The story of how Robert Clifford went from schoolboy dunce, via professional fisherman to global shipping entrepreneur reads more like adventure fiction than cold hard fact. But it is all true. The tale contains the usual quota of disaster and triumph, spiced with a fascinating account of ingenuity and invention at work. After all, if you go into business, you might as well experience a financial meltdown and a bank receivership. If you take up yachting, you might as well win the Sydney-Hobart race in a near photo-finish. If you invent and then dominate a global fast-ferry market, you might as well win the Hales Trophy for the fastest Atlantic crossing, not once but three times.
But behind the swashbuckling adventure story lies a complex, affectionate and little-understood man of surprising sensitivity and creativity. He is an all-action hero consumed by the need to conceive, shape and bring to fruition objects of great utility and beauty. He is a man quite unlike the standard-issue 'businessman'and much more like those distinguished artists and scientists who are impelled by some inner voice to do the work they do.
