The Last Of The Windships

While working on the wind ships that had so enthralled him in his childhood, Villiers was injured. As a result he took a job as a journalist which led him to join a whaling expedition to Antarctica in 1923. This adventure paved the way to a brilliant career combining his professional seamanship with his undoubted gifts as a narrator and photographer for the National Geographic Society. He continued to work on these ships throughout the late 1920s and 1930s, and it is this period that resulted in the powerful images that make up this volume. Villiers truly participated as a seaman and he felt at home in the microcosm of the wind-borne ship, sharing the company and traditions of those aboard. For this reason his pictures provide us with an extraordinary insight into a real way of life, with all its hardships and joys.

As a photographer, with an eye for angles, wide spaces, people and atmospheres he was the best of his generation. By single-mindedly pursuing his boyhood dream, he has bequeathed to us a priceless portrait of a vanished way of life on the ocean. 'The Last of the War Ships' is a tribute to the last days of these merchant ships which allows us to rediscover his achievement and to offer him the recognition he deserves.