Obituary | To sea in a barrel

Jean-Jacques Savin wanted to defy old age

The intrepid adventurer died on January 21st while rowing solo across the Atlantic, aged 75

Feb 5th 2022

EDWARD LEAR’S Jumblies, seeking the hills of the Chankly Bore, went to sea in a sieve. They had a beautiful pea-green sail tied with a ribbon to a tobacco-pipe mast, and slept in a crockery jar. In 2018-19 Jean-Jacques Savin, aiming for the Caribbean from the Canaries, crossed the Atlantic in a Bordeaux tonneau made of plywood and painted a gaudy orange. It had no sail or engine, but flew the flag of France. Inside, in a space scarcely bigger than a crockery jar, he installed a bunk, a sink, a captain’s chair, a card-table and a porthole in the floor through which to watch the fish. His barrel-baby, as he thought of it, was baptised on the beach after mass in Arès, his home town in the Gironde, and named Audacieux, because it was. It would drift to America in the arms of the ocean, with no man-made power at all.

This article appeared in the Obituary section of the print edition under the headline “To sea in a barrel”