Alec Rose, the greengrocer who circumnavigated the globe in 1968

In 1968, modest greengrocer-navigator Alec Rose reflected in the Observer on what drove him to undertake a perilous round-the-world trip on his boat, Lively Lady, with only his teddy bear, Algy (pictured), for company.

A shy, solitary child, Rose dreamed of ‘far-off places’. Like the racing pigeons he loved, ‘I seemed to have the travel bug,’ he wrote. He worked as a market gardener, then a greengrocer, while saving to buy, then converting his first beloved boat, Neptune’s Daughter. When his marriage broke up, Rose even took to sleeping aboard, but the craft wasn’t up to the vast distances he dreamed of. He swapped it for Lively Lady; soon after the pair came fourth in the 1964 Observer Trans-Atlantic Race.

Like the racing pigeons he loved, ‘I seemed to have the travel bug,’ he wrote

On 16 July 1968, after more years of saving and preparation (and a false start when a series of freak accidents scuppered his first departure), Rose left Portsmouth (his ‘very efficient’ second wife, Dorothy, minded the shop). That evening, stuck barely beyond the Isle of Wight on a windless night, ‘I had some supper of cold ham, tomato, lettuce and brown bread and butter,’ he wrote. ‘It was not until then that I began to feel alone, utterly alone.’

Rose’s mood and the wind picked up and on 26 August, not without dramas, Lively Lady crossed the equator. He and Algy ‘toasted Father Neptune in a hot whisky’. It took until 15 December to reach Hobson’s Bay in Australia, where his son, Michael, greeted him with champagne.

The article ends there (a second instalment followed), but after 354 days at sea, during which time Rose’s voyage captured the public imagination, an estimated quarter of a million people watched him arrive home in Portsmouth (you can see it on YouTube ). ‘He seemed a bit dubious about the size of the reception that was planned,’ Dorothy said, ‘and I told him that if he would do these silly things, he must expect it.’ ‘I just felt it was my personal affair and really interested no one else,’ Rose said with typical understatement.