H.W. Tilman's book Ice with Everything describes three voyages that attempt to reach East Greenland's Scoresby Sound, 'the first comparatively humdrum, the second totally disastrous, and the third exceedingly troublesome'. Tilman loses his boat Sea Breeze, crushed between a rock and an ice floe, and replaces her with the pilot cutter, Baroque.
The first voyage in In Mischief's Wake gives H.W. Tilman's report of the loss of Mischief. He buys Sea Breeze and makes landfall in Iceland before heading to East Greenland. Forty miles from Scoresby Sound, 'a polite mutiny' forced him to abandon the voyage. The following year, he completes a voyage he considered 'certainly the happiest'.
The circumnavigation of Spitsbergen is the first of three voyages described in H.W. `Bill' Tilman's fifteenth and final book, Triumph and Tribulation, a remarkable example of Tilman's ability to triumph when supported by a crew game for all challenges.
First published in 1946, the scope of H.W. 'Bill' Tilman's When Men & Mountains Meet is broad, covering his disastrous expedition to the Assam Himalaya, a small exploratory trip into Sikkim, and then his wartime heroics. Tilman's war was fast, exciting, lightweight and foolhardy-and makes for gripping reading.
It's 1938, the British have thrown everything they've got at Everest but they've still not reached the summit. War in Europe seems inevitable; the Empire is shrinking. Still reeling from failure in 1936, the British are granted one more permit by the Tibetans. Mount Everest 1938 by H.W. Tilman is the account of this pioneering expedition.
Mostly Mischief's ordinary title belies four more extraordinary voyages made by H.W. 'Bill' Tilman covering almost 25,000 miles in both Arctic and Antarctic waters. The first of which sees the pilot cutter Mischief retracing the steps of Elizabethan explorer John Davis to the eastern entrance to the Northwest Passage.
In Mischief goes South, Tilman and his pilot cutter Mischief head south with the Antarctic Peninsula, Smith Island and the unclimbed Mount Foster in their sights. The second part of the volume regales an expedition to the remote Crozet Islands in the southern Indian Ocean, a voyage that evolved into an unplanned circumnavigation of Africa.
First published 50 years before political correctness became an accepted rule, Mischief in Greenland is a treasure trove of H.W. Tilman's observational wit. In this account of his first two West Greenland voyages, he pulls no punches with regard to the occasional failings, leaving the reader to seek out the numerous achievements of these voyages.
Mischief among the Penguins is H.W. Tilman's 1961 book about his voyage to the Southern Ocean islands of Crozet and Kerguelen. It bears testament to his ocean navigation skills and seamanship. The accounts of the island anchorages, their snow-covered heights, geology and the flora and fauna pay tribute to the interests and ingenuity of his crew.
Mischief in Patagonia follows H.W. Tilman and his crew as they sail the length of the Atlantic oceans and through the Magellan Strait to their icy landfall in the south of Chile. The party crossed the Patagonian ice cap before returning home for a total of 20,000 miles sailed, all here related with the Skipper's characteristic modesty and humour.