1998. Slocum, the first to travel the world alone. In the late nineteenth century

Welcome to the special section “GdV 5th Years.” We are introducing you, day by day, An article from the archives of the Journal of Sailing, starting in 1975. A word of advice, get in the habit of starting your day with the most exciting sailing stories-it will be like being on a boat even if you are ashore.

Slocum, the legend

Taken from the 1998 Journal of Sailing, Year 24, No. 09, Oct., pp. 94/99.

The story of Joshua Slocum, the first sailor in history to circumnavigate the globe solo in 1895, at age 51. The boat was called Spray, was 11 meters long, and the height below deck was just over a meter. It took him three years.

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He was the first man to circumnavigate the globe solo. His name was Joshua Slocum, and for 100 years his name has been written in sailing history.

In the age of space travel, cloning and virtual reality, little is left on our planet that has not been done before. If today many of us can realistically hope to realize the dream of an around-the-world cruise, something also owes something to Joshua Slocum, the first man to circumnavigate the globe on a small yacht, and a solo yacht at that. The uniqueness of his feat lies in a complex interweaving of elements: the primacy, the boat, the loneliness, but in essence everything can be traced back to the author’s extraordinary personality. In the last century, after a lifetime of work at sea, one thanked God for still being alive and disposed oneself to a well-deserved rest. In 1895, at the age of 51, Joshua Slocum, on the other hand, by love or force took another road: a 46,000-mile road that in the space of three years took him with his Spray to every corner of the world laying the foundation of a myth that stands firm against the onslaught of time.

A life at sea

Slocum – Americanization of his paternal surname Slocombe – was born in Nova Scotia on Feb. 20, 1844, to a family of English Quakers who had immigrated to the New World for several generations. Although a vocation for the sea was common among both the Slocombe and Southern (the maternal family), a different solution seemed to lie ahead for Joshua. His uncle Joel, a giant always in high spirits, was a justice of the peace, while his father John, equally imposing but rather grumpy, was a Methodist deacon. After an ill-fated attempt to farm the land, the Slocombe family traded the farm where Joshua was born for a sailor’s boot store where, according to his father’s plans, Joshua was to spend the rest of his days. Forced to leave school to work in the store, young Slocum soon discovered that store life was not for him; thus, after in an excess of anger his father destroyed a model ship he was working on, Joshua, not yet 12 years old, ran away from home to become a sailor. Embarking on a schooner in St. Mary Bay as a cook, he cut his teeth for four years learning the difficult trade of fishing: then, in 1860, his mother having died, he put his sack on a sailing ship bound for Dublin, cutting all ties with the land of his birth. From this point on, Joshua climbed all the rungs of the strict naval hierarchy of the time, demonstrating a disposition for things seaward above the ordinary. Entering Dublin, the pilot on duty asked the captain to put the best helmsman on the helm: it was Joshua’s turn, and it certainly was no mistake.

A “conventional” career

During his first two years at Long Slocum he made up for lost time in the store by preparing for the second officer’s exam in the Frankish Guards between shifts. Reading was always a great passion of his, of science as well as literature. At 18 he made his first tour as a lieutenant, spending what little savings he had on an almanac and an ebony sextant with ivory graduation. For 25 years he made a conventional career in the merchant navy, if conventional can be called a life that never saw him ashore for more than a few months, roaming all over theFar East, Australia and America. In 1869 his first command, a schooner: then brigs, ships, steamships and even a gunboat. His life at sea became an adventure book with tales of storms, shipwrecks, mutinies, but also of tropical islands, friendships and professional satisfaction. As connected to his family as to the sea, he also embarked his wife and children on his ships, including Victor who was his first officer and later captain. In those years big sailing was in decline, steel was taking the place of wood on hulls, and steam was undermining masts and spars from long-distance routes. Slocum had nothing against commanding a steamship, but when his substance allowed him to become a shipowner, he chose a small three-masted rigged ship theAquidnek.

An unfortunate accident changes everything

The captain’s dreams of tranquility ran aground on a shallow water in front of Guarakasava, where the ship broke its keel, leaving Slocum with his wife and two children in South America without a dollar in his pocket. Rather than begging for passage on some postal service he decided to build his own boat to return home. Launched on May 13, 1888, the day Brazil ‘s slaves were declared free he named her Libertade. The voyage brought him some fame, but finding good command was increasingly difficult so when his friend Eben Pierce offered him a ship to refurbish as a gift, Joshua gladly accepted. The “ship,” as Slocum himself put it, “was nothing more than a very old sloop called the Spray, which neighbors said had been built in the year “one.” It was carefully propped up in the middle of a field and covered with a tarp, some distance from the salt water.” “You demolish it, I suppose?” asked a passerby, “no, I rebuild it,” replied Slocum. The intention was to use the Spray for fishing, but after one unsuccessful season, the idea of a trip around the world entered the captain’s imagination. It is hard to argue that Slocum was not thinking from the beginning of commercial speculation about his project. He had noticed the great interest generated by the Libertade trip and probably hoped for an advertising or editorial return.

An unforgettable lesson

However, the value of his feat cannot be undermined in the slightest by such considerations. In 1898, upon his return from 3 years around the world, Slocum was hailed at home as a hero. At sea he had demonstrated extraordinary abilities, and the same abilities he demonstrated ashore by lecturing and publishing the story of his voyage in serial form in various magazines. In a clear and concise style, like a ship’s log, Joshua leaves an unforgettable lesson on how to go to sea: with humility, competence and a certain amount of humor. In 1909, at age 65, after refurbishing the Spray in the yards of the great Nat Herreshoff in Bristol, Rhode Island, in anticipation of the customary winter cruise to Grand Cayman, Slocum took to the sea never to return. The mystery of his disappearance has never been cleared up. For his son Victor, there are four hypotheses: sinking in a storm (the least likely because both Joshua and the Spray were in tip-top shape), a fire, a fall overboard(Slocum had never learned to swim), and finally a night collision, perhaps the most likely given the captain’s habit of spending very little time at the helm. Clearly his connection to the sea could not have predicted a different fate. His testament is all in one sentence, the last in his book, “Wherever my ship sailed, my days were happy.”

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The Myth of the Spray

The myth of the Spray, like that of its captain, has fascinated several generations of sea enthusiasts: but what kind of boat was this that sailed alone, for thousands of miles, without the need for any intervention on the rudder? Although it went down in history as a yacht, the Spray was for all intents and purposes a work boat. It served for oyster fishing along the Delaware coast even before Slocum was born. She measured just over 11 feet by 4.25 feet wide, had an underdeck height of 1.25 feet, a net tonnage of 9 tons and a gross tonnage of 10.5. Seen through today’s eyes, she looks almost like a bastion: the bow wheel, made of Canadian oak, was capable of cracking ice, and in fact she split a coral reef in two at the Keeling Islands without sustaining but a minor scratch. The Spray was refurbished using a system still very much in vogue for vintage boats: rebuilding every piece and replacing it with the original, so that when Slocum put it back to sea it was a completely new boat. Arms and rigging were oak bent to steam in a muffler used as a boiler. The planking was Georgia pine three and a half inches thick, and the deck was white pine, studded with beams of yellow pine. The auric sloop rig, with a New Hampshire spruce mast, was modified to a yawl in Tierra del Fuego. The new rig “improved it only in that it reduced the size of a rather large mainsail and made upwind steering a little easier.” The recovery cost $153.62 and thirteen months of work.

How to navigate the Spray

Slocum was at the helm only the bare minimum: in the two thousand seven hundred miles between Thursday Island and the Keeling Cocos, he stayed at the tiller for about an hour in twenty-three days of crossing. This extraordinary course stability was due partly to the qualities of the boat and partly to the craft of her skipper, who patiently searched for the right trim until he found a perfect balance. “With the wind at the stern I didn’t use the mizzen, I always cheated her. With the boom all well lashed out and the wind two fourths from the hip, the Spray kept itself perfectly on course. It never took me long to find how much tiller it took to keep it on course, so I would tie the wheel in that position. The mainsail carried it and the jib caulked flat in the center-it greatly increased its ability to stay on course. A strong downhaul to haul the peak was necessary, otherwise I would not be able to haul the mainsail in high winds. The amount of rudder needed to steer depended on the strength and direction of the wind. These are details that are quickly learned with practice. I will say briefly that upwind in a light wind the Spray would heave little or nothing. When the wind increased I would go on deck and turn the rudder wheel an ankle or two upwind and stop it again or, as the sailors say, put it back in its restraint and let it stay, as before.”

The round-the-world tour

Lo Spray departed Boston at noon on April 24, 1895, and, determined for an around-the-world voyage, followed the route his captain considered most favorable for a sailing ship of that size. Initially Slocum thought he would sail east instead of west, via the Suez Canal. He thus headed for the Azores, and then for Gibraltar, but at the gateway to the Mediterranean he changed his mind and took a more familiar route touching Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and reaching the Pacific via the Magellan Canal. From there with a few stops to the Marquesas, Samoa and Australia. And again at sea to South Africa, the Caribbean and finally the United States. On May 8, 1898, heading for home, he cut the route he had taken on the outward voyage and at one o’clock in the morning of June 27, 1898, he bottomed out in Newport harbor after a cruise over forty-six thousand miles long, lasting three years, two months and two days.

by Fabio Vespa

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