Sailing Alone Around the World

Sailing Alone Around the World (1899) 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 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-deprecating, was first published in installments before being issued in book form in 1900 (variously 1899). 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 Columbus' crew-member: the pilot of the 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, Rodriguez, 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', embayed, shoals and coral seas, stranding, shipwreck.

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."

Legacy

Captain Slocum continued to sail the Spray for the remainder of his life. In 1909, he and the Spray were lost at sea under unknown circumstances on a journey from Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, to the West Indies where he usually spent his winters.

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