Alain Gerbault

Alain Gerbault (born the November 17th 1893 with Laval), and dead the December 16th 1941 with Dili (Island of Timor) was a navigator French.

Origin

Born in an easy family from industrialists, it carries out his schooling with Laval then with Paris, before entering to the National school of the Highways Departments. During the First World War he is volunteer in the Aviation. Although beginning in 1914, it proves to be an endowed pilot, and gains several spectacular victories, being pointed out by its tactical science and its skill in the aerobaticss. After war, it launches out in the businesses without much success, and takes part in many tournaments of Tennis, sport which it practices since its childhood.

Sea

In 1921, it decides to change life and buys in England an old sailing ship of race: the Firecrest' (peak of fire, probable allusion to the fire of Saint-Elme) “, built into 1892 which is a solid boat, very tenantable and marine, but without deck house nor cockpit and of which gréement was not appropriate at all to solitary navigation. After a drive of several months in the Mediterranean, it realizes in 1923 the first crossing of the Atlantique as a recluse of is in west, rejoining in 101 days Gibraltar with New York. This long life has as a reason the lack of preparation of the boat for such a navigation and the lack of experience of its captain. Gerbault multiplies the troubles what will be worth to him near the sailors a reputation of amateur having known to put forward itself through its books and near the media world of the time. It remains some time in the United States where its exploit was worth a certain celebrity to him, then sets out again in 1924 for the South Seas, passing by the Bermuda, the channel of Panama, the Galapagos, Tahiti, the islands Fiji, the Réunion, the Cape, the Île Grey waxbill, the Cap Verde and the the Azores, to join Le Havre in 1929 which it will tell in these works. It thus carries out a round the world tour which will be worth an international repute as well as a to him Légion of honor. Always attracted by the sea and the Polynesia with which it fell in love during its tour, it sets out again in 1932 on a new boat built thanks to the royalties of his works.

Polynesia

It will not then cease defending the cause of the Polynésie and studying its geography and its history. It spends the nine last years of its life in the Pacific Ocean, reaching the Marquesas Islands in 1933, the Tuamotu in 1934, Tahiti in 1935. Impassioned in the past these islands, he learns the Langues océaniennes and comes to assistance of the natives, rising against the European Colonisation which regards the disappearance of the Polynesians as inevitable. He endeavors with each one of his stopovers to make revive the local traditions, the songs and the dances prohibited by the Church and the administration. He endeavors to create an emulation sporting and introduced the Football to fight against the Alcoolisme. He undertakes in addition important research Linguistique S and ethnological. Sailing of island in island, and always returning to its Home port of Bora-Bora, it at that time carries out an ideal of life very in advance over its time.

The Second world war

The Second world war forces it to leave French Polynesia; it takes frantically and awkwardly the party of the marshal Pétain in July and August 1940: the rallying of the French Settlements in Oceania in Free France on September 4th, 1940 obliges it with an escape and a last voyage which is a wandering despaired through all the Pacifique, to escape the threats from war. Exhausted physically (in particular by an acute alcoholism) and morally, it touches the Samoa, the Tonga, and finally the island of Timor, from which the half east is Portuguese and neutral, and it succumbs to Dili (Timor Eastern) of the malaria and a physical dilapidation generalized in 1941, after several unfruitful attempts to gain the open sea. In 1947, its ashes are transferred by the National marine to Bora-Bora where it since then rests, according to its wish.

Publications

Only through the Atlantic , Grasset, 1925. Testimony of the French navigator on his crossing of the Atlantic as a recluse.
With the continuation of the sun, log book. Of New York to Tahiti , Grasset, 1929. Preface J.B. Charcot.
On the road of the return Log book II of Tahiti towards France , Grasset, 1929
In margin of the crossings. The Gospel of the sun . Fasquelle. 1932.
Islands of beauty . Gallimard. 1943.
a paradise dies . Coil. 1949.
My boat the Alain Gerbault . Amiot-Dumont. 1952.
O.Z.Y.U Last newspaper . Grasset. 1952.

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