Pillock, Parrot & Pussy Pound Pacific

William Willis

A cat, a parrot and a grizzled 61-year-old American went to sea on a raft last Tuesday to cross the Pacific Ocean.

They set out from Callao, Peru. A Peruvian naval tug towed the raft into the Humboldt current, and at that point the American cheerfully farewelled his wife and set sail for Samoa, more than 6,000 miles away. .

The voyagers are William Willis, his Peruvian cat Mecke and his Peruvian parrot Ecke. The cat, already seasick from the 10-mile trip in the tug, crept into the thatched cabin on the balsa-wood raft as Willis waved good-bye. The parrot had climbed into the rigging and was still squawking an old Spanish sea chanty when the raft sailed out of hearing.

On Friday a Peruvian Air Force pilot reported sighting the craft, The Seven Little Brothers, more than 100 miles off-shore in calm seas and fair weather.
He said the American was basking in the sun, the sails were up and the fragile craft appeared to be making good headway.

I don’t hope to prove a thing. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for years. I’m doing it just to show that a lone man can conquer the sea. The sea is there and nobody else has ever done it. I’m not crazy. I’ll get to Samoa all right.

Willis has spent most of his lifetime at sea – once serving on a windjammer and is an experienced navigator. He has also been a gold miner in Alaska, hunted whales in the Antarctic and is reputed to have once helped a prisoner escape from the French penal colony of Devil’s Island.

He spent six months and more than £6,000 building the raft and planning the voyage.

Willis flew to Guayaquil, Ecuador last December to find the balsa logs for the raft. He took a crew of timber cutters into the jungle-covered mountains outside the city to select and cut the logs.

Because the rivers were low after a dry season, the party used teams of oxen to haul the logs to the sea and ship them to Callao.

With help from the Peruvian naval authorities, Willis began building the raft at the Callao naval arsenal where the Kon-Tiki was constructed in 1947. Naval technicians helped him design the craft and machined the metal parts used in building it. Naval riggers helped him put it together. The sails, made of orlon, were shipped from America.

Willis extensively tested the raft outside the harbour and three weeks ago a naval tug towed it around the harbour with 38 Peruvian sailors on board.

He Doesn’t Want It “Too Easy”

But he steadfastly refused offers from several adventurous Peruvian sailors to accompany him on the real voyage.

The trip would be too easy with two men aboard. lt would take away the element of competition with the sea.

He at first refused to take a radio transmitter with him because that too..

would be tempting destiny. …Did not intend to ask for assistance, no matter how tough the going.

But a director of the British Marconi Wireless Company, Sir George Nelson, who was visiting Peru persuaded him to accept a powerful portable transmitter specially flown from England, and naval expert; taught him how to operate it. He has efficient navigator instruments.

The raft, the Seven Little Brothers – named for the seven balsa logs used in building it-is 34ft long and roughly half the size of the Kon-Tiki.

Willis said he would rely on fish for food, but he is also carrying tins of máchica (a Peruvian cereal made from wild corn) and tins of brown sugar. He also has three weeks of air force emergency rations in case be is blown off course. Also there is a small canoe-Willis’s “last resort.”

But he said his is a more seaworthy and more easily manageable craft than the Kon-Tiki. It has a keel, rudder and steering wheel where the Kon-Tiki had only a centreboard and a steering oar. Willis took movie and still cameras with him. He intends to write a book on the voyage. This raft is half the size of the Kon-tiki.

He said he had taken 10 years to persuade his wife to let him go. Mrs. Willis, a tall, attractive woman about 15 years younger than her husband, flew to Peru from New York to see him before he left on Tuesday.

My main problem on the voyage will be finding time to sleep. The best I can expect will be a couple of hours at a time. My other problem will be the solitude. I hate cities and crowds – give me the sea or the jungle – but I like to talk occasionally. I thought I might be able to talk to the parrot, but the darned thing only speaks Spanish.

As his tiny craft bobbed away from the Peruvian tug he shouted to his wife: “See you in Times Square,” and he turned to face an empty ocean.

Mrs. Willis waved tearfully until her husband had sailed out of sight.

He’s been planning for it so long now I couldn’t ask him not to go. lt’s better that he does it now before be gets any older.

Sun-Herald (Sydney, NSW : 1953 – 1954), Sunday 27 June 1954, page 50

A man and his raft

WILLIAM WILLIS, the 61- year-old American adventurer, stands aboard his raft “Seven Little Brothers” as it moves off the Peruvian coast late in June. Last Friday his battered 35ft. raft was towed into Pago Pago after drifting across the Pacific. Willis, after his 11,000-mile solo journey that took 115 days, was well when he leapt ashore, despite a two-months sea-water diet.

Herald (Melbourne, Vic. : 1861 – 1954), Thursday 21 October 1954, page 3

MAN DRIFTS OVER PACIFIC

WELLINGTON (NZ), Thursday. — A 61-year-old American Who left Peru on a raft four months ago to drift to Samoa has radioed he is safe.

The man, William Willis is only 20 miles off the American Samoan island of Tutuila. Willis, who set out with balsa log raft, a cat and a parrot, has drifted 7000 miles. His message, picked up in Raratonga, one of the Cook Islands, said, “Need help to land. All is well.” The message was picked up by radio superintendent Douglas Cunnold. On lookout It has been relayed to Pago Pago, Tutuila’s capital. Cunnold had been on the lookout for a message from the raft following an appeal from Willis’ wife. Willis left Callao (Peru) on June 22 in what everyone thought was a suicide attempt to cross the Pacific alone.

A Peruvian navy tug towed him to 10 miles offshore, then set him adrift to catch the currents for Samoa.

Nothing had been heard from his small radio since June when he signalled “All going well” and it was assumed he had been lost.

Sun (Sydney, NSW : 1910 – 1954), Thursday 14 October 1954, page 5

Willis became a sailor at 15, leaving his home in Hamburg to sail around Cape Horn.

Wiki

A few days after New Years, 1938 (Page 5, “Damned and Damned Again”) Willis rented a room from a woman named Madame Carnot. Her brother, Bernard Carnot, had been sent to Devil’s Island for a murder he did not commit, and out of compassion and a sense of adventure Willis set out to Devil’s Island to effect Bernard Carnot’s escape, which he eventually accomplished.

During his first solo expedition in 1954 from South America to American Samoa, he sailed 6,700 miles – 2,200 miles farther than did Thor Heyerdahl on Kon-Tiki. His raft was named “Seven Little Sisters” and was crewed by himself, his parrot, and cat. Willis was age 61 at the time of this voyage.

In a second great voyage ten years later, at the age of 71, he sailed 10,000 miles from South America to Australia single-handing a 34-foot (10.4 m) raft named Age Unlimited. He left Callao on 5 July 1963, made a lengthy stop in Apia, and after a total of 204 days at sea, arrived near Tully, Queensland, completing his voyage on 9 September 1964.^[2]

Death and legacy

At age 74, Willis made his third attempt at a solo crossing of the North Atlantic in a small sailboat. Willis left Montauk Point, Long Island on May 2, 1968, in his boat Little One. On September 24, 1968, the crew of the Soviet Latvian trawler Yantarny sighted his half-submerged boat nearly four hundred miles west of the Irish coast. No one was found on board. Willis’ log was found on the boat, with its last entry dated July 21, 1968.

Novelist T. R. Pearson wrote the book Seaworthy: Adrift with William Willis in the Golden Age of Rafting (2006), summarizing Willis’s adventures.

Willis’s adventure on Devil’s Island was featured in the Season 4 premiere of Drunk History on Comedy Central.