Books: Sail

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LAST OF THE WIND SHIPS — Alan J. Villiers—Morrow ($4).

Like the cab horse, the absolute monarch and the beehive police helmet, the sailing ship is rapidly fading from human sight. Many a sailor, professional and amateur, is sorry. But that nostalgic sorrow might well be mitigated by such a superb record of the sailing ship's passing as this book of Sailor-Author Villiers'.

With brief text (59 pp.), 208 photographs (mostly of the square-rigger Parma, on which he sailed in 1933), he tells the soon-to-be-historic story of the dwindling fleet that still annually rounds the Horn on the long passage from Australia to England.

That fleet in 1921 numbered 140. Last year there were 20 left. Fourteen of them are the personal property of one old man, last of the sailing-ship owners. Captain Gustaf Erikson of the Aland Islands. He makes his fleet pay by carrying no insurance, paying no overhead, allowing no depreciation. The crews consist almost entirely of boy-apprentices, who pay to learn their trade and ''there are always more applicants than vacancies." Two girls signed on for last year's passage, but no women may sail with Captain Villiers again. Said he last week (when he brought the Joseph Conrad into New York) : "This ship is my home, and in future no women shall board her for a sea voyage. A ship is for men."