Ken Duxbury Author

Born in 1923, Ken Duxbury entered the Royal Navy as an Ordinary Seaman early in the Second World War and gained his Commission in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve shortly after. Later he spent five years demolishing wrecks around the coast of Great Britain - a ticklish job involving the use of large quantities of high explosive from small open boats operating from a parent ship in the open sea. After transfer to the Royal Navy he held his own command before retiring in 1954 and embarking on a four-year cruise in his fourteen-ton yacht. In 1958 he took up journalism and also founded a highly successful school of sailing in North Cornwall. As Principal of this school he gained many thousand hours' experience of instructing complete beginners to handle small sailing dinghies. He later co-founded a boatbuilding firm. He retired from business in 1970 to take up full time writing, and in later years has been active as an artist from his home high on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall.