The Rowing Marine

On 9 January 2019, Lee Spencer, a disabled former Royal Marine, set out in a tiny rowing boat called Hope from the Southern Portuguese town of Portimao. He was hoping to become the fourth person in history to row solo and unsupported across the Atlantic Ocean, as well the first disabled person to complete the row and the fastest. After sixty days, sixteen hours and six minutes at sea, Lee rowed into the Mahury River estuary in Cayenne, South America, shattering the able-bodied record by an astonishing thirty-six days and became the world’s only physically disabled person, to break and hold an able-bodied record in an endurance event. Lee dreamed of one day being strong enough to face his father. He dreamed of becoming a Royal Marine. In 1992 he achieved his goal. Having served in the second Iraq War, Lee then volunteered for Special Duties and was one of only three out of 126 who eventually passed the course. He then completed three tours of Afghanistan as an agent handler. Then on a dark wintery night, Lee stopped to help at the scene of a motorway crash. Struck by debris when another car hit the scene, Lee came within a whisker of bleeding to death. He instructed a passer-by to stand on his groin when a makeshift torniquet wouldn’t work. Surgeons, though, could not save his leg. Unperturbed by becoming disabled, he learned to walk again, would row across the Atlantic with the world’s first physically disabled crew of four – with just three legs between them – to row any ocean and to embark on his epic solo journey. In The Rowing Marine Lee takes us on his epic solo voyage, as he relates his unparalleled life story, bringing the threads of his many experiences together.

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