Tristan Jones

He spent most of his life at sea, first in the British Royal Navy, and then sailing in small yachts for various purposes, including self-appointed adventure trips.

Though he was not allowed to launch his boat, he did make a brief sail on the Sea in an Israeli naval officer's sailboat.

As Tristan Jones, in his mid-forties, he sailed out of Brazil's Mato Grosso and into a Greenwich Village apartment to write six books in three years and reinvent his past."

In his imagined past, he was born at sea, on his father's tramp freighter off Tristan da Cunha in 1924 (thus the name "Tristan"), left school at 14 to work on sailing barges (A Steady Trade), and served as a boy seaman in the Royal Navy during World War II (Heart of Oak).

[3][4][5] While his account of war service is entertaining, Jones has been compared to a 'rum gagger' (19th century British slang for a man who got money or drinks by telling fraudulent tales of supposed suffering at sea).

He then continued across central Europe by river and canal to the Black Sea, as told in The Improbable Voyage, and then around southern Asia to Thailand, as recounted in Somewheres East of Suez.

Though he seems not to have informed all his older friends of this, he signed his name as 'Ali' in correspondence with Rafiq A. Tschannen, a Swiss Muslim living in Bangkok.

This talk was recorded, and has been released as a videotape and DVD, titled Tristan Jones: the Psychology of Adventure.