Sailing Alone Around the World
By Joshua Slocum
Slocum attracted considerable international interest by his journey, particularly after entering 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 was first published in instalments before being issued in book form in 1900. The book was lavishly illustrated. Slocum tells his story as a sequence of adventures, understating his part and always crediting the Spray. He invents a crew member, a supposed pilot of Columbus’ Pinta, to take credit for the vessel’s safety while he sleeps.
The trip itinerary was as follows: Fairhaven, Boston, Gloucester, Nova Scotia, Azores, Gibraltar, (Morocco), Canary Islands, Cape Verde Islands, Pernambuco, Rio de Janeiro, Maldonado, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, 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.
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Joshua Slocum
Joshua Slocum (February 20, 1844—on or shortly after November 14, 1909) was the first to sail solo worldwide.
Biography.
He was a Nova Scotian-born, naturalized American seaman, adventurer, and noted writer. In 1900, he wrote a book about his journey, Sailing Alone Around the World, which became an international best-seller. He disappeared in November 1909 while aboard his boat, the Spray. Joshua Slocum was born on February 20, 1844, in Mount Hanley, Annapolis County, Nova Scotia (officially recorded as Wilmot Station), a community on the North Mountain within sight of the Bay of Fundy.
The fifth of eleven children of John Slocomb and Sarah Jane Slocombe née Southern, Joshua descended, on his father’s side, from a Quaker known as “John the Exile,” who left the United States shortly after 1780 because of his opposition to the American War for Independence. As part of the Loyalist migration to Nova Scotia, the Slocombes were granted 500 acres (2.0 km2) of farmland in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis County.
Joshua Slocum
