An explorer who recreated voyages, both legendary and historical.
Tim Severin
Born: September 25th, 1940
Died: December 18th, 2020
The explorer, writer and film maker, Tim Severin, best known for the Brendan Voyage where he sailed from Ireland to Newfoundland to prove that the 6th century Irish saint could have reached the Americas 900 years before Columbus, has died at his home in west Cork at the age of 80. ...
... it was while he was still an undergraduate there at Keble College in 1961 that he sought to recreate his first ancient journey, retracing on motorbike Marco Polo’s 13th-century journey into Asia.
Six years later he followed in the footsteps of Spanish conquistadors and others sailing down the Mississippi river, but it was his decision to try to follow in the footsteps of St Brendan and cross the Atlantic in a leather-bound boat in 1976 that caught the public imagination.
Studying the Latin texts of the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis (The Voyage of St Brendan the Abbot) which dates back to at least 800 AD and tells the story of Brendan’s (circa 489-583), Severin sought to follow in the Irish saint’s steps.
“I recreated the boat of St Brendan and set out to see what would happen, and it was in that way that I discovered for me, the fascination of travel wasn’t just space but being able to go back in time, and . . . that new dimension opened for me on the Atlantic,” he later said. ...
On May 17th, 1976, Severin and his three fellow crew men, led by sailing master George Moloney from Dublin, rowed out of Brandon Creek on the Dingle Peninsula, the spot where St Brendan is reported to have departed almost 1,500 years earlier to begin what would prove a 7,200km epic journey. ..
Severin undertook voyages to retrace the journey of Sinbad the Sailor from The One Thousand and One Nights in 1980 and 1981, and the voyages of legendary figures from Greek mythology such as Jason and the Argonauts in 1984 and Ulysses in 1985.
He followed the knights of the First Crusade by riding on horseback to Jerusalem in 1987 and 1988. He rode with Mongol horsemen in 1990 to mark the 800th anniversary of the birth of Genghis Khan. That story was published in 1993 as The Search for Genghis Khan. ...
https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and...r-best-known-for-the-brendan-voyage-1.4448332