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Sailing Alone Around the World (1900) is a sailing memoir by Joshua Slocum about his single-handed global circumnavigation aboard the sloop Spray. Slocum was the first person to sail around the world alone. The book was an immediate success and highly influential in inspiring later travelers.
Background
Captain Slocum, a highly experienced navigator and ship-owner, rebuilt and refitted the derelict sloop Spray in a seaside pasture at Fairhaven, Massachusetts during a thirteen-month period between early 1893 and 1894.
Between April 24, 1895 and June 27, 1898, Slocum, aboard the Spray, crossed the Atlantic twice (to Gibraltar and back to South America), negotiated the Strait of Magellan, and crossed the Pacific. He also visited Australia and South Africa before crossing the Atlantic (for the third time) to reach 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; he was awaited at most of his ports of call, and gave lectures and lantern-slide shows to well-filled halls. His journal, which is masterfully self-deprecating, was first published in installments before being issued in book form in 1900. The book was lavishly illustrated.
Slocum tells his story as a sequence of adventures, understating his own part and giving credit always to the Spray. He even invents a crew-member, a supposed pilot of Columbus' Pinta, to take credit for the safety of the vessel while he sleeps.
The trip itinerary went as follows: Fairhaven, Boston, Gloucester, Nova Scotia, Azores, Gibraltar, (Morocco), Canary Islands, Cape Verde Islands, Pernambuco, Rio de Janeiro, Maldonado, Montevideo, Strait of Magellan, Cockburn Channel, Port Angosto, Juan Fernandez, Marquesas, Samoa, Fiji, Sydney, Melbourne, Tasmania, Cooktown, Christmas Island, Keeling Cocos, Rodrigues, Mauritius, Durban, Cape Town, (Transvaal), St Helena, Ascension Island, Devil's Island, Trinidad, Grenada, Newport, Fairhaven.
Highlights of the journey included perils of sailing blue water, such as fog, gales, danger of collision, loneliness, doldrums, navigation, fatigue, gear failure. Other perils of coastal navigation included pirates, attack by 'savages', embayment, shoals & coral reefs, stranding, and shipwreck. In Tierra del Fuego he was warned that he might be attacked by the Yahgan Indians in the night, so he sprinkled thumbtacks on the deck, and was awakened in the middle of the night by yelps of pain. He also took pride in the fact that the Spray sailed 2000 miles west across the Pacific without his once touching the helm.
Reviews
Reviewers received the slightly anachronistic age-of-sail adventure story enthusiastically. The book was greatly admired by Arthur Ransome. Some editions contain an introduction by Ransome, who wrote in 1947: "A school library without this book is incomplete. It should be part of the education of every English or American boy." He went so far as to declare, "Boys who do not like this book ought to be drowned at once." In his review, Sir Edwin Arnold wrote, "I do not hesitate to call it the most extraordinary book ever published."
1950s Attempt to Recreate Slocum's Voyage
In the mid-1950s a Robert Carr of Monkton, Vermont built a replica of the Spray using the ship building methods of the late 1800s and announced he was going to sail around the world recreating Slocum's voyage. While one article appeared about the replica Spray and Mr. Carr, he never attempted the voyage according to any records.
References
- Arthur Ransome on Sailing Alone Around the World
- "On the Trail of the Spray." Popular Mechanics, June 1956, pp. 78-81/242.
External links
- Sailing Alone Around the World , available at Project Gutenberg.
- Sailing Alone Around the World, available at Internet Archive. Illustrated by Thomas Forgarty and George Varian. Pan-American edition. New York Century Co., 1901.
- Sailing Alone Around the World , available at IBiblio. Illustrated.
- Sailing Alone Around the World , audiobook at Librivox
- Joshua Slocum - New World Columbus - documentary
- Joshua Slocum Society
