Books
Sailing Close to the Wind
Philip Beale and Sarah Taylor
Between 2008 and 2010 Philip Beale and his crew attempted to recreate the first circumnavigation of Africa, believed to have been accomplished by Phoenician mariners in circa 600BC.
It was the start of a twenty thousand mile journey, facing the threat of piracy, the treacherous seas around the Cape of Good Hope and an Atlantic marathon lasting eighty-four days.
Sailing Close to the Wind is both a modern-day adventure and the story of an ancient forgotten civilisation with an incredible maritime history.
Atlantic B.C.
Philip Beale
“In fourteen hundred and ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”
It’s a rhyme that every school child knows. Christopher Columbus, after all, was the first European to cross the Atlantic and discover the Americas. Or was he?
Archaeological evidence now suggests that the Vikings settled there in the 10th century A.D. Or was it, as legend has it, St. Brendan in his traditional Irish currach who first made the crossing in the 6th century?
“The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it,” wrote Oscar Wilde. In 2019, ex-Royal Navy Officer, Philip Beale, took Wilde at his word and put his maxim into practice. In his ship, Phoenicia, a reconstruction of a 6th century B.C. wooden sailing ship, he sailed with his crew from Carthage (modern-day Tunis) across the Atlantic to Florida. Their mission? To show that in all likelihood it was actually the Phoenicians, an ancient European civilisation renowned for their maritime skills, who were the first to discover America 2000 years before Columbus. This is their story.
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Shortlisted to the final three of the West Country Writing Prize 2022!