Photograph: Werner Schmidt

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Talk about Puffin at RRM - Not to be missed!


Last year in September 2013, the River & Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames presented Graham Walters, who gave a thrilling talk on an incredible journey across the Atlantic in the fifteen-foot Puffin, successfully completing an ill-fated voyage that began 30 years earlier when the two-man crew, David Johnstone and John Hoare, disappeared after 106 days at sea in an attempt to row across the Atlantic. Due to popular demand, on Saturday 7 June, Walters will be back at the River & Rowing Museum in Henley to repeat his talk, which is called “Puffin’s Redemption: The Journey across the Atlantic”. The talk is between 11.30 a.m. and ca. 12.30 p.m. (coffee from 11 a.m.) and the ticket price is £7.

River & Rowing Museum • Mill Meadows • Henley-on-Thames, RG9 1BF
For more information call 01491 415600 or visit www.rrm.co.uk


In October 1966, the headlines in newspapers around the world told the tragic story how Puffin was found upside down in the mid-Atlantic with no trace of the crew, David Johnstone and John Hoare. There has since been much speculation about the reasons for this tragedy. In 1968, The Penance Way: The Mystery of Puffin’s Atlantic Voyage by Merton Naydler was published. The author based his book on a first-hand account, a 35,000-word journal written by Johnstone, who was a journalist who got the idea to row across the Atlantic from west to east. Johnstone’s day-to-day log book was found by divers and, as the front flap of the book reads, ‘it depicts heroism of a high order and may come to be acknowledged as one of the most moving and vivid documents of personal experience and high endeavour ever written.’

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