Sailing Alone Around The World

On April 1895, an old sea captain, set sail on a voyage that some said could not be done. Three years and more than forty-six thousand miles later, Joshua Slocum sailed into his homeport of Fairhaven Massachusetts. Captain Slocum in his small boat became the first person to sail alone around the world.

It was the beginning of the age of steam and sailing ships were losing out to new, faster steam ships. Joshua Slocum after spending his whole life at sea as a sail captain found he could no longer find work. On a winter day of 1892, a whaling captain friend offered Slocum a ship and all the assistance needed to make her seaworthy. The "ship" turned out to be an old sloop that a few neighbors claimed had been built in the year one, called the "Spray". This is Slocum's own account of his remarkable adventures during the historic voyage.

Sailing Alone Around The World is a story for everyone with action and adventure, written in a humorous and matter of fact way that makes the reader feel as though nothing could surprise Slocum. The adventure begins in chapter one, Slocum shows us how even a seasoned sailor can sometimes be afraid, when doing the simple task of docking his boat.

... It was my first experience of coming into port alone, with a craft of any size, and in among shipping. Old fishermen ran down to the wharf for which the Spray was heading, apparently intent on braining herself there. I hardly know how the calamity was adverted, but with my heart in my mouth, almost, I let go of the wheel, stepped quickly forward, and downed the jib. The sloop naturally rounded in the wind, and just ranging ahead, laid her cheek against a mooring-pile at the windward corner of the wharf, so quietly, after all, that she would not have broken an egg....

After a stop in Nova Scotia and with the whole world in front of him, Captain Slocum left North America behind and headed his craft toward Europe. Finding his eastward passage through the Mediterranean blocked by pirates Slocum changes course to the southwest to round Cape Horn. It is in the Straits of Magellan that we see an example of Slocum's humorous style of writing.

... As drowsiness came on I sprinkled the deck with tacks, and then turned in. ... Now it is well known that one cannot step on a tack without saying something about it. A pretty good Christian will whistle when he steps on the "commercial end" of a carpet-tack; a savage will howl and claw the air, and that was just what happened that night about twelve o'clock...

Slocum's adventure continues as he journeys around the world; submerged by a great wave off the Patagonia coast; the "rain of blood" in Australia; dodging coral reefs in the south seas. In Samoa, Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson, widow of the great author, visited Slocum. She presented him with a gift of sailing directories that had belonged to the author himself. On to South Africa where he met with Stanley of "Stanley and Livingstone" fame. Slocum also met with "Oom Paul" Kruger, President of the Transvaal republic. One of his officials insulted Kruger when he described Slocum’s voyage as "around the world," since his religious beliefs convinced him that the world is flat.

This is a classic book of the sea and it has been widely read ever since it was first published in 1900. It has been reprinted many time and has been required reading in many schools. With the success of the voyage Slocum started a revolution in the pleasure sailing industry. Hundreds of people have gone on too follow Slocum’s journey around the world, as I plan to do someday. This story, written by a normal person, conveys the message, that you do not have to be someone special to have an adventure.


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Created: Tuesday, March 04, 1997 Updated: Tuesday, March 04, 1997