Peter Raymond Warner (1931 - 2021)

Born 22 Feb 1931 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Ancestors

Died 13 Apr 2021 at age 90 in Ballina, New South Wales, Australia

Biography

Peter Warner is Notable.

Peter Warner was an Australian seafarer and ship's captain who discovered six Tongan youths marooned on a Pacific island in 1966, more than a year after they had been presumed dead and, in 1974 discovered four sailors, a Welsh captain, and crew, a New Zealand nurse, an Australian teacher and an Australian student, from the sailing boat Sospan Fach who had been shipwrecked on the lonely reef. He also won the line honours three times in the Sydney to Hobart yacht race.

Peter Raymond Warner was born on 22nd February 1931 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. He was the younger son of Arthur Warner and Ethel Wakefield.

In 1968, he moved with his family to Tonga and lived there for the next thirty years. His career turned from fishing and shipping to horticulture, tree management, and the farming of nuts by the early 1990s. Several years after returning to Australia in 1998, he founded Tree Carers Pty Ltd, a business dedicated to nut farming.

He published three volumes of his autobiography:

1. Astor: Adventures Ashore & Afloat (2020), on his upbringing and taking to sea and his yachting successes up to 1965.
2. Ocean of Light: 30 years in Tonga and the Pacific (2020), on his time from finding the Tongan boys in 1966, establishing a fishing fleet and then a small shipping line based in Tonga, until his intended retirement to Australia in the mid-1990s.
3. Twilight of the Dawn (2020), on his attempts to retire—always frustrated by his entrepreneurial spirit and a wish to solve problems—with his search for meaning in an age of excess information and poor wisdom.

Aged 90 years Peter drowned in 13th April 2021 when his boat capsized attempting to cross the treacherous bar at the mouth of the Richmond River at Ballina, New South Wales.

Sources

• Wikipedia profile: Peter Warner; accessed 16 Apr 2021.