(This is Slocum's own account of his remarkable adventures...)
This is Slocum's own account of his remarkable adventures during the historic voyage. Slocum writes in a fast-paced, exhilarating style. His almost matter-of-fact descriptions of hazardous episodes and his colorful, often witty observations make this book perhaps the most delightful and absorbing adventure tale in history. Across the Atlantic he sailed, but chased by Moorish pirates off Gibraltar, he decided to circle Cape Horn instead and go around the world the other way! He tells of perils on stormy seas and of numerous harrowing events.
Joshua Slocum was an American writer and navigator. He was the first person to sail single-handed around the world.
Background
Joshua Slocum was born on February 20, 1844, Mount Hanley, Nova Scotia. He was the fifth of eleven children of John, a farmer, and a bootmaker, and Sarah Jane Slocombe. After a while, Joshua changed his last name from Slocombe to Slocum, and in 1869 he became a United States citizen.
Education
Joshua Slocum attended Mount Hanley School (now the Mount Hanley Schoolhouse Museum).
Joshua Slocum was a sailor who spent his life from the age of ten at sea. From the time of his first command in 1869, Slocum navigated numerous ships carrying cargo to anywhere from Australia to Brazil. He was a captain of eight vessels, such as Washington, Constitution, Benjamin Aymar, Amethyst, Pato, Northern Light 2, Aquidneck, and Liberdade.
Joshua Slocum's first command in 1869 was the bark Washington, which he took across the Pacific from San Francisco to Australia and then onwards to Alaska. In remote Alaska, Washington ended up dragging her anchor during a gale, ran ashore, and was a total loss. However, Slocum managed to save the cargo and crew, bringing them back safely in the ship's open boats.
The shipping company was impressed by this feat of leadership and seamanship and gave Joshua Slocum command of the Constitution, which he sailed to Honolulu and later Mexico. After the Constitution, he commanded the Benjamin Aymar in the South Seas. However, when the owner sold the vessel, Slocum became stranded in the Philippines. There he organized native workers to build a 150-ton steamship, and in partial payment for the work was given the 90-ton schooner, the Pato, in 1874.
Reviving his fortunes, Joshua Slocum crossed the North Pacific to British Columbia. Crossing to Hawaii, he sold the Pato and bought the Amethyst in 1878, which he sold in Hong Kong for an interest in the full-rigged ship Northern Light 2. It was his best command and was considered the finest American sailing vessel afloat at the time.
However, in 1883 Joshua Slocum sold his interest and bought the bark Aquidneck in which he sailed to Buenos Aires. In 1887, his ship ran aground and broke up in Brazil. Unwilling to return to the United States as a castaway and a pauper, he used native help and the wreckage of his ship to build a 35-foot junk-rigged, which he named Liberdade. The next year he sailed this small, homemade craft across 5,500 miles of open ocean to South Carolina. Slocum wrote his first book, Voyage of the Liberdade, about the trip.
After returning from Brazil, Joshua Slocum took the job of delivering the steam-powered, ironclad, torpedo boat Destroyer, from New York to Brazil, to aid in putting down a revolution. The ship did not prove specifically seaworthy, and the trip became an ongoing battle to keep her from foundering in the rough seas encountered. Adding insult, the Brazilian government took delivery of the boat and never paid him for his services.
When the era of sailing ships has completed, Joshua Slocum took a resolute decision to make a circumnavigation alone. Slocum remade his average sloop in the strong yacht Spray, length of 11 meters, and a width of 4 meters. It took him a year. On the 24 of April 1895, Joshua Slocum, at age 51, on his yacht came from Boston. On the road, he took the lantern, which could light the way at night, fishing tackle, iron stove for heating, and a cooking cabin. It took three and a half years to go 74,000 miles, circumnavigating the globe in June 1898 in the dock at Newport.
Two years later, Joshua Slocum published a book entitled Circumnavigation alone in which he described his adventures. Slocum has been gaining popularity and recognition, mainly due to his book. Particularly interesting, he describes the mental state of the person who turned on one with the ocean. Fearing that the long silence may cause loss of speech and lead to a mental disorder, Slocum talked a lot, gave himself orders, reported on their performance, and sang songs.
Joshua Slocum died about in 1909 after attempting to sail down the Amazon to the sea and back to New England. In November 1909, Slocum sailed from the island of Martha's Vineyard, headed for South America, and went missing. According to one of the assumptions, he could die on the way due to their advanced age (at the time he was 65 years old), and an uncontrolled ship sank. Also, it could be an accident, and the yacht could face big ships, but for a fact, nobody knows. In 1924, Slocum was declared formally dead.
Quotations:
"If the Spray discovered no continents on her voyage, it may be that there were no more continents to be discovered. She did not seek new worlds or sail to pow-wow about the dangers of the sea."
"I had already found that it was not good to be alone, and so made companionship with what there was around me, sometimes with the universe and sometimes with my own insignificant self, but my books were always my friends, let fail all else."
"The officers who are over-sure, and "know it all like a book," are the ones, I have observed, who wreck the most ships and lose the most lives."
Personality
Joshua Slocum was a skilled mariner, but he couldn't swim. Moreover, he believed that learning to swim is a futile effort.
Connections
Joshua Slocum married Virginia Albertina Walker on January 31, 1871. They had seven children, but only four children, sons Victor, Benjamin Aymar, James Garfield, and daughter, Jessie, survived to adulthood. In 1884 Virginia Albertina Walker died, and after two years, Slocum remarried. His second wife was Henrietta Miller Elliott.