Wayward Sailor: In Search of the Real Tristan Jones

This is a fascinating biography of an infuriating poseur. Tristan Jones, Royal Navy, had great skill as a teller of autobiographical tales of danger at sea and adventures ashore. Unfortunately, as Anthony Dalton demonstrates in a book that started out as an attempt to spread Jones's fame, it turns out that most (and possibly all) of his spellbinding tales are untrue. He made them up. They didn't happen. Old salts are expected to tell "sea stories." Memoirists, however, are not. It will come as a real disappointment to anyone who, like me, enjoyed the hell out of Jones's books, to discover that such wonderful reads like Ice! and The Incredible Voyage are effectively no more than tall tales. They remain great tall tales, I admit (so great you just want to keep on believing them), but fiction should be labeled as such. Public records revealed to Anthony Dalton that the old sea dog, who died in 1995, simply was not where he claimed to be when he claimed to be there. Dalton himself was reluctant to accept the evidence until it became overwhelming. Example: Jones wrote a compelling "memoir" entitled Heart of Oak about serving in the Royal Navy in World War II. It's so good that even the prominent, crotchety critic Paul Fussell mentioned its virtues. Turns out Navy records show that Tristan Jones didn't even join the RN till World War II was over. And so it goes. I used to be a big fan of his, too.

...that de-bunks the Tristian Jones self created "persona". It is clear that the end of the book was hard to write and researching the latter parts of TJ's life was made harder by his isolation abroad coupled with TJ's recognition that he was in the process of getting "caught out" and so made his life hard to research. This makes the end of the book rather flat - but it is worth it in its own right for the first two thirds.

I find it interesting that someone would go to such great lengths to prove a book wrong. Its seems to me that Dalton had more to loose by not proving Tristan wrong than Tristan would from not doing the things in his books and then writting it as if he did.

I've only read four of Tristan Jone's books, with the first being The Incredible Voyage. I wasn't far into the book before it became obvious that there was a lot of fabrication and embellishment going on there. ICE! was even more far-fetched. And as Dalton pointed out in Wayward Sailor, the book ICE! was entirely fiction.Dalton's book serves to confirm what many of us already knew: Tristan Jones was less than truthful. What I was surprised to hear, though, is that Jones wasn't a very nice person in real life, either. He had far more enemies than friends and spent much of his time as an obnoxious drunk. He was not a trustwothy person; for example, he took "Outward Leg", a boat belonging to its manufacturer, and left it abandoned and trashed before completing the agreed route. But, nevertherless, I will still buy Tristan's books and plan to read them all. Tristan's writing skills are a bit rough around the edges, but he does tell a great story. The important thing is that the books are entertaining and everything in them must be taken with a grain of salt. I would recommend the books to everyone.While Tristan Jones greatly exagerated his "record voyages" and did not sail anywhere near the miles he claimed, he was still a great seamen and writer.

I have been in contact with Anthony Dalton over the last couple of years while he was writing this biography of Tristan Jones...Some believe every word he writes in his books, some who knew him doubt many of the stories he wrote. Finally, Tony Dalton has traveled all over the world collecting the facts. He has documented the cold truth in this extraordinary researched biography. I must admit that his conclusions are not the ones I wished for, but the truth is very often hard to accept. I have corresponded with many people who knew Tristan personally, and many have told me that what Tony recorded in his new book is true. Regardless, if you want to read some wonderful stories, read some of Tristan Jones books. Fact or fiction, I loved every one.