The Adventures of the Circumnavigators in their small Sailing Boats E-Book

David Loscalzo

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 2115

Beschreibung

Within a few miles of my home in suburban Portland, Oregon, there are perhaps two dozen small ships all sailing vessels of thirty to forty feet in length in various stages of construction, with the ultimate purpose of carrying their owners and builders on world voyages. The shipyards are old barns, backyards, temporary sheds of wood framing and plastic sheeting. Even at the small moorage on Multnomah Channel where I keep my sloop, there are four such vessels being built in a corner of the parking lot, and there is a waiting list for the space. I am sure that similar activity can be found at every seaport of every maritime country in the Free World where the political, social, and economic status is sophisticated enough to stimulate the natural human urge to escape to a more simple life, or to indulge one's curiosity and restlessness by travel to faraway places. And for every ship abuilding there are perhaps a thousand or more secret dreamers (many of whom live hundreds of miles from the nearest salt water) who spend their leisure hours marking ads in the classified sections of metropolitan newspapers and boating periodicals, or prowling the marinas, yacht clubs, and small boat harbors searching for a ship in which to make their escape at a price within their dreams. Most of them, of course, will never get beyond the ad-marking stage; or if they do, most of their ardor will have been dissipated by the actual physical activity and the reality of inquiry. There is nothing new or unusual about this. Civilized man has endeavoured to escape to sea at least since the time of the Minoans, circa 1500 B.C. Daydreams like this are what help many over the small daily crises, the frustrations of the job, and that state of mental rebellion that Henry David Thoreau was trying to define when he wrote that most men lead lives of quiet desperation. Some of these owners, builders, and searchers have announced their intentions in advance, and are already savoring the heady stimulation of publicity and small notoriety which they hope to earn later. Others hold it as a secret ambition and will not talk about it, or if they do, they are vague about future ports of call and even departure dates. A few are building only what they refer to as "retirement boats," for which they have no conscious plans other than living aboard when the ship is finished and launched. These are the cagey ones. This book is about the adventures of some of these circumnavigators.

Leseprobe

Table Of Contents

The Adventures of the Circumnavigators in their small Sailing Boats

Introduction

The most famous solo circumnavigation

The venturesome viking

Three on a dream ship

Amaryllis shows the flag

Hi Jinks on the Speejacks

The farmer who went to sea

The Irish rebel

The magnificent shizoid

The Conneticut Tahitian

The young and innocent Rotarian

The spray comes back to life

Hurricane leaves a ribald wake

Tall ship and high adventure

The Yankees go around and around

The lonley one in the Roaring Forties

For Auld Lang Syne

Stornoway and the Good Samaritan

The Proper Wanderers

Because it was there

The saga of the White Seal

Awahnee means peace

Thunder out of Brittany

The Chef's Special

Four winds and a bachelor

The logical sea tramp

Only super heroes need apply

The over-the-hill sailor

On the wings of a moth

The Globe Girdling Gourmet

Tortoise among the hares

British Steel faces the test

Opogees Orbit

Around the world on the instalment plan

The schoolboy circumnavigator

The inpromptu circumnavigation

The lone pole

The same girl in every port

A whale's tale and others

Copyright

The Adventures of the Circumnavigators in their small Sailing Boats

If a person walks completely around either pole, they cross all meridians on the surface of earth separating two halves of comparable area. A basic definition of a global circumnavigation would be a route which covers roughly a great circle and in particular one which passes through at least one pair of points antipodal to each other.

Introduction

Within a few miles of my home in suburban Portland, Oregon, there are perhaps two dozen small ships all sailing vessels of thirty to forty feet in length in various stages of construction, with the ultimate purpose of carrying their owners and builders on world voyages. The shipyards are old barns, backyards, temporary sheds of wood framing and plastic sheeting. Even at the small moorage on Multnomah Channel where I keep my sloop, there are four such vessels being built in a corner of the parking lot, and there is a waiting list for the space. I am sure that similar activity can be found at every seaport of every maritime country in the Free World where the political, social, and economic status is sophisticated enough to stimulate the natural human urge to escape to a more simple life, or to indulge one's curiosity and restlessness by travel to faraway places. And for every ship building there are perhaps a thousand or more secret dreamers (many of whom live hundreds of miles from the nearest salt water) who spend their leisure hours marking ads in the classified sections of metropolitan newspapers and boating periodicals, or prowling the marinas, yacht clubs, and small boat harbours searching for a ship in which to make their escape at a price within their dreams. Most of them, of course, will never get beyond the ad-marking stage; or if they do, most of their ardour will have been dissipated by the actual physical activity and the reality of inquiry. There is nothing new or unusual about this. Civilized man has endeavoured to escape to sea at least since the time of the Minoans, circa 1500 B. C. Daydreams like this are what help many over the small daily crises, the frustrations of the job, and that state of mental rebellion that Henry David Thoreau was trying to define when he wrote that most men lead lives of quiet desperation. Some of these owners, builders, and searchers have announced their intentions in advance, and are already savouring the heady stimulation of publicity and small notoriety which they hope to earn later. Others hold it as a secret ambition and will not talk about it, or if they do, they are vague about future ports of call and even departure dates. A few are building only what they refer to as "retirement boats," for which they have no conscious plans other than living aboard when the ship is finished and launched. These are the cagey ones. They not only have the dream, but they have the means, the time, and the personal discipline it takes to accomplish it. One has a feeling that they are waiting to see what the situation looks like when they are ready for sea, and chances are pretty good that one will learn at some future date that they are on their way around the world after all. Among these dreamers is a bachelor and college professor who is completing his 32-foot Atkins ketch at precisely the same rate as his academic career draws to a close. When his boat is finished and his retirement checks are coming in regularly, he plans to sail the one hundred miles down the Willamette River of Oregon to the Columbia, and then down the ninety miles or so to the Pacific Ocean. "When I get there," he told me, "then I will decide whether to turn right or left." Like many other unfortunates, I am incited by and envious of all these dreams and ships building, for I lost my chance years ago. I, too, once planned a solo circumnavigation, only to become one of the thousands who were thwarted by fate and circumstances. Born and raised on the bleak prairies of North Dakota, in almost the exact center of the North American continent and as far as you can get from any ocean, the sea fascinated me since my earliest remembrance. Perhaps it was some latent manifestation of my Viking ancestry; more likely it was merely the result of my early reading of Robert Louis Stevenson or Herman Melville or John Masefield. I had never even set eyes on an ocean until I was nineteen years old. But my first conscious urge to build my own ship and travel to faraway places (although I had built row boats and canoes when I was not more than ten years old for use on the local Mouse River) was fired by John Hanna's wonderful little Tahiti ketch, hundreds of which have been built by dreamers like me, and dozens of which have made long voyages, even around the world. Created on his drawing board as Orca at Dunedin, Florida, in about 1923, this famous 30-footdouble-ender was released to an eager audience through a series of articles in the old Modern Mechanics that were subsequently collected for reprint in the 1935 edition of How To Build 20 Boats. Today, almost forty years later, I still get the same thrill and feel the same yearnings as I did when I first devoured Hanna's own explanation: The Tahiti design has been built, tested, put up against real deep water and dirty weather, and proved good. Not one boat, but five of them. Not by one man, but by many skilled sailors and competent judges. Not in just one place of favourable conditions, but in the Atlantic, Gulf, Chesapeake Bay, the Great Lakes, and the North Sea, off England's coast. Not in one pleasant summer, but in all weather as it comes for six years. I put the first one through her paces myself, sometimes with one man, sometimes handling her alone. Everything the owners of others have reported to me has simply confirmed my own observations, or gone farther. he is dry; that means she stays on top of the waves, and does not tend to stick her nose under them. She is easy in her motion; she is remarkably easy to handle, and obedient to her helm; the rig, known as the ketch rig, is extraordinarily well balanced, not only under full sail, which all boats are, but under any combination of sails, which few boats are; and she has that much-desired but seldom-attained merit of a good cruiser, the ability to sail herself and hold her course for hours with the tiller lashed. She has laughed at the worst storm she has ever met wind estimated at 75 to 90 miles an hour by the Boston papers. In short, whatever it takes to get to Tahiti and back, this ship has. What daydreamer, be he a young kid on a Midwest farm, or a middle-aged Walter Mitty on New York's Madison Avenue, could resist that kind of romance! Moreover, this was one enthusiastic project that withstood a half-century of actual experience, and there are probably more people building Tahiti types today than ever before proving the wisdom and soundness of the late John Hanna's siren call. (Incidentally, I still have the original articles and plans for Tahiti, almost disintegrated by time and handling.) I was only sixteen and chasing under the social and economic restraints of a small town in mid-America when exposed to the Modern Mechanics articles. I spent hours reading and rereading them, and teaching myself how to understand blueprints, to loft lines, and to set up molds. This was during the Depression and the Great Drought of the mid-1930's before the dogs of World War II had been unleashed. Though life was a great deal less complex and the future less uncertain than now, this seemed to have no bearing on the ageless urge to escape to sea. As Melville had written almost a century before, "I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is away I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation." Leaving home immediately after graduation from high school, I spent several years roaming about, finding work where I could. At last, in 1939, I was established in Juneau, Alaska, with a steady job and a small savings account. My magic carpet was getting closer to reality. By this time, another wonderful thing had happened: A boat building firm in Michigan, Bay City Boats, was manufacturing prefabricated kits for a line of boats that could easily be assembled at one-third the cost by diligent amateurs. Among the models in Bay City's line were a 45-foot schooner, Hanna's Gulf weed and Carol and right after the war, L. Francis Herreshoff's famed Marco Polo and the Tahiti ketch! For about $600, you could purchase the complete frame for Tahiti, all ready to set up and bolt together. For another $250, you could purchase the planking, cut, drilled, and ready to bend on. Other kits for the engine, tankage, rigging, and sails were available at equally reasonable prices, even for 1939. At last, I had the means and the facilities to make the dream come true, and off went my order for the frame kit. Meanwhile, I found space in town for a temporary shipyard. But like the dreams of thousands of others of military age, my plans were thwarted by the outbreak of war in Europe and subsequently Pearl Harbor. War time restrictions and long years of military service (ironically often served in those very same exotic South Pacific areas that had once fired their imaginations) killed the dream for most. The luckier ones, like Dwight Long of Seattle, who departed in his Idle Hour just in time to avoid the opening of hostilities, got their dreams fulfilled before it was too late. For others, the passage of too many years and the subsequent readjustment to peacetime and a cold war had caused the magic moment to be lost forever. For them, things were never quite the same, and never would be again. But for many, the dream did continue, and each upcoming generation had its usual quota of dreamers. In the mid-1950s and again in the late 1960s, there was a boom in the number of small boats setting out on world cruises. The trend today toward bluewater voyaging is even greater. In fact, the present-day boom in sailing and boat building is unprecedented. If it continues, future escapists may find the ocean lanes of the world regulated by traffic signals. Today there are literally thousands of yachts en route to exotic places, while there were hundreds in the 1950s and 1960s. The urge to go has even taken on a sort of frantic overtone, fed by the affluence of this decade and the availability of improved designs and new maintenance-free materials such as fiber glass, aluminium, and even ferro cement. Perhaps some of this frantic feeling today is due to the underlying insecurity of the times, the realization that the world is not only becoming overcrowded and polluted as it shrinks, but that the old personal freedoms and individual enterprises are being eroded by the emergence of monolithic political systems, of totalitarian communist aggressions that, once imposed, are never again thrown off, and of new welfare states that sap the initiative and dull the imagination. The oceans of the world are now all that remain for those who seek personal freedom and challenge. The quiet desperation of many who still cherish individualism has become a crushing anxiety to embark before it is too late. As for myself, I have learned to indulge my inner yearnings with coast wise cruising, sailing among the islands of the north, and in offshore fishing trips to Alaskan and Mexican waters. Time spent in the Navy during the war and on commercial fishing boats in the North Pacific has helped compensate for the feeling that something has been missed. The writing of books and articles and a daily column in a metropolitan newspaper on related subjects has been an effective outlet for repressed impulses. And, as a frustrated world voyager, over the years I have been an avid follower of the sea adventures of others, getting a vicarious pleasure this way. As a hobby, I have studied and analysed the voyages of nearly a hundred circumnavigators those who succeeded and those who failed and those who were never heard from again. This book is my attempt to pull together the best and most representative of these voyagers, and to try and define for my own personal satisfaction and curiosity, if nothing else, many of the underlying reasons that motivate a man to leave the comforts of an established society and bounce around the world at an average rate of five miles an hour in cramped, damp, and often extremely uncomfortable quarters. Who are these people? What are they really seeking? What motivates them to undertake the risks involved in crossing vast oceans in tiny ships, frequently alone, always dependent upon the prevailing winds and currents, subject to all the raw hazards of the open sea, the possibility of accident and sickness, fearful uncertainties of the unknown, and the inevitable and exasperating red tape of many petty customs and port officials in foreign lands? Certainly, there is nothing easy or simple about a bluewater voyage. Are these people seeking adventure? Romance? Escape? Or are they really searching for meaning in their lives? Do they desire fame and fortune? Or is it just an impulse for achievement against overwhelming odds? Are they anachronisms in a world that no longer has use for explorers and pioneers? Are they bums, dropouts, copouts, or just plain nuts? Do they have something that you and I do not, besides money? Or, as one psychologist opined, are they just people with suicidal compulsions, their voyages being spectacular manifestations of it? Of enduring interest to all erstwhile voyagers, of course, be they daydreamers or actual doers, are the technical details of these voyages. How did they do it? How did they get the money and the years of time it takes to go on a world voyage? What kind of boats did they find most seaworthy and comfortable? How did they cope with heavy weather? How about medical supplies, stores, fuel, water, food, spare parts? How did they cope with port and customs authorities? What about landfalls and uncharted reefs, or celestial navigation? How did they manage on passages of a month or more without sight of land or another ship? And when they did make a landfall, which natives were friendly, and which were not? Thwarted dreamers or serious planners all eagerly lap up such fascinating bits of business, for this is the stuff of which dream ships are derived, even if vicariously. Here then are the most notable men and women who have circumnavigated the world, and especially those who have solo navigated. World voyagers are the elite of modern travellers, and circumnavigators in small ships are the nobility of the elite. The solo circumnavigation is the epitome of all personal odysseys.

The most famous solo circumnavigation

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 harbour 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 at East Boston got a picture of her as she swept by, her fag at the peak throwing its 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. Sailing alone around the world, Thus began the first and most famous SOLO CIRCUMNAVIGATION in maritime history, a voyage of adventure and escape, and a feat of seamanship that remains unsurpassed in all the annals of men who go down to the sea in ships. The author of these charming lines, and the skipper of the 37-foot Spray on that crisp April morning, was Captain Joshua Slocum, and he had just marked his fifty-first birthday. Behind him were a 20-year career as master of some of the finest merchant ships afloat; a supremely happy life with his sea wife, Virginia, which produced four surviving children all born at sea or in exotic ports; and high adventure most of which crumbled around him in ruins, tragedy, and personal despair in middle age, the most critical time in any man's life. The Spray was all that he had left, and it was a century-old oyster man that had been hauled out on the beach unused for many years. Given to Slocum by a friend, Captain Eben Pierce, as a joke, he set about characteristically and rebuilt her from the keel up, at a cost of $553.62 and thirteen months' labour. Slocum's description of his departure from Boston on his solo circumnavigation, written several years later, did not fail to recapture his exhilaration and exuberance of once again walking the slanting deck of his own sailing ship, escaping to the wonderful sea that had charmed him since his childhood. Left behind were agonizing memories of Virginia, who had died suddenly in Buenos Aires aboard their beautiful bark A quid neck some years before, the confusion and hopelessness of an old sailor cast up on the beach, a second wife whom he regarded as little more than a a baby sitter for his children, and the great social and economic disorders that were changing his world as he knew it, and to which he was unable to adapt. He had $1.80 in cash, agreements with several newspapers to file stories along the way at space rates, and a number of copies of a book he had written previously and printed at his own expense, The Voyage of the Liberdade. He did not, however, have any timetable, nor even any clear-cut idea of what route he would take. His first landfall was Gloucester, only twenty miles away. There he spent two weeks enjoying a visit, and acquiring a dinghy by the simple expedient of sawing a Cape dory in half and boarding up the open end so hat it would fit athwart ships on the deck between the trunk cabins. Leaving Gloucester, he sailed east instead of south as everyone expected including his irritated editors. He sailed through the tide race in the Bay of Fundy and to Brier Island, where he had been born and raised. A month passed, then another, and he was still in Nova Scotia. Finally, on July 2, his gamming with relatives and old boyhood friends done, and the Spray made ready for sea with stores of fresh butter, potatoes, water in casks, and a dollar-and-a-half tin clock with broken hands that he had acquired as a chronometer, he let go his grasp on the North American continent. Eighteen days later, after a magnificent sail, he reached the Azores. After a short visit there, Slocum left for Gibraltar with a supply of fresh white cheese and ripe plums. Gorging on these as he sailed into a storm area, he was soon immobilized by cramps and passed out on the floor of the cabin. It was during this wild night, as his ship raced through the storm unattended, that Slocum recalled the pilot of the Pinta coming aboard to assist him in the crisis. At Gibraltar, Slocum was welcomed heartily by the British Navy, wined and dined, and even taken on an excursion to North Africa aboard a new fangled motor torpedo boat at a speed of 20 knots. Naval officers warned him not to attempt an east-to-west passage through the Mediterranean because of pirates, so he then altered his plans to follow the trade route south through the Atlantic and around Cape Horn to the Pacific. Forty days later, after a few hours of thrilling suspense when a pirate felucca put out from Africa to intercept him, he arrived at Pernambuco (Recife), on the bulge of Brazil. Here he tried to collect some money due him from the Brazilian government, and failing this, continued on along the coast to Rio de Janeiro, some 1,200 miles in 12 days, stopping for mail, selling books, and renewing old acquaintances among seafaring people. Leaving Rio, Slocum ran aground just south of the Brazilian border, and after refloating he continued on to Montevideo, where he met an old friend and Rio de la Plata pilot, Captain Howard of Cape Cod. Together they sailed across to Buenos Aires, where Virginia had been buried in English Cemetery. Then, overcome by his old grief, Slocum departed suddenly for the challenge ahead. On the way south, he encountered a monster wave, a frighteningly common occurrence in the southern latitudes, but Spray came through the ordeal easily, which gave Slocum the final confidence he needed that his ship would take him anywhere. In early February, he rounded Cape Virgins, deciding to make the passage through the Strait of Magellan. It was the wrong time of the year to attempt the outside passage around the Horn. At the small frontier city of Punta Arenas, Slocum stopped for rest and recreation, and here was warned about the murderous savages who preyed on ships and stranded seamen in the Tierra del Fuego labyrinth and especially one Black Pedro, the most wicked, murderous, and cunning of them all. He was given a box of carpet tacks and told how to use them to prevent being surprised at night while at anchor. For the next two months he battled the fierce williwaws and tidal races of the Strait, outguessed and outfought fleets of fire canoes, and even survived an encounter with Black Pedro himself. On his first attempt to break out the western entrance, Slocum was caught in a storm and swept southward around the Horn for days, during which he decided he would change his plans and sail east-about after all. Then, spotting an opportunity, he turned in through the frightening Milky Way reefs that Charles Darwin had first described in awe, and safely made his way back into the Strait again. On his second attempt, on April 13, Spray succeeded in making an offing, and Slocum joyously steered north west for the Robinson Crusoe island of San Fernandez. Here he was welcomed by the islanders, and for nearly a month enjoyed their hospitality, especially that of the children, whom he liked to be around. Sailing on May 5, 1896, he ran down the trades for seventy-three days in one of his most enjoyable passages, most of which was spent in the cabin reading, with no one at the wheel. Passing up the Marquesas, a popular stop for all sailing ships, he made his landfall at Samoa. Here he paid his respects to Fanny Stevenson, widow of his favourite author, and spent the rest of the summer. In October, after a boisterous passage, he arrived in Newcastle, New South Wales, now a year and a half out of Boston. Slocum had friends and relatives here, for this was where he had met and married Virginia and carried her off on his ship as a young bride. His voyage had now become famous all over the world, and much publicity was generated by his appearance and stay in Australia. He made the most of it. Then, restless again, he departed. At first, he planned to sail south of Australia, around Cape Leeuwin, but because of the season of the year he decided to cross over to Tasmania instead. At Hobart, he beached the Spray for maintenance, and gave lectures to raise funds. In May, he was sailing inside the Great Barrier Reef the other way around Australia, through Torres Strait. By June, he had left the Coral Sea and was en route across the Indian Ocean to the tiny atoll islands of Keeling-Cocos. It was on this leg that he made his classic passage down the trades from Christmas Island 2,700 miles in 23 days with the helm untouched to arrive at this tiny fly speck in the centre of the entrance channel. Slocum records a delightful stay on the islands, which were owned by the Clunies-Ross family,but it was the children whom he most enjoyed, especially a ten-year-old named Ophelia, who wrote a poemin his logbook about the great kepting (giant crab) that kept ships there by holding onto the keel. Admiral Fitzroy of the Beagle had written of these tiny isolated islands "where crabs eat coconuts, fish eat coral, dogs catch fish, men ride on turtles, and shells are dangerous mantraps." Slocum refitted the Spray, then threw overboard his ballast and loaded the hold with giant tridacna shells which he planned to sell or trade later in the voyage. On August 22, the kepting let go his keel and Slocum departed for Rodriguez. His stay there was also pleasant, as a guest of the governor, but after only eight days he departed for Mauritius, loaded down again with fresh fruits and vegetables. It was still winter off the great Cape of Good Hope, so he tarried on this pleasant island until October 26, and then set sail via Cape St. Mary on the southern tip of Madagascar, weathering the stormy Mozambique Channel, and arriving in Durban, South Africa, on November 17. News of his arrival was already in print and on the street in the morning newspaper before he arrived, and a copy was handed to him by port officials. Port Natal was then, as now, a favourite stop for world voyagers because of the hospitality of the local yachtsmen, and because it afforded a safe haven in which to wait for favourable weather to double the Cape. Slocum was again wined and dined, introduced to all the important people, sought out by President Paul Kruger and the famed explorer, Stanley, of Stanley and Livingstone legend, colonels and colonels' ladies. He took trips into the back country, visited schools where he had the pleasure of meeting many bright children, and like almost all other visitors clucked sadly over the rigid social and economic barriers of the South African society. On December 14, Slocum reluctantly departed, managed the frightful seas off the great bight of the continent, rounded Cape Agulhas (the actual southernmost tip of Africa), Cape of Good Hope, Table Mountain, and came to anchor off the city of Cape Town. Again he settled down for weeks of socializing with admirals, colonels, high-placed politicians, local yachtsmen, and hospitable citizens of all rank. As many other voyagers, he was tempted to end his journey and settle down in this pleasant and dynamic country, but on March 26, 1898, he was on his way again with a nice light morning breeze giving him an offing for the next leg to the island of St. Helena, with the Spray running sprightly under a single-reefed main-sail, whole jib, and flying jib, leaping along among the marching white sea horses, with porpoises playing off the bow. On April 11, he caught sight of the island where Napoleon spent his last days, opened a locker, and with a bottle of port wine toasted the health of his invisible helmsman, the pilot of the Pinta. As usual, Slocum was given the freedom of the port and was hosted by the governor. He paused to visit with the local families, and was given a goat by the American consul there, a Mr. R. A. Clark. Slocum, who did not like pets, had nothing but trouble with his goat and managed to put it ashore in Ascension, but not until it had eaten his only chart of his next landfall, the West Indies. He had the Spray fumigated here and the ship's papers put in order by the British officer in charge of the "Stone Frigate." On May 8, 1898, the Spray crossed her outbound track, thus completing a technical circumnavigation to a point on his track of October 2, 1895. Slocum sailed south of Fernando de Noronha, passing it at night. On May 10, there was a change in the condition of the sea, and to Slocum, an old hand in these waters, this meant that he was off St. Roque and was in the north-moving current. He had been in the trade winds for some time, and now also had the benefit of a forty-mile-a-day current. Somewhere in this region, he encountered the U. S. S. Oregon. The battleship hoisted the signal "C B T," meaning, "Are there any men-of-war about?" Slocum replied in the negative and then added his own signal: "Let us travel together for mutual protection." Thus, Slocum learned that the United States was at war with Spain. On May 18, he saw the north star or Polaris for the first time in nearly three years, and he was logging better than 140 miles a day. His first stop was at Grenada, to which he carried letters from Mauritius, and he came into the roads off the island on May 22. On June 1, he arrived at St. John, Antigua, where he was welcomed by the governor and his lady, and was invited to lecture on his exploits. On June 4, he cleared with the United States consulate, and his yacht license was returned to him for the last time, with a personal note written on it by the consul. On June 8, the Spray passed under the sun and bounded joyously for home waters. For three days, Slocum was becalmed in the Sargasso Sea, then entering the Gulf Stream, he encountered a fierce gale which broke some of the weary rigging. Fighting his way through squalls and cobble seas northward to Fire Island, there he was caught in the tornado of June 25, which had wrecked buildings a few minutes earlier in New York City. With a sea anchor out, he weathered the storm, and when it was over and the Spray was safe once more, Slocum recorded that he never saw the pilot of the Pinta again. The Spray rounded Montauk Point, carried Point Judith abeam at dark, and fetched in at Beavertail. Sailing on, Slocum hugged the shore going into Newport Harbor, which was mined, and at last, reached safe anchorage at one A. M., June 27, 1898, after a voyage of46,000 miles and an absence of three years and two months a voyage that carried him into immortality. Later, the Spray waltzed cockily around the coast and up the Acushnet River to Fairhaven, where Slocum secured to the same stake driven into the bank to tether her when she was launched. "I could bring her no nearer home," Slocum wrote. The world was now ready for Captain Joshua Slocum, and like a true Yankee shipmaster, he was quick to take full measure of it. When Slocum had departed on his voyage three years before, one of the last well-wishers to see him off was the girl to whom he dedicated his book, twenty-four-year-old Mabel Wagnalls, daughter of an old friend, Adam Wagnalls, the publisher. First to come aboard to write a welcome in his logbook was Miss Wagnalls "the one whos aid the Spray would come back." Slocum's original motive for making the voyage around was, oftensibly at least, to write stories about it for publication, including possibly a book. Although his initial arrangements to file stories to newspapers had collapsed along the way because of the time element and lack of editorial interest, he still wanted very much to write up his accounts in the same vein as the popular travel books of Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson. So, while still at the Keeling-Cocos Islands, he wrote to Joseph Benson Gilder, editor of The Critic, the literary magazine of the day, and younger brother of Richard Watson Gilder, the great editor of Century Magazine. Young Gilder had previously written a favourable review of Slocum’s book, The Voyage of the Liberdade, and can now be considered the first to "discover" Slocum's literary potential. The letter, written seven years afterwards while the Spray was tied to a palm tree on remote Keeling-Cocos, can be considered the genesis of Sailing Alone Around the World, one of the all-time great maritime classics, which Van Wyck Brooks described in The Confident Years as the "nautical equivalent of Thoreau's account of his life in the hut at Walden.""Do you think," Slocum concluded in his letter to Gilder, "our people will care for a story of the voyage around?" Now, immediately after arriving home, Slocum received a telegram requesting his story from Richard Watson Gilder. It was the beginning of Slocum's happiest association since the death of Virginia, and the culmination of a lifetime ambition to be an author. At first, however, because he was still restless, it was hard to settle down to the actual chore of putting together his story. The Spanish-American War was still occupying the front pages and Slocum thought of volunteering to skipper a gunboat in the Philippines, still remembering the perfidy of petty Spanish officialdom from the days when he was a shipmaster and shipbuilder in the China trade. He talked of fitting out a college ship to accommodate three hundred student-passengers on a voyage around the world, during which they could learn seaman--ship as well as study liberal arts and engineering courses. At last, he got down to work on the series, first while living with his wife, Hettie, whom he had rejoined, and later in the winter aboard the Spray tied up at the Erie Basin Dry docks in Brooklyn. He delivered the manuscript in the summer of 1899 and immediately celebrated with a cruise in New England waters, correcting galley proofs & as he sailed. The story was published in monthly instalments, from September 1899 through March 1900. The book was published by the Century Company on March 24, 1900, illustrated with pen drawings by Thomas Fogarty and George Varian. A second edition was published the same year in England. There were sixteen reprintings by Century through 1941, three printings by Blue Ribbon Booksin the 1930s, and additional printings by Sheridan House, Inc., and Grosset & Dunlap, Inc. Charles Scribner's Sons brought out an abridged edition for schools in 1903. French, Polish, German, and Dutch editions appeared over the years. The book entered the public domain in 1956, and since then numerous reprints have appeared in various forms with seemingly a steady increase in reader interest rather than a decline. Sailing Alone Around the World was an immediate critical and financial success. With the proceeds of its sales, plus Slocum's lucrative lecture and lantern slide appearances, he was able to pay off his debts and buy a farm for Hettie on Martha's Vineyard. In addition, he was able to capitalize on his new fame by selling copies left over from his previous efforts, The Voyage of the Liberdade and The Voyage of the Destroyer. He wrote and published pamphlets to advertise his wares such asthe Sloop Spray Souvenir, which he sold at the Pan American Exposition at Buffalo, where he exhibited the globe-circling Spray, charged admission, and sold books and souvenirs. He planned also to exhibit an expedition to Iceland and the Arctic at the Universal Exposition in Paris. He toyed with underwater experiments and with the newfangled flying machine; he became a frequent visitor and confidant of President Teddy Roosevelt and often took the President's son sailing on the Spray; he made short cruises in New England waters, and in 1905 made the first of several annual winter sojourns to Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and other ports in the West Indies. Returning from one cruise, and while on a lecture tour in New Jersey, he was arrested on a charge of molesting a twelve-year-old girl. After spending two months in jail, he then pleaded nolo contendereto a reduced charge and was released by the judge after a lecture on morals. It is unlikely that Slocum was actually guilty of molesting the child; more likely, his flinty pride refused to take the charge seriously. His biographer, Walter Magnes Teller, draws a perceptive parallel in Melville's Mardi, "the heart-loneliness which overtakes most seamen as they grow aged, impelling them to fasten on some chance object of regard. In any case, Slocum did not let it trouble him. He went from the jail in New Jersey to Sagamore Hill, where he was welcomed cordially by President Roosevelt and took young Archibald Roosevelt for a week’s cruise. Each winter thereafter, Slocum sailed south to the Caribbean, increasingly restless and unable to settle down in Martha's Vineyard with Hettie. In 1909, at age sixty-five, he set off on another expedition, this time to explore the Orinoco up to the Rio Negro, then sail down the Amazon to the Atlantic Ocean. He was never seen nor heard from again, and was declared legally dead as of November 14, 1909. There have been many theories about his disappearance including suicide, fire at sea, storms, and even disintegration of the aged Spray. The most logical is the one suggested by Slocum's eldest son, Victor, also an experienced sea captain. Victor believed that his father was run down at night in the crowded ship lanes off Cape Hatteras. Collision at sea between large, fast vessels and small craft, particularly in such congested areas, remains a major hazard today. In spite of his simplistic, dead-center Yankee manner and appearance, Joshua Slocum was a complex man, a personality of paradoxes. Born February 20, 1844, on Brier Island, Nova Scotia, he was descended from a seafaring English family that had settled in New England in the early eighteenth century, but removed to Nova Scotia during the War of Independence. Later, the family drifted back to Massachusetts and Joshua became a naturalized American. His father was a large, muscular, somewhat frustrated and embittered man, stern and unrelenting in views, a church deacon, farmer, and boot maker. His mother was a daughter of a lighthouse keeper on Brier Island, small, delicate, gentle, and fine-featured. Joshua took after her in physical appearance and appreciation of finer things and after his father in grit, determination, and aggressiveness. His mother was young Joshua's whole world, and as long as she lived, he endured his father's brutality and the harsh life. When she died at forty-six, he left home for good to follow the sea. His first voyage was at sixteen on a British ship. Quick, intelligent, loyal, and handy with his fists, he learned fast and rose quickly, obtaining his first command as captain of an American coastal schooner out of San Francisco when he was only twenty-five. During this period, he also engaged in various adventures on the Northwest coast, including commercial fishing, trapping, and boat building. His son Victor credited his father with the design of the famed Columbia River gillnet boats, although this is unlikely. His second command was the bark Washington, which sailed from San Francisco to Sydney with a mixed cargo. There he met Virginia Walker, daughter of an American immigrant, and after a two-week courtship, they were married and spent their honeymoon on a voyage to Cook Inlet in Alaska to take on a cargo of salmon. Virginia was a perfect soul mate, witty, intelligent, cultured, yet courageous and adventurous and a dead shot with a pistol, which came in handy during several attempted mutinies in later years. Though the Washington was wrecked in Alaskan waters, most of the cargo was saved by the efforts of her captain, and the owners responded by giving Slocum the command of another ship, the bark Constitution. Victor was born aboard this vessel in 1872. The next residence of the little family was aboard the square-rigger B. Aymar. Then followed a shipbuilding period in the Philippines in which he acquired a beautiful little 45-ton schooner Pato, Spanish for "duck." The Pato was first employed in salvage operations, and then, with his family that now included two boys and a girl, Slocum picked up gear, dories, and a crew in Hong Kong and sailed through the Sea of Japan to waters off Kamchatka on a codfishing venture. Thousands of miles from the nearest medical help, Virginia gave birth to twins. They died four days later, and the following day Virginia joined the rest of the crew at the rail, bringing aboard a cargo of cod which was salted down and taken to Portland, Oregon, and peddled from door to door. With the proceeds of this operation, during which the family lived ashore on the east bank of the Willamette River, and the sale of the Pato in Honolulu for $5,000 in gold, the Slocum next acquired the 350-ton Amethyst and fitted it out for the China lumber trade. Another daughter was born, but she died soon after. In Hong Kong, March 3, 1881, Virginia gave birth to her seventh child, James Garfield Slocum. Now Slocum moved up to captain and part owner of the beautiful1,800-ton clipper, the Northern Light, one of the tallest and fastest ships of the day. On a bright June day in 1882, Slocum sailed her up the East River under the new Brooklyn Bridge, her rig so tall that the upper section had to be struck to pass under, a proud ship with a proud captain at the pinnacle of his career. Later, there was a mutiny aboard the Northern Light during which Virginia backed up her husband with a loaded pistol and in which the ringleader was stabbed to death. Continuing on to Yokohama to discharge cargo, on the return trip the Northern Light passed the island of Krakatoa a few days before it blew up, suffered damage off the Cape of Good Hope and lost most of her cargo, and again endured an attempted mutiny led by an ex-convict who came aboard at Cape Town. The next ship was the little bark Aquidneck, which Slocum described as the "nearest to perfection of beauty" any man could ask for. This was operated in the South American trade and was a happy but brief interlude in the captain's career. On one trip to Buenos Aires, Virginia took ill suddenly, and on the evening of July 25, 1884, she died with her husband and the children at her bedside, not yet thirty-five years old. Slocum, who had lost his mother when he was sixteen, now lost the second woman in his life when he was thirty-nine. When Virginia died, Slocum died with her spiritually. In his grief, he ran the Aquidneck aground once, then two years later, with his second wife, his cousin, twenty-four-year-old Henrietta Elliott, and two of the brood, victor, age fourteen, and Garfield, age five, sailed for South American a wedding trip. The Aquidneck was wrecked on this voyage through a series of unfortunate incidents including a cholera epidemic and a mutiny during which Slocum killed two men, and everything was lost. Salvaging what he could from the wreckage, Slocum set about building a 35-foot sailing dory, which he called the Liberdade, because it was launched the day the Brazilian slaves were freed. In this craft, with his family for a crew, Slocum sailed 5,000 miles from Paranagua Bay to Washington, D. C., one of the most remarkable small-boat voyages of all times. He wrote a book about this, which he published himself and tried to sell for $1 a copy. In the winter of 1892, his friend Captain Eben Pierce gave him the ancient Spray, which was on the beach at Fairhaven. Slocum, who had been five times around the world, and spent a lifetime at sea, had little use for a yacht, but he set about rebuilding the sloop for want of something better to do, and also as a cosy sea-going home in which he could retreat. He fished in the Spray one season, with little success, chartered an occasional party, and then, in December 1893, he undertook a commission to deliver the Ericsson iron-clad gunboat Destroyer to the Brazilian government during the insurrection. After another incredible voyage and masterpiece of seamanship, he was cheated out of his pay and returned home broke again to write a book about this hazardous voyage, which did not sell well either. Returning to the waiting Spray, which he had recreated with his own hands and now seemed his last refuge, he conceived the idea of a single-handed voyage around the world. Although his life had crumbled around him, he still had his charts, sextant, compass, his favourite rifles, and books, and he knew the way, oh so well. For him, the sea was a friend, a haven, a world he understood and which understood him. He was about to discover the one thing that almost all men seek and which few ever find in their lifetimes meaning. And, as Slocum exclaimed to his eldest son on seeing him again, "You could have done it, Vic but you would not have been first.

THE VENTURESOME VIKING