Barques, Sparks & Sharks

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.