In 1951, the Portuguese ambassador to the United States, Pedro Teotónio Pereira, a sailing enthusiast and later a close friend of Villiers, invited him to sail on the schooner "Argus", a cod fishing four-masted schooner, and to record the last commercial activity ever to make use of sails in ocean-crossings. Villiers wrote "The Quest Of The Schooner Argus: A voyage to the Grand Banks and Greenland on a modern four masted fishing schooner". The book was a great success in North America and Europe and was later published in sixteen languages. The voyage made news on the BBC, in the main London newspapers, the "National Geographic Magazine", and the "New York Times", and the Portuguese government made Villiers a Commendador of the Portuguese Order of St. James of the Sword for outstanding services to literature in March 1951.