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| Fairhaven, Boston, Gloucester, Nova Scotia, Azores, |
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| Highlights of the journey include: | Highlights of the journey include: | ||
| Perils of sailing blue water: fog, gales, danger of collision, loneliness, doldroms, navigation, fatgue, gear failure. | |||
| Perils of costal navigation: pirates, attack by 'savages', embayed, shoals and coral seas, stranding, shipwreck. | |||
Revision as of 14:59, 7 May 2007
Sailing Alone Around the World is the title of the book in which Joshua Slocum described his epic single-handed circumnavigation of the world aboard the sloop Spray, the first voyage of its kind.
Background
Captain Slocum, a highly experienced navigator and erstwile ship-owener, rebuilt the Spray in a field at Fairhaven, New Bedford, from local timbers between 1892 and 1894.
From April 24 1895 to June 27 1898 the Spray was away from her Fairhaven mooring-post; she crossed the Atlantic twice, negotiated the Straight of Megellan and crossed the Pacific. Slocum visited Australia and South Africa before crossing the Atlantic for the third time and returning home after a journey of 46,000 miles.
The Book
There was considerable international interest in Slocum's journey, particularly once he had entered the Pacific and he was anticipated at most of his ports of call, giving lectures and lantern-slide shows to well-filled halls. His journal, which is masterfully self-deprecaiting, was first published in installments before being issued in book form in 1900 (variously 1989). The book was lavishly illustrated.
Book summary
Template:Spoiler Slocum tells his story as a sequence of adventures, understating his own part and giving credit always to the Spray. He even invents a Columbus' crew-member: the pilot of the to take credit for the safety of the vessel while he sleeps.
The Itinerary: Fairhaven, Boston, Gloucester, Nova Scotia, Azores, Gibraltar, (Morocco), Canary Islands, Cape Verde Islands, Pernambuco, Rio de Janeiro, Maldonado, Montevideo, Straight of Megellan, Cockburn Channel, Port Angosto, Juan Fernandez, Marquesas, Samoa, Fiji, Sydney, Melbourne, Tasmania, Cooktown, Christmas Island, Keeling Cocos, Rodriguez, Mauritius, Durban, Cape Town, (Transvaal), St Helena, Ascension Island, Devil's Island, Trinidad, Grenada, Newport, Fairhaven.
Highlights of the journey include:
Perils of sailing blue water: fog, gales, danger of collision, loneliness, doldroms, navigation, fatgue, gear failure.
Perils of costal navigation: pirates, attack by 'savages', embayed, shoals and coral seas, stranding, shipwreck.
Footnotes
External links
The text from the 1894 Chapman and Hall edition may be found in Project Gutenberg.
There is also an unabridged audio recording of the book on the Librivox web site.
See also Circumnavigation, Travel Literature.