Sailing Without a Chart

Gordon Leed

1927 and Stalin takes full control of the Communist Party in the USSR following the expulsion of Trotsky; Charles Lindbergh makes the first solo non-stop trans-Atlantic flight from New York to Paris; the first full-length “talkie” movie, The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson, is released; the carving of Mount Rushmore begins; Ford produces the last Model T; Philo Farnsworth transmits the first electronic (not mechanical – that was done by John Logie Baird the year before) TV signal over long distance; the Australian Parliament moves to Canberra; and inventors patent the aerosol spray can and the cheese slicer.

Not the least momentous event that year was the birth of Gordon Leed in Bradford, England.
Sailing Without a Chart is the story of Gordon’s early life as he remembers his childhood in the UK, growing up in Australia, and his years in the Royal Australian Navy from the latter part of the Second World War until the mid 1950s.