Joshua Slocum

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Joshua Slocum

Joshua Slocum
Born 1844-02-20
Mount Hanley
Died November 14, 1909 (aged 65)
Cause of death Died at sea (unknown)
Nationality Canadian
Known for First solo circumnavigation of the world


Joshua Slocum (February 20, 1844 – on or shortly after 14 November 1909) was a Canadian-American seaman and adventurer, a noted writer, and the first man to sail single-handedly around the world. In 1900 he told the story of this in Sailing Alone Around the World. He disappeared in November 1909 while aboard his boat, the Spray, originally sloop-rigged, but re-rigged as a yawl in the midst of his circumnavigation, while Slocum was traversing the Strait of Magellan.

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[edit] Nova Scotian childhood

Joshua Slocum was born on 20 February 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 Slocum and Sarah Jane (Southern) Slocum, Joshua descended, on his father's side, from a Quaker 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 Slocums were granted five hundred acres of farmland in Nova Scotia's Annapolis County.

Slocum's childhood school, now the Mount Hanley Schoolhouse Museum.
Slocum's childhood school, now the Mount Hanley Schoolhouse Museum.

Joshua Slocum was born in the family's farm house in Mount Hanley and learned to read and write at the nearby Mount Hanley School. His earliest ventures on the water were made on coastal schooners operating out of the small ports such as Port George and Cottage Cove near Mount Hanley along the Bay of Fundy. When Joshua was eight years old, the Slocum family moved from Mount Hanley to Brier Island in Digby County, at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy. Slocum's maternal grandfather was the keeper of the lighthouse at Southwest Point there. His father, a stern man and strict disciplinarian, took up making leather boots for the local fishermen, and Joshua helped in the shop. However, the boy, quite naturally, found the scent of salt air much more alluring than the smell of shoe leather. He yearned for a life of adventure at sea, away from his demanding father and his increasingly chaotic life at home among so many brothers and sisters.

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 Slocum 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.

[edit] Early life at sea

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 Moluccas, 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.

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 coastwise 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, —— to China, Australia, the Spice Islands, and to Japan —— transporting mixed cargoes. 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.

Shortly before Christmas 1870, Slocum and the Washington put in at Sydney, Australia. There, in about a month's time, he met, courted, and married a young woman named Virginia Albertina Walker. Their marriage took place on 31 January 1871. Miss Walker, quite coincidentally, was an American whose New York family had migrated west to California at the time of the 1849 gold rush and eventually continued on, by ship, to settle in Australia. She sailed with Slocum, and, over the next thirteen years, bore him seven children at sea, four of whom, sons Victor, Benjamin Aymar, and Garfield, and daughter Jessie, survived to adulthood.

In Alaska, the Washington was wrecked when she dragged her anchor during a gale, ran ashore, and broke up. Slocum, however, at considerable risk to himself, managed to save his wife, the crew, and much of the cargo, bringing all back to port safely in the ship's open boats. The owners of the shipping company that had employed Slocum were impressed by this feat of ingenuity and leadership, so they gave him the command of the Constitution which he sailed to Hawaii and the west coast of Mexico.

His next command was the Benjamin Aymar, a merchant vessel in the South Seas trade. However, the owner, strapped for cash, sold the vessel out from under Slocum, and he and Virginia found themselves stranded in the Philippines without a ship. There, 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.

Ownership of the Pato afforded Slocum the kind of freedom and autonomy he had never experienced before. Hiring a crew, he contracted to deliver a cargo to Vancouver in British Columbia. Thereafter, he used the Pato as a general freight carrier along the west coast of North America and in voyages back and forth between San Francisco and Hawaii. During this period, Slocum also fulfilled a long-held ambition to become a writer; he became a temporary correspondent for the San Francisco Bee.

[edit] The ship's master

The Spray
The Spray

Slocum spent most of his life at sea. When shipwrecked with his 140 foot 3 masted barque Aquidneck on his way to Montevideo in 1887, he sold the wreckage, paid off his crew and built the Liberdade, an unusual 35-foot junk-rigged boat which he described as a cross between a "Chinese sampan" and a "Cape Ann Dorie," in which he and his family sailed home to Washington, DC. In 1894 he published Voyage of the Liberdade[1] describing this adventure.

[edit] First solo circumnavigation

In Fairhaven, Massachusetts, he rebuilt the 36′ 9″ (11.2 metre) sloop-rigged fishing boat named Spray (later re-rigged as a yawl after problems he encountered in the Strait of Magellan).

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, he described his departure in the following manner:

"I had resolved on a voyage around the world, and as the wind on the morning of April 24, 1895 was fair, at noon I weighed anchor, set sail, and filled away from Boston, where the Spray had been moored snugly all winter. The twelve o'clock whistles were blowing just as the sloop shot ahead under full sail. A short board was made up the harbor on the port tack, then coming about she stood to seaward, with her boom well off to port, and swung past the ferries with lively heels. A photographer on the outer pier of East Boston got a picture of her as she swept by, her flag at the peak throwing her folds clear. A thrilling pulse beat high in me. My step was light on deck in the crisp air. I felt there could be no turning back, and that I was engaging in an adventure the meaning of which I thoroughly understood."

After an extended visit to his boyhood home at Brier Island and visiting old haunts on the coast of Nova Scotia, Slocum took his departure from North America at Sambro Island Lighthouse near Halifax, Nova Scotia on July 3, 1895.

Slocum tells us that he navigated without a chronometer. Instead he navigated by the traditional method of dead reckoning for longitude, which required only a cheap tin clock for approximate time, and Noon Sun sights for latitude. On one long passage in the Pacific, Slocum also famously shot a lunar distance observation, decades after these observations had ceased to be commonly employed, which allowed him to check his longitude independently. But Slocum's primary method for finding longitude was dead reckoning. He only took one lunar observation during the entire circum-navigation.

Slocum normally sailed Spray without touching the helm. Due to the length of the sail plan relative to the hull, and the long keel, Spray was inherently capable of self-steering (unlike faster modern craft), being able to be balanced stably on any course relative to the wind by adjusting or reefing the sails and by 'lashing' the helm. He tells us that he only helmed Spray when manoeuvering or in an emergency, and was proud of the fact that he sailed 2000 miles west across the Pacific without once touching the helm. (ref needed).

More than three years later, on June 27, 1898, he returned to Newport, Rhode Island, having circumnavigated the world, a distance of more than 46,000 miles (74,000 km). Slocum's return went almost un-noticed. The Spanish-American War which had begun two months earlier dominated the headlines. After the end of major hostilities, many major American newspapers published articles describing Slocum's amazing adventure.

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 editions. It is a wonderful adventure story from the Age of Sail and a book about which Arthur Ransome opined, "Boys who do not like this book ought to be drowned at once."[2] In his review, Sir Edwin Arnold wrote, "I do not hesitate to call it the most extraordinary book ever published." Slocum's book deal had been proposed in advance before his departure, and his publisher had provided Slocum with an extensive on-board library. Slocum wrote several letters to his editor from distant points around the globe.

Slocum's Sailing Alone won him wide fame in the English-speaking world. He was one of eight invited speakers at a dinner in honor 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. Slocum was well-compensated for his participation in the fair.

[edit] Later life

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 in 1901, but after a year and a half, he found he could not adapt to a settled life. Soon Slocum was sailing Spray from port to port in the northeastern US during summer and the West Indies in winter, lecturing and selling books wherever he could. Slocum spent little time with his wife on the Vineyard and preferred life aboard the Spray, usually wintering in the Caribbean. Slocum's mental health appeared to deteriorate in later years. Visiting Riverton, New Jersey in May, 1906, Slocum was charged with raping a 12-year-old girl. After further investigation and questioning, it became apparent that the crime was indecent exposure, but Slocum claimed to have no memory of any wrong-doing and that, if anything had happened, it must have occurred during one of his mental lapses. Slocum spent 42 days in jail awaiting trial. At his trial he plead "no contest" and was released for time served. The judge at his trial told him, "upon request of the family I can deal leniently with you."[3]

A few weeks after his conviction in New Jersey, 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. The President's young son, Archie, along with a guardian, spent the next few days sailing with Slocum up to Newport aboard the Spray which by then was a decrepit, weather-worn vessel. Slocum again met with President Roosevelt in May of 1907 (sources disagree on the date), this time at the White House in Washington. Supposedly, Roosevelt said to him, "Captain, our adventures have been a little different." And Slocum answered, "That is true, Mr. President, but I see you got here first."[3]

By 1909, Slocum's funds were running low; book revenues had tailed off. He was prepared to sell his farm on Martha's Vineyard and began to make plans for a new adventure in South America with hopes for another book deal.[3]

[edit] Disappearance

In November 1909 Slocum set sail for the West Indies again for the winter. There were also reports that he was ready to start his next adventure sailing up the Orinoco River. Slocum was never heard from again, and in July, 1910 his wife informed the newspapers that she believed he was lost at sea. At the time, most who knew Slocum believed that Spray had been run down by a steamer or struck by a whale, the Spray being too sound a craft and Slocum too experienced a mariner for any other cause to be considered likely. Years later, an analysis by Howard I. Chapelle, curator of maritime history at the Smithsonian Institution and a noted expert on small sailing craft, demonstrated that the Spray was stable under many circumstances but could easily capsize if heeled beyond a relatively shallow angle. He felt that Slocum was merely lucky that his unstable vessel had not killed him earlier. In 1924 Joshua Slocum was declared legally dead.

[edit] A continuing inspiration

Original cover 1900.
Original cover 1900.

Slocum's voyages and his book proved a many inspiration for mariners, writers and travellers. The name Spray has become a popular choice for cruising yachts since the publication of Slocum's account of his circumnavigation, in fond memory of his achievements. One notable example was the long-distance French sailor Bernard Moitessier who christened his 39-foot ketch-rigged boat Joshua in honor of Slocum. It was this boat that Moitessier sailed from Tahiti to France, passing through six days and nights of deadly storms near Cape Horn. He sailed Joshua in the 1968 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race around the world, making great time, only to drop out near the end and sail on to Tahiti. Over the years, many versions of Spray have been built from the plans in Slocum's book, more or less reconstructing the sloop with various degrees of success. This includes the Thane, based in Victoria in British Columbia, which is slightly larger than Spray herself.

Ferries named in his honour (Joshua Slocum and Spray) served the two Digby Neck runs between 1973 and 2004.[4] The Joshua Slocum was featured in the film version of Dolores Claiborne.[5]

An underwater glider, a type of autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), designed by the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, was named after Slocum's ship Spray. It became the first AUV to cross the Gulf Stream, operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.[6]

In addition to several biographies about Slocum, his life was given novelistic treatment by author Cameron Royce Jess in the 2004 book Soul Voyage. In 2001, Billy Collins published a collection of his poetry, entitled Sailing Alone Around the Room a clear homage to Joshua Slocum.

A monument to Slocum exists in Brier Island, Nova Scotia not far from his family's boot shop which still stands. Slocum is commemorated in museum exhibits at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts, the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia and the Mount Hanley Schoolhouse Museum at his birthplace.

The noted sculptor, Daniel Chester French, created a memorial to Joshua Slocum that stands in Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. (Because Slocum was lost at sea, his remains are not at Forest Hills.)

The Slocum River in Dartmouth, Massachusetts was named for him.

For several years, Dennis Rodman owned a restaurant and nightclub called Josh Slocum's on the water in Newport Beach, California.

[edit] See also

Nautical Portal

[edit] References

  1. ^ Slocum, Captain Joshua. Voyage of the Liberdade. New York: Dover Publications, 1998.
  2. ^ http://www.arthur-ransome.org/ar/literary/ardocs.htm
  3. ^ a b c Teller, Walter Magnes (1971). Joshua Slocum. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press. ISBN 0-8135-0700-6. 
  4. ^ http://www.valleyweb.com/westport/tsdbrier.html
  5. ^ Newscotland1398.net
  6. ^ Spray AUV. UC San Diego.

[edit] External links