This article is about the adventurer. For other uses of this name, see William Willis. William Willis (8 September 1897 – July?, 1968) is a rafter who is famous for his solo expeditions across oceans. Willis became a sailor when just a teenager, leaving his home in Hamburg to sail around Cape Horn.
During his first solo expedition in 1954 from South America to American Samoa, he sailed 6700 miles—2200 miles further than did Thor Heyerdahl on Kon-Tiki. His raft was named "Seven Little Sisters" and crewed by himself, his parrot, and cat. He was 61 at the time of the first voyage.[1]
In a second great voyage ten years later, he rafted 11,000 miles all the way from South America to Australia.[2] Willis died and was lost at sea, trying to cross the North Atlantic in a small sailboat. He was 74, and it was his third try. Willis had left Montauk Point, Long Island on May 02, 1968 in his boat Little One. On September 24, 1968 the crew of the Latvian trawler Yantarny sighted his half-submerged boat nearly four hundred miles west of the Irish coast. There was no one on board. Willis's final log entry found on the boat was dated July 21, 1968.
Novelist T. R. Pearson wrote the book Seaworthy: Adrift with William Willis in the Golden Age of Rafting (2006), summarizing Willis's adventures.
Bibliography
- Willis, William (1966). Whom the Sea Has Taken. New York: Meredith Press.
- Willis, William (1955). The Epic Voyage of the Seven Little Sisters: A 6700 Mile Voyage Alone Across the Pacific. London: Hutchinson.
- Willis, William. An Angel on Each Shoulder.
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