Sailing Alone around the World

Captain Joshua Slocum, born in Nova Scotia in 1844 and who later became an American citizen, had been lured by the sea his entire life. At 14 he ran away to work as a cook on a fishing schooner and two years later when his mother died he left home for good, enlisting as an ordinary seaman on a British merchant ship bound for Ireland. Then from Britain he shipped again sailing for China, the Philippines, and Singapore, and by 18 he had been awarded the certificate of second mate.

Around 1870 he was given command of a merchant ship that he sailed out of San Francisco to Japan, China, the Spice Islands, and Sydney Australia, where he met an American woman, Virginia Albertina Walker, who he married. The two were well matched for ship life and together for the next 13 years sailed the world, with Virginia giving birth to and schooling their seven children (only four survived) on the various ships that Slocum commanded. 

But this ideal marriage to the sea and a wife did not last and Virginia took ill and died. Two years later Slocum married his cousin Henrietta aka Hetty and with a crew of 10, including two of Slocum's sons, the newlyweds set out for South America. The voyage was conflicted with problems -- a cholera outbreak, a smallpox epidemic, and a mutinous crew before finally running aground near Paranagua, Brazil. Stranded, Slocum salvaged what he could from the wreck and constructed the Liberdade, a 35-foot long "canoe" that he sailed for 5,500 miles home, the adventure that he later published in his Voyages of the Liberdade, 1890. Hetty was completely disenchanted with ship life, and on their honeymoon voyage at that, and the forever-after land-loving Hetty and old sea-wolf Slocum stayed married but pretty much only in name.

With the advent of steamships, sailing the seas became steaming the seas, yet old-school Slocum refused to adjust. In 1892 Slocum was offered the rotting shell of a 37-foot long oyster boat, the Spray, which Slocum rebuilt from the keel up. And with this oyster boat Slocum determined to circumnavigate the earth alone, a feat emphatically expressed as impossible.

Many books by Joshua Slocum titled Sailing Alone around the World. I read the Barnes and Noble 2005 edition. It came with a timeline of Slocum's life juxtaposed with world events affecting him (e.g. the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898 affecting his solitary return) and a glossary of sea terms.

In April 1895 Slocum sets sail aboard the Spray. He had almost no money and lacked critical navigational equipment. The last leg of his journey he even lacked a map as the goat that had kindly been given him as a companion chewed through his ropes, equipment and seemed to have a palette partial for maps. On June 27 Slocum sails into Newport, Rhode Island, completing the world's first solo circumnavigation, a passage of 46,000 miles. 

To earn money for his journey, along the way at various ports he would entertain people in halls and informal places with his stories, charging them a small fee. At some of these ports he would stay but a few days or even hours while at others he would stay for extended periods of time, like at the southern tip of Africa where he was given a free rail pass and just wandered, enjoying the sites, for three months. On his return to the States, he achieved great fame and his adventures printed first as a serial and later as a book, Sailing Alone around the World, were well received. With the proceeds he was able to purchase a house on the Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. 

Yet, the sea still called and restless Slocum sailed off to the Caribbean for the winter of 1905, returning with rare Caribbean orchids for President Theodore Roosevelt. On November 14, 1909, the aging Slocum in the aging Spray set sail for South America, and the story of him and his Spray, which to this day is one of the most replicated boats due to its reliable and well-balanced construction, disappeared. 

Sailing Alone around the World (Barnes and Nobles 2005), p 230-231