Bill King’s Legacy & the 1996 Sinking of Galway Blazer II | Season 3 – Episode 34
Floats Jun 24, 2025
Today, June 24th, 2025, we commemorate the sinking, on this day in 1996, of Galway Blazer II, the junk-rigged schooner once owned by ‘honorary’ Irishman Bill King of Oranmore Castle, County Galway. In 1973, he completed a solo circumnavigation of the globe aboard her.
Despite being the Royal Navy’s longest-serving wartime submarine commander, Bill King saw himself as an Irishman. He shared over 60 years of connection with County Galway, where he lived, and County Monaghan, his wife Anita’s birthplace. From naming his yacht Galway Blazer II after local fox hunters to wearing Aran jumpers, flying the tricolour, and farming organically—his Irish identity was unmistakable.
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SOLO YACHT RACE
By 1967, Bill King was determined to attempt a solo circumnavigation. Using funds from an inheritance, he commissioned a custom-designed boat from Angus Primrose, with design input from former Royal Marine Colonel Herbert Hasler—creator of the junk-rigged Jester, which he had sailed in the inaugural 1960 OSTAR (Original Singlehanded Transatlantic Race).
ROUND THE WORLD RACE
Bill King had long intended to sail around the world, and the timing proved right with the launch of the inaugural Sunday Times Golden Globe Race in March 1968. At 58, the oldest entrant, he joined the race instead.
He set sail from Plymouth, England aboard Galway Blazer II on August 24th 1968. Early in the voyage, he identified a key flaw in his schooner’s design—no guard rails. To solve this, he rigged a steel wire from bow to stern and clipped in with a harness, a safety feature soon adopted by other solo sailors.
The race took him into the South Atlantic, but on October 31st 1968, a violent storm northeast of Gough Island capsized Galway Blazer II in 50-foot waves (15m), snapping both masts. With radio contact lost, King was eventually towed into Cape Town, South Africa.
SECOND ATTEMPT
Undeterred and showing the tenacity and doggedness that he was famous for, Bill tried again in 1970 and again with Galway Blazer II, but hull damage and injury to his hands, necessitating him putting ashore in Western Australia. After a period of recuperation and necessary repairs he set sail from Fremantle.
LIFE AT SEA
When at sea Bill lived on dried fruit and green sprouts that he grew on board. To keep himself occupied during the voyage he read up on the major religions of the world and in his own words; “all the best novels, such as Tolstoy”. Claiming to have avoided depression during the voyage because of his constantly changing surroundings he said, “You are…alone with God…there’s no opportunity to sin”.
THIRD ATTEMPT
On his third attempt his race came close to total disaster when on December 12th 1971 about 400 miles (640 km) southwest of Australia a large great white shark caused almost irreparable damage to the underside hull of Galway Blazer II.
Later recounting to journalists in Freemantle how he was below deck when he heard a shattering sound and saw the hull below the water line bulge inward and splinter. He explained that he rushed on deck and immediately heeled the boat over so that the hole in the hull was lifted out of the water and less likely to take on water.
He then carried out repairs in dangerous conditions that included hanging over the side and submerging himself to work on the hull breech. He made repairs using everything at his disposal on the outside and inside of the hull including ropes, tape, tarpaulin, sheet copper and sponge rubber.
KEITH CLIFFORD TO THE RESCUE
After three days of patching and repair he returned to Fremantle, Western Australia in his own words, “barely able to limp into port”. There he was met by shipwright Keith Clifford aboard his small boat ‘Little Toot’ who was to carry out repairs. To help the damaged schooner clear a low bridge en-route to the repair yard, Keith devised a clever solution: six 44-gallon drums filled with seawater were loaded onto the starboard side, allowing the yacht to be winched over just enough to slip beneath the bridge.
Galway Blazer II spent a month in Fremantle under the care of master shipwright Keith Clifford. His son Stephen, then just six, vividly remembers meeting the weathered sailor Bill King and exploring the schooner.
The Clifford family had a strong generational bond with the sea. Keith Clifford spent over five decades as a master shipwright at the Royal Freshwater Bay Yacht Club and competed in several prestigious yacht races. His son Stephen, who shared this story with us, inherited that passion and spent 35 years as a professional cray fisherman, skippering Dejavu around the Abrolhos Islands off Western Australia.
LAST LEG
Bill King set sail once more from Australia and headed for Plymouth and eventually after five months of silence with no shore contact, on May 23rd 1973 after a voyage lasting three years and on his third attempt he proudly sailed back into the harbour, having overcome enormous obstacles along the way. He was the first sailor living in Ireland to accomplish this remarkable journey, and Galway Blazer II became the first junk-rigged schooner to sail around the world.
HOW BILL KING BECAME BILL KING
Bill King was born in Hampshire, England. His father, a University of Galway graduate, was killed on the Western Front in 1917. Raised by his mother and adventurous grandmother—who skied at 75 and sailed into her eighties—Bill inherited a deep resilience.
He began his naval career in the Mediterranean and joined the submarine service in 1932, later commanding HMS Snapper by 1939. While serving in Beirut in 1943, he met Monaghan-born Anita Leslie, whom he married in 1949.
On 17 July 1944, as commander of HMS Telemachus, King torpedoed and sank the Japanese submarine I-166 in the Strait of Malacca—a story we will return to later.
Anita also served with distinction, earning the Croix de Guerre for her work as an ambulance driver in the French Army.
They briefly lived in a hunting lodge near Oranmore, County Galway, beginning Bill’s lifelong bond with Ireland. In 1946, Anita’s mother bought the ruined Oranmore Castle for £200, and the couple restored it, establishing a 150-acre organic farm.
Between 1958 and 1997, Bill authored two autobiographies and several sailing books. Anita wrote 17 books, including a 1974 biography of Francis Chichester, the first person to sail solo around the world—featured in our episode on Gipsy Moth III, the 1960 Tyrrell-built transatlantic winner.
WW2 RECONCILIATION
In 2004, Akira Tsurukame, the son of the chief engineer who tragically lost his life aboard the I-166 submarine, reached out to Bill King. United by their shared experiences, King, Tsurukame, and Katja Boonstra-Blom, whose father was killed when the Dutch submarine K XVI was sunk by the Japanese I-166, gathered at Oranmore Castle. There, they planted a tree to pay tribute to the fathers of both Tsurukame and Boonstra-Blom. The local paper, The Galway Advertiser, dubbed their three-way tree planting at Oranmore Castle a “reconciliation”.
William (Bill) Donald Aelian King (1910 – 2012) submarine commander, solo-circumnavigator, organic farmer, author and honorary Irishman died in 2012 at age 102 at his home at Oranmore Castle, Co Galway.
GALWAY BLAZER II DEMISE
British yachtsman Peter Crowther purchased Galway Blazer II in 1974 for £10,000, renamed her as ‘Galway Blazer of Dart’ and entered her in that year’s two-handed Round Britain Race. On June 24th 1996, while Peter was competing on his fifth transatlantic race, ‘Galway Blazer of Dart’ was lost after she struck an unknown object and began flooding. “There was an almighty bang, and water poured in,” he said. With no hope of saving her, he abandoned ship and was blown off the deck as she sank.
After six hours adrift, 700 miles west of the Isles of Scilly, he was rescued by the container ship Atlantic Compass, having been located by an RAF Nimrod responding to his distress beacon. He was taken aboard the container ship bound for Nova Scotia, where he watched the 42ft junk-rigged Galway Blazer II sink before his eyes.
Each week, we journey across Ireland to uncover and share the hidden history and often overlooked stories of our transport heritage. These journeys take time and fuel—and they all add up. If you’ve enjoyed our stories and would like to support this work, please consider subscribing for just €2 a month at www.irelandmade.ie. Your support helps keep the wheels turning and the stories coming.
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Information sources:
Afloat Magazine
Associated Press
Bill’s Log Blogspot
Capsize by Bill King
Commander Bill King – Daily Telegraph Obituary
Commander Bill King – The Guardian Obituary
Dublin City Library and Archive
Galway Blazer of Dart
Independent.ie
King family archive
Nature Public Library – Rick Tomlinson
Oranmorecastle.com
PPL Photo Agency
Single-handed Sailing in Galway Blazer by Peter Crowther
The Circumnavigators: Small Boat Voyagers of Modern Times – Don Holm
The Life and Times of Commander Bill King
