A single-handed GP

Abstract

David Henry Lewis, who died 10 years ago, was a London GP and perhaps the most colourful seafaring adventurer of the second half of the last century. Undeterred by his limited experience as a seaman he left his practice in the hands of a locum to compete in the first single-handed transatlantic race in 1960. He snapped his main mast a few hours out of Plymouth, yet still reached New York in 53 days, coming third out of five competitors. He published his observations on the physical and emotional stress of extended single-handed sailing in the BMJ and the Journal of the College of General Practitioners ,1 the forerunner to the BJGP . After this, his return to general practice was brief. He sold his house and practice in 1964 and together with his wife and two daughters, the youngest still in a carry cot, set sail for the first circumnavigation in a catamaran. He sailed the 2200 miles from Tahiti to New Zealand without the aid of compass, sextant, chart, or any other navigational aid, solely relying on naked eye observations of wave patterns, sea life, and sun, moon and stars, to prove his theory that the ancient Maoris had been capable of long-distance voyaging using the same methods. He reached New Zealand only 26 miles south of his intended landfall, and published the results of his observations in the Journal of the Royal Society of Navigation and the Journal of the Polynesian Society . After being granted a scholarship at the Australian National University he purchased Isbjorn , a wooden Scottish fishing ketch, and left England for good to embark on several years of field research in the South Pacific. In 1972 he published We, the Navigators ,2 his book on the ancient art of landfinding …