author
Alain Gerbault
1893–1941
A restless adventurer who traded conventional success for the open sea, he became one of the great early solo sailors and turned his voyages into vivid travel writing. His life moved from tennis courts and wartime aviation to long ocean passages and books shaped by the South Pacific.
1 Audiobook
Seul, à travers l'Atlantique
by Alain Gerbault
About the author
Born in Laval, France, in 1893, Alain Gerbault lived an unusually wide-ranging life. He served as a fighter pilot during the First World War, played tennis at a high level in France, and then found the pursuit that defined him: ocean sailing.
Gerbault became famous for crossing the Atlantic alone in the small yacht Firecrest and later completing a solo circumnavigation of the world between 1923 and 1929. That achievement made him one of the best-known long-distance sailors of his era, and his books drew readers into the practical hardships, freedom, and solitude of life at sea.
He also wrote about the islands and peoples of the South Pacific, where he spent much of his later life and where he became sharply critical of colonial influence and modern industrial society. He died in Dili, Timor, in 1941, leaving behind a reputation not only as a navigator, but as a writer whose work captured both the romance and the unease of wandering far from Europe.