Intrepid explorer, author and historian Tim Severin will give a lecture on his famous ‘Brendan Voyage’ in the Seanchaí – Kerry Writers’ Museum, Listowel on Thursday March 30th commencing at 7.30pm.
Tim Severin has captained an Arab sailing ship from Muscat to China to investigate the
legends of Sindbad the Sailor, steered a replica of a Bronze Age galley to seek the landfalls of Jason and the Argonauts and of Ulysses, ridden the route of the first Crusader knights across Europe to Jerusalem, travelled on horseback with nomads of Mongolia in search of the heritage of Genghis Khan, sailed the Pacific on a bamboo raft to test the theory that ancient Chinese mariners could have reached to the Americas, retraced the journeys of Alfred Russell Wallace, Victorian pioneer naturalist, through the Spice Islands of Indonesia using a nineteenth century prahu, and traced the origins of Moby Dick, the great white whale among the aboriginal sea hunters of the Pacific.
He has written books about all these adventures, which have won him the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, The Book of The Sea Award, a Christopher Prize and the literary medal of the Academie de la Marine. He has also recorded his journeys in documentary films which have become classics of exploration and adventure.
However, one of Tim’s most famous expeditions was way back in the 1970s when he sailed a leather boat across the Atlantic in the wake of St. Brendan the Navigator. The success of this expedition finally answered the question, could an Irish monk in the sixth century really have sailed all the way across the Atlantic in a small open boat, thus beating Columbus to the New World by almost a thousand years?
The lecture will explore this extraordinary journey from the painstaking work in constructing the replica craft to the dangers he and his crew experienced on the open seas. It will also include a screening of extracts from the award winning documentary film on the famous
voyage.
The lecture is being organised in conjunction with Listowel & District Historical Society as part of its 2017 programme. Limited seating is available so come early to avoid
disappointment.
