH MASSACHUSETTS 1957"!
"64" year old postal history with original content still intact!
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Alan Villiers
Alan Villiers
Alan Villiers aboard the
Grace Harwar
in 1929
Born
Alan John Villiers
23 September 1903
Melbourne
,
Victoria
,
Australia
Died
3 March 1982 (aged 78)
Oxford
,
Oxfordshire
,
England
Occupation
journalist, sailor, author
Language
English
Nationality
Australian
Citizenship
Australian / British
Notable works
Whalers of the Midnight Sun
Notable awards
Children's Book of the Year Award: Older Readers
1950
Years active
1928-1965
Alan John Villiers
,
DSC
(23 September 1903 – 3 March 1982) was an author, adventurer, photographer and mariner.
Born in
Melbourne
,
Australia
, Villiers first went to sea at age 15 and sailed on board traditionally
rigged
vessels, including the
full-rigged ship
Joseph Conrad
. He commanded
square-rigged ships
for films, including
Moby Dick
and
Billy Budd
. He also commanded the
Mayflower II
on its voyage from the United Kingdom to the United States.
[1]
Villiers wrote 44 books, and served as the Chairman (1960–70) and President (1970-74) of the
Society for Nautical Research
, a Trustee of the
National Maritime Museum
, and Governor of the
Cutty Sark
Preservation Society. He was awarded the
British Distinguished Service Cross
as a
Commander
in the
Royal Naval Reserve
during the
Second World War
.
Early history
[
edit
]
Alan John Villiers was the second son of Australian poet and union leader
Leon Joseph Villiers
. The young Villiers grew up on the docks watching the
merchant ships
come in and out of the
Port of Melbourne
and longed for the day on which he too could sail out to sea.
Leaving home at the age of 15, he joined the
barque
Rothesay Bay
as an apprentice. The
Rothesay Bay
operated in the
Tasman Sea
, trading between Australia and
New Zealand
. Villiers was a natural seaman. He learned quickly and gained the respect of his shipmates.
An accident on board the barque
Lawhill
beached Villiers in 1922, by then a seasoned
Able seaman
. He sought employment as a
journalist
at the
Hobart Mercury
newspaper in
Tasmania
while he recovered from his wounds.
Writer and adventurer
[
edit
]
The call of the sea was strong, and soon Villiers was back at sea when the great explorer and whaler
Carl Anton Larsen
and his
whaling
factory ship, the
Sir James Clark Ross
came to port with five whale chasers in tow in late 1923. His accounts of the trip would eventually be published as
Whaling in the Frozen South
. Named for the
Antarctica
explorer
James Clark Ross
, the
Ross
was the largest whale factory ship in the world, weighing in at 12,000 tons. She was headed for the southern Ross Sea, the last whale stronghold left. Villiers writes: "We had caught 228, most of them blues, the biggest over 100 feet long. These yielded 17,000 barrels of oil; we had hoped for at least 40,000, with luck 60,000."
Villiers' passage on board the
Herzogin Cecilie
in 1927 would result in his publication of
Falmouth for Orders.
Through it he met Captain
Ruben de Cloux
, who later became his partner in the barque
Parma
.
He wrote
By Way of Cape Horn
after his harrowing experiences crewing the full-rigged
Grace Harwar
from Australia to Ireland in 1929. Villiers had a desire to document the great sailing ships before it was too late, and
Grace Harwar
was one of the last working full-riggers. With a small ill-paid crew and no need for
coal
, such vessels undercut
steam ships
, and maybe 20 ships were still involved in the trade. As Villiers first stood on the dock looking at
Grace Harwar
, a wharf laborer warned "Don't ship out in her! She's a killer." The warning would prove true, as Villiers' friend Ronald Walker was lost on the journey. More than 40 years old at the time, the ship had
barnacles
and
algae
growing along her waterline. "Dirty bottoms make slow ships, and slow ships make hard passages." The ill-fated voyage took 138 days. The voyage was filmed as
The Cape Horn Road
and Villiers took many photographs, serving as a significant record of that period in full-rigged working ships.
Ship owner and circumnavigator
[
edit
]
Villiers reunited with
Ruben de Cloux
in 1931, becoming a partner with him in the four-masted barque
Parma
. With de Cloux as captain,
Parma
won the unofficial "
grain race
" between the ships of the trade in 1932, arriving in 103 days despite
broaching
in a gale. In 1933, the ship won in 83 days. Villiers sailed as a passenger on both voyages.
[2]
After selling his shares back to de Cloux, Villiers purchased the
Georg Stage
in 1934. A
full-rigged sailing ship
of 400 tons, originally built in 1882 by Burmeister & Wain in
Copenhagen
,
Denmark
, she was employed as a sailing
school ship
by Stiftelsen Georg Stages Minde. Saving her from the
scrapyard
, Villiers renamed her the
Joseph Conrad
, after the
author
of
The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'
,
Typhoon
, and
The Shadow-Line
, who was also an accomplished seaman.
A
sail training
pioneer, Villiers
circumnavigated
the globe with an amateur crew. He used the unique environment of the sea to build character and discipline in his young crew and, with his contemporaries
Irving and Exy Johnson
, he helped form the modern concept of sail training. It is used not to teach youth for a life at sea, but to use the sea to teach youth for life.
Returning almost two years later, Villiers sold the
Joseph Conrad
to George Huntington Hartford. He published two books of his adventures,
Cruise of the "Conrad"
and
Stormalong
. The
Joseph Conrad
is maintained and operated as a
museum ship
at
Mystic Seaport
in Connecticut, USA, where she continues to educate the youth of today in the rich history of the age of sail.
In 1938, Alan Villiers embarked as a passenger on an Arab
dhow
for a round trip from Oman to the
Rufiji Delta
, and depicted the way of life of Arab sailors and their navigation techniques in a book called
Sons of Sindbad,
illustrated with his own photographs.
World War II
[
edit
]
A LCI(L) during the Invasion of Sicily - 1943
With the outbreak of
World War II
, Villiers was commissioned as a
Lieutenant
in the
Royal Naval Reserve
in 1940. He was assigned to a convoy of 24 LCI(L)'s, or
Landing craft
, Infantry (Large). Ordered to deliver them across the
Atlantic
, with a 40 percent loss rate expected, Villiers got all but one safely across. He commanded "flights" of LCI(L)'s on
D-Day
in the
Battle of Normandy
, the
Invasion of Sicily
, and the
Burma Campaign
in the Far East. By the end of the War, Villiers had been promoted to
Commander
and awarded the British
Distinguished Service Cross
.
Later years
[
edit
]
Married in 1940 to his second wife Nancie, Villiers settled in
Oxford, England
, and continued to be active in sailing and writing. He was the Captain of the
Mayflower II
in her 1957 maiden voyage across the Atlantic, 337 years after the original
Mayflower
, and beating her predecessor's time of 67 days by 13 days. He was involved in almost every large Age of Sail ship then still in existence
[
citation needed
]
, including the
Balclutha
, the
USCGC
Eagle
, the
Falls of Clyde
, the
Gazela
, the
Sagres
, and would also prove instrumental in the restoration of the
Star of India
. From 1963-67 he was involved in an unsuccessful attempt to build a replica of
HM Bark
Endeavour
. He advised on the 1962 MGM movie
Mutiny on the Bounty
. Villiers was a regular contributor to the
National Geographic Magazine
throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
Villiers produced a travel lecture film,
Last of the Great Sea Dogs
, which ran at the Dorothy Chandler pavilion in 1976. The film contains 16mm color, filmography of his adventures. There is a digital restored master of the performance with an audio track, narrated by Villiers.
In 1951, the
Portuguese Ambassador to the United States
,
Pedro Teotónio Pereira
, a sailing enthusiast and later a close friend of Villiers, invited him to sail on the schooner
Argus
, a cod fishing four-masted schooner, and to record the last commercial activity ever to make use of sails in ocean-crossings. Villiers wrote "The Quest Of The Schooner Argus: A voyage to the Grand Banks and Greenland on a modern four masted fishing schooner".
[3]
The book was a great success in North America and Europe and was later published in sixteen languages. The voyage made news on the BBC, in the main London newspapers, the
National Geographic Magazine
, and the
New York Times
, and the Portuguese government made Villiers a Commander of the Portuguese
Order of St. James of the Sword
for outstanding services to literature in March 1951.
[4]
In 1978, Villiers weighed in that
Francis Drake
landed at
New Albion
at
Point Reyes
in
Marin County
, California.
[5]
In 2010, the
Society for Nautical Research
, the
Naval Review
, and the Britannia Naval Research Association jointly established the annual
Alan Villiers Memorial Lecture
at
St Edmund Hall, Oxford
.
[6]
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