Ocean adventurer’s life to hit the big screen

The life of John Fairfax, the first person to cross the Atlantic Ocean alone in a rowing boat, is to be explored in a new film.

The British self-professed ‘professional adventurer’ gained international attention in 1969 when he became the first person in recorded history to cross the Atlantic alone in a rowboat, according to the Daily Mail. He subsequently went on to become the first to row the Pacific Ocean with his then girlfriend, Sylvia Cook.

Variety.com reports that Rob Goodrich and Jason Armstrong of Walk Like a Duck Entertainment have acquired the rights to the film. In a statement the production company said: “John Fairfax was the real-deal and we are honoured with the opportunity to help bring his remarkable journey through life to screen with the support of his devoted love, Tiffany Fairfax. While we’ve all become overly-connected to technology, special media and new forms of peer pressures, John Fairfax fought one battle: John vs the world, regardless of fanfare or perception.”

Fairfax was born 21 May 1937 in Rome to an English father, who lived in London working for the BBC, and a Bulgarian mother. He was said to have been adventurous and rebellious from a young age.

When he was thirteen, Fairfax and his mother moved to Argentina where he left home to live in the jungle ‘like Tarzan’, where he survived by hunting and bartering skins from local peasants.

It was then, having read of Frank Samuelsen and George Harbo’s adventures, that he began thinking about rowing across the Atlantic. But it was when he read of Chay Blyth and John Ridgway’s successful row across the Atlantic and realised that if he wanted to be the first person to row solo across the Atlantic, he would have to do it soon, says the Daily Mail.

Returning to England, it took Fairfax two years to prepare for the adventure, which included taking daily rows across the Serpentine to train.

He spent 180 days rowing across the water, but on 19 July 1969 he became the first person to row solo across an ocean when he arrived in Florida having set off from the Canary Islands. Fairfax’s self-righting and self-bailing boat Britannia was designed by Uffa Fox, and is now located in the National Maritime Museum, Cornwall.

Such was his achievement at the time, on completion of his epic row Fairfax received a message of congratulations from the crew of Apollo 11, who had walked on the Moon the day after he had completed his voyage. In a letter, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin A. Aldrin Jr. wrote: “We who sail what President Kennedy once called ‘The new ocean of space’ are pleased to pay our respects to the man who, single handedly, has conquered the still formidable ocean of water.”

But this wasn’t the end of his sea-going adventures.

In 1972, he and Sylvia Cook became the first known people to row across the Pacific Ocean. Cook had replied to a personal ad that Fairfax had put in The Times when looking for support for his first row. According to the Daily Mail, it was a yearlong adventure, during which many presumed their ship was lost at sea, with Fairfax surviving a shark attack and cyclone on the 8,000-mile trek from San Francisco to Australia.

Years later, his wife Tiffany said: “On the Pacific, a shark took a big chunk of his arm out when he was spearing fish. There you are on the Pacific Ocean and there’s no hospital, and you need to row. He was an amazing, amazing human being. He believed a human could accomplish anything if they had confidence. When he would get an idea in mind, he would pursue it and say, ‘I can do it’.”

Fairfax wrote the books Oars Across the Pacific and Britannia: Rowing Alone Across the Atlantic about his ocean adventures. Both were published in the 1970s.

He died on 8 February 2012 of an apparent heart attack at his Las Vegas home. Fairfax’s wife, who will serve as executive producer for the film about his life, told Variety.com: “John Fairfax is the love of my life. He is my hero, my soulmate and my king… John lived a million lives in the span of one and I’m so excited for the world to see this man exactly as he was and I’m confident Walk Like a Duck is the perfect company to achieve this.”