Anthony Dalton

Much as happened with Dean King's biography of Patrick O'Brian, Dalton started out with the aim of writing this book as a tribute to a writer he admired, but discovered along the way that his subject wasn't at all who he claimed to be. As he works through Jones's career, Dalton finds himself regretfully demolishing, one by one, the statements Jones makes about himself in his various "autobiographical" works, until very little is left except for Jones's undoubted skill as a storyteller and a seaman, and the bloody-minded, combative spirit that kept him going despite an unpromising start in life and serious health problems later on.

Given his background (lower-class child brought up in Liverpool orphanages; stoker in the peacetime navy; Ibiza boat bum on the fringes of the law), it's perhaps not all that surprising that Jones should have turned out to be such a fantasist. He was obviously a rather lonely person until a lucky chance brought him into the heady world of ocean yachting rather late in life. Once there, the temptation to tell stories match or exceed the achievements of his contemporaries must have been strong, particularly for someone who seems to have done a lot of drinking when not at sea. Dalton is rather nervous about discussing Jones's sexuality, but I'm sure that enters into the picture as well: as a gay man in pre-Wolfenden Britain, he would have had plenty of need for inventing stories about himself.

As Dalton, and many other fans, say, it doesn't detract significantly from the entertainment value of Jones's books to know that they are fiction. It does detract seriously from their technical and geographical interest as records of travel, though, particularly as Jones was often rather slapdash with his research (see Dalton's detailed demolition of Ice!, for example). Many of Jones's readers over the years will have filed away little nuggets of information about the places and incidents he describes in his books without realising that they are totally misleading. Just the other day someone confidently assured me that it used to be common for barges to go up the Rhine under sail, against wind and current, based purely on what he had read in Jones.

Dalton's book provides quite a gripping story, better-written than I expected, although it does repeat itself a bit. It does leave quite a few areas of Jones's life unexplored, though: it's a shame that Dalton didn't manage to track down anyone who had known him in the navy, but hardly surprising given the time elapsed and the number of naval ratings called "Arthur Jones" there must have been in the forties and fifties. And he's a bit evasive about Jones's final years in Thailand and the mysterious death of Jones's long-time crewman/secretary/assistant, Thomas Ettenhuber, probably because there are other people involved.… (mehr)