Vintage Chichester

Press, 14 August 1982, Page 16

Vintage Chichester

Solo to Sydney. By Francis Chichester. Doubleday, 1982. 208 pp. $15.95. (Reviewed by Vincent Orange) This is a welcome reprint of a famous book by a famous man: “the best navigator in the world,” as Amy Johnson once called him. It describes how the voung Chichester learned to fly. finding it very difficult. In fact) he found all the skills at which he excelled tried him to the utmost, whether it was handling a rugby ball, a pair of skis, or an oceangoing yacht. And yet. after only five months as a pilot, he became the second person to fly solo from London to Sydney. He did it in a tiny De Havilland Gipsy Moth, covering more than 14.500 miles in 22 days, in December and January, 192930. Chichester's account of his marvellous feat was written quickly, while the memory was still fresh, and first appeared in 1930. It has been out of print for years and now appears at a price less than a second-hand copy would have cost (in London, at least) a year ago. When Chichester wrote this book he was only 28, but he had already experienced enough joy and sorrow to last a lifetime. After a miserable childhood and school career, he had emigrated to New Zealand at 18. By the time he was 26 he was earning £lO,OOO a year, but within another two years his wife and their only child had died and' the Depression practically ruined him. However, no-one coming fresh to this book would suppose Chichester to be other than the most light-hearted and trouble-free of men. There are plenty of laughs as well as thrills in “Solo to Sydney” and Chichester reveals an enviable talent for combining narrative and description. It is worth remembering that he published seven books about his flights and voyages as well as several textbooks when he was senior navigation officer at the Empire Central Flying School during the war. As with all the famous explorers, ancient or modern, Chichester had not only an overwhelming desire to see or to know for himself, but also the resilience

to cope with the endless hassles which make you and I prefer to read about great adventures, rather than to endure them. Chichester shared with Columbus, for example, the ability to borrow money in support of a daft idea; to obtain equipment which he could repair or modify himself at need; to cajole or threaten unhelpful officials and, quite simply, the determination to see it through or die in the attempt. As well as Baron von Zedlitz’s original introduction, in which he briefly outlined Chichester’s early days in England and New Zealand, Chichester’s second wife tells in a brief foreword how she met him in Devon in 1936 and agreeed to marry him a week later. It was a fortunate decision for him because in later years her support would play an important part in his great triumphs at sea.