'Hand (man) wanted for long voyage in small boat. No pay, no prospects, not much pleasure.' So read the crew notice placed in the personal column of 'The Times' by H.W. 'Bill' Tilman in the spring of 1959. This approach to selecting volunteers for a year-long voyage of 20,000 miles brought mixed seafaring experience: 'Osborne had crossed the Atlantic 51 times in the Queen Mary, playing double bass in the ship's orchestra.' With unclimbed ice-capped peaks and anchorages that could be best described as challenging, the Southern Ocean island groups of Crozet and Kerguelen provided obvious destinations for Tilman and his 50-year-old wooden pilot cutter 'Mischief.' His previous attempt to lad in the Crozet Islands when their only means of landing was carried away by a severe storm in the Southern Ocean.