Joshua Slocum (February 20, 1844-on or shortly after November 14, 1909) was the first person to sail single-handedly around the world.
He was a Nova Scotian-born, naturalized American seaman and adventurer, and a 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 Slocombe 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. Part of the Loyalist migration to Nova Scotia, the Slocombes were granted 2.0 km2 of farmland in Nova Scotia's Annapolis County.
He made several attempts to run away from home, finally succeeding, at age fourteen, by hiring on as a cabin boy and cook on a fishing schooner, but he soon returned home.
In 1860, after the birth of the eleventh Slocombe (Joshua changed the spelling of his last name later in his life) child and the subsequent death of his kindly mother, Joshua, then sixteen, left home for good. He and a friend signed on at Halifax as ordinary seamen on a merchant ship bound for Dublin, Ireland.
From Dublin, he crossed to Liverpool to become an ordinary seaman on the British merchant ship Tangier (also recorded as Tanjore), bound for China. During two years as a seaman, he rounded Cape Horn twice, landed at Batavia (now Jakarta) in the Dutch East Indies, and visited the Maluku Islands, Manila, Hong Kong, Saigon, Singapore, and San Francisco. While at sea, he studied for the Board of Trade examination, and, at the age of eighteen, he received his certificate as a fully qualified Second Mate. Slocum quickly rose through the ranks to become a Chief Mate on British ships transporting coal and grain between the British Isles and San Francisco.
More information: The Guardian
In 1865, he settled in San Francisco, became an American citizen, and, after a period of salmon fishing and fur trading in the Oregon Territory of the northwest, he returned to the sea to pilot a schooner in the coastal trade between San Francisco and Seattle. His first blue-water command, in 1869, was the barque Washington, which he took across the Pacific, from San Francisco to Australia, and home via Alaska.
He sailed for thirteen years out of the port of San Francisco, transporting mixed cargo to China, Australia, the Spice Islands, and Japan. Between 1869 and 1889, he was the master of eight vessels, the first four of which (the Washington, the Constitution, the Benjamin Aymar and the Amethyst) he commanded in the employ of others. Later, there would be four others that he himself owned, in whole or in part.
While in the Philippines, in 1874, under a commission from a British architect, Slocum organized native workers to build a 150-ton steamer in the shipyard at Subic Bay. In partial payment for the work, he was given the ninety-ton schooner, Pato, the first ship he could call his own.
In 1884, Slocum's wife Virginia became ill aboard the Aquidneck in Buenos Aires and died.
After sailing
to Massachusetts, Slocum left his three youngest children, Benjamin
Aymar, Jessie, and Garfield in the care of his sisters; his oldest son
Victor continued as his first mate.
After being stranded in Brazil with his wife and sons Garfield and Victor, he started building a boat that could sail them home. He used local materials, salvaged materials from the Aquidneck and worked with local workers. The boat was launched on May 13, 1888, the very day slavery was abolished in Brazil, and therefore the ship was given the name Liberdade, the Portuguese word for freedom.
In the northern winter of 1893/94, Slocum undertook what he described as, at that time, being the hardest voyage that I have ever made, without any exception at all. It involved delivering the steam-powered torpedo boat Destroyer from the east coast of the United States to Brazil.
In Fairhaven, Massachusetts, he rebuilt the 11.20 m gaff rigged sloop oyster boat named Spray.
On April 24, 1895, he set sail from Boston, Massachusetts. In his famous book, Sailing Alone Around the World, now considered a classic of travel literature.
After an extended visit to his boyhood home at Brier Island and visiting old haunts on the coast of Nova Scotia, Slocum departed North America at Sambro Island Lighthouse near Halifax, Nova Scotia on July 3, 1895.
More than three years later, on June 27, 1898, he returned to Newport, Rhode Island, having circumnavigated the world, a distance of more than 74,000 km.
Slocum's return went almost unnoticed. The Spanish-American War, which had begun two months earlier, dominated the headlines. After the end of major hostilities, many American newspapers published articles describing Slocum's amazing adventure.
More information: The New York Times
In 1899, he published his account of the epic voyage in Sailing Alone Around the World, first serialized in The Century Magazine and then in several book-length editions. Reviewers received the slightly anachronistic age-of-sail adventure story enthusiastically.
Slocum's book deal was an integral part of his journey: his publisher had provided Slocum with an extensive on-board library, and Slocum wrote several letters to his editor from distant points around the globe.
Slocum's Sailing Alone Around the World won him widespread fame in the English-speaking world. He was one of eight invited speakers at a dinner in honour of Mark Twain in December 1900.
Slocum hauled the Spray up the Erie Canal to Buffalo, New York for the Pan-American Exposition in the summer of 1901, and he was well compensated for participating in the fair.
In 1901, Slocum's book revenues and income from public lectures provided him enough financial security to purchase a small farm in West Tisbury, on the island of Martha's Vineyard, in Massachusetts.
Slocum and the Spray visited Sagamore Hill, the estate of US President Theodore Roosevelt on the north shore of Long Island, New York. Roosevelt and his family were interested in the tales of Slocum's solo circumnavigation.
On November 14, 1909, Slocum set sail in the Spray from Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts for the West Indies on one of his usual winter voyages. He had also expressed interest in starting his next adventure, exploring the Orinoco, Rio Negro and Amazon Rivers.
Slocum was never heard from again. In July 1910, his wife informed the newspapers that she believed he was lost at sea.
In 1924, Joshua Slocum was declared legally dead.
Slocum was inducted into the National Sailing Hall of Fame in 2011.
Download Voyage Of The Liberdade by Joshua Slocum
Download Sailing Alone Around The World by Joshua Slocum
it may be that there were no more continents to be discovered.
She did not seek new worlds,
or sail to pow-wow about the dangers of the sea.
Joshua Slocum
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