Sunchaser's Westward Voyage was Elissa Farman’s bold attempt to cross the Sunset Sea in search of unknown lands and a western route to the riches of the east. Sailing as Alys Westhill, she left Oldtown with two Hightower ships in 56 AC. The expedition found islands no known chart recorded, but storms, loss, and the crew’s refusal to continue divided the voyagers: Eustace Hightower returned, while Elissa pressed west alone. The Sun Chaser vanished, leaving the voyage suspended between a documented discovery and an enduring maritime mystery.

Purpose and departure

Elissa’s ambition was not simply to sail farther than earlier mariners. She sought lands beyond the Sunset Sea and imagined that a western passage might reach Yi Ti and Leng, bringing extraordinary wealth to whoever found it. The very possibility was disputed. Some learned men considered the sea too vast to cross; others thought it might be navigable by a sufficiently capable ship. Elissa’s plan depended on the more hopeful estimate, but she had to find a crew willing to risk a journey into waters whose distance and dangers were unknown.

She was still in Oldtown late in autumn, although the Sun Chaser had already reached port. Elissa wanted sailors who shared her purpose and would not lose heart or force the expedition to turn back. Her identity also complicated the preparations: she was travelling under the name Alys Westhill, rather than as Elissa of House Farman. King Jaehaerys recognized the false name and ordered Lord Donnel Hightower to take her into custody and send her to the Red Keep. The order arrived too late to stop the departure. Donnel sent a dozen swift ships after the fugitives, but they returned unsuccessful; the Sun Chaser, built in Braavos and notably fast under sail, escaped them.

The prospect of arrest was not the only obstacle. Elissa’s wealth, part of the gold paid by the Sealord for the stolen dragon eggs, let her offer sailors three times the wages available from other captains. Lord Donnel had sent his grandsons Eustace and Norman to question her and, if they thought it necessary, place her in fetters. Instead, both joined the voyage, bringing their ships and crews. Their decision changed the expedition from a lone captain’s difficult recruiting effort into a three-ship departure. On the twenty-third day of the third moon of 56 AC, the Sun Chaser sailed down Whispering Sound alongside Eustace’s Lady Meredith and Norman’s Autumn Moon.

Westward across the sea

Beyond the Arbor, Elissa steered south by southwest, seeking warmer water and steady winds. After twelve days at sea, the ships’ best estimates put them as far south as the Summer Islands and farther west than any ship was known to have sailed and returned. The crews celebrated their progress, though they had gone several days without seeing a bird. At first, the expedition had favourable conditions and signs of life at sea: the sailors saw fisherfolk and a large vessel they thought might be a whaler from Ib, while dolphins swam beside them. The apparent promise of the crossing made the subsequent change all the more severe.

The wind failed for nearly a fortnight, leaving the ships to move only when their crews could tow them. A supply of meat aboard the Autumn Moon was found crawling with maggots. When the wind returned, a red evening sky unsettled the sailors; before morning, the stars disappeared and the wind rose into a succession of storms. The first was followed by two more, each worse than the one before. Lightning split the Autumn Moon’s mast, and the ships were separated in the tumult. Eustace’s crew saw the Autumn Moon founder and disappear beneath a great wave. They believed a kraken had taken it, although Eustace’s account describes a wave rather than confirming a monster. His own Lady Meredith survived, damaged and missing nine men.

By the following afternoon, the Sun Chaser had found the Hightower ship again. Elissa had not merely survived: driven west by the storm, she had found land. Birds circling a hazy mountain peak had led her to three small islands. The Lady Meredith, too damaged to sail under its own power, reached their shelter with help from three boats sent out from the Sun Chaser.

The islands and the fleet’s division

The ships remained off the islands for more than a fortnight while their crews repaired damage and replenished supplies. Elissa treated the discovery as a decisive opening toward the unknown: the islands lay farther west than any land previously recorded and appeared on no known chart. Because there were three, she named them Aegon, Rhaenys, and Visenya. They were uninhabited, but springs and streams supplied fresh water, while wild pigs, fruit-bearing trees, and large grey lizards offered resources to the voyagers.

Eustace regarded the islands as a sufficient discovery and saw an immediate opportunity to profit from their produce. Elissa considered them only a beginning. Even the largest, she judged, was no more than a third the size of Dragonstone; the greater lands she hoped to find might lie farther west. Eustace feared that the ocean beyond could instead stretch for another thousand leagues. His crew’s terror after the loss of the Autumn Moon made the disagreement more than a difference in appetite for risk: Eustace believed the sailors would not permit him to continue and might replace him as captain if he gave the order.

The fleet therefore separated. The Lady Meredith turned east for home, while Elissa and the Sun Chaser continued west in pursuit of the setting sun. That choice preserved the expedition’s original purpose but left Elissa without the two Hightower vessels and their crews. The documented discovery of the islands became the limit of what Eustace’s returning party could attest to; beyond them, the voyage belonged to the missing ship.

Return, disappearance, and uncertain legacy

Eustace’s return was itself a long and dangerous passage. Contrary winds forced the Lady Meredith repeatedly to tack. Three of the islands’ grey lizards had been taken aboard, and one bit the steersman, whose injured leg had to be removed. Later, a large white bull leviathan struck the ship and cracked its hull. Eustace tried to make for the Summer Islands, but found that he was farther south than he had realized and missed them, reaching Sothoryos instead.

The Lady Meredith remained there for a full year while Eustace’s men attempted repairs. The crew gathered valuable goods, including emeralds, gold, and spices, but the place also proved deadly: men disappeared or died, disease and fever repeatedly left much of the crew unable to work, and the freshwater was dangerous. Summer Islanders passing through helped Eustace get the ship to Tall Trees Town, from which he eventually returned to Oldtown. When the Lady Meredith limped into port on the seventh day of the 59th year after Aegon’s Conquest, nearly three years after its departure, its weathered condition and the dark-skinned sailors disembarking with Eustace briefly prompted speculation that the expedition had reached lands beyond the Sunset Sea. Eustace explained that these sailors were Summer Islanders hired in Sothoryos, and that his rich cargo came from there, not from the far western lands Elissa had sought.

Elissa’s fate remains unknown. The Sun Chaser was never seen again after continuing west, so the voyage’s furthest reach and its outcome cannot be established. The account nevertheless leaves open a possible echo from a later expedition: Corlys Velaryon, years afterward, reported seeing an old, much-weathered ship in Asshai-by-the-Shadow that he believed could only have been the Sun Chaser. The identification is presented as his conviction, not as proof. The voyage thus ends in two different kinds of evidence: Eustace’s return supplies a detailed account of peril, landfall, and retreat, while Elissa’s disappearance leaves her intended destination—and whether she ever reached it—unresolved.