In this time of terabytes and drones and private space launches, I find it inspiring and grounding to take a genuine look back at times past, at events as significant in their time as any in ours. Joshua Slocum was the first person to complete a solo circumnavigation, done over three years from 1895 to 1898. Now there is a regular race run every four years, the Vendee Globe, with a dozen or more entrants, and the record stands at 57 1/2 days.
Slocum was in no hurry, mind you. As he sailed out of Boston harbor on a lively breeze, he notes, “A thrilling pulse beat high in me. My step was light on deck in the crisp air. I felt that there could be no turning back, and that I was engaging in an adventure the meaning of which I thoroughly understood.” That line still leaves me a bit puzzled. Perhaps he was simply saying that, by dint of his extensive experience aboard ships as a sailor, a mate, and a captain, having made numerous passages to far ports of the world in merchant ships and having witnessed the countless hazards, he fully recognized the dangers inherent in what he had undertaken. But that sheds little light on why he was doing it. I still don’t know the answer to that question. The best I can speculate is the same reason for climbing high peaks and voyaging to the moon--”because it is there.”
Once he had resolved in his mind to do it, I believe nothing short of death would have stopped him. His plan was to sail from Boston across the Atlantic, through the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal, and so on. When he arrived at Gibraltar after a difficult passage across the North Atlantic, he was advised by British naval officers there that piracy was rampant along his planned route and he would be unwise to pursue it. No worries. Slocum was a prudent seaman, respectful of the knowledge and advice of other seafarers. So he headed back across the Atlantic for South America, to go around the world the other way!
Here are a few essentials that Slocum did without: an engine, GPS, EPIRB (emergency beacon), radio, weather forecasts, autopilot, canned food, bottled water, refrigeration, a depth sounder, company, sleep. He published the book in 1900 when most of the items on that list did not exist so it was of little note to him that he did without them. I’m still astounded that his 37 foot sloop, “Spray”, would hold a course for hours, even days at a time without a touch on the helm. No modern boat will do that.
Slocum’s writing style is humble, relating actions he took and why he took them, without making too much of it. For example while anchored in the Strait of Magellan at the southern tip of South America, he went ashore, cut a tree, and shaped and fitted it as a “jigger”--a mizzen mast--to aid in the long passage with the favorable trade winds across the Pacific. Are you kidding me? Adding a mast to the boat, changing the rig like there’s nothing to it? That would have required additional shrouds, a stern sprit, a boom, lines for a halyard and sheet, sail hoops. He never mentioned the sail but presumably he cut and sewed a suitable one.
He apparently ate a lot of flying fish that landed randomly on his deck. I know that happens, I’ve seen it often at sea, but they’re bony mostly meatless little critters, and covered in scales. Smelly too, very fishy. I think my stomach would have rebelled....unless I was starving, which I suspect was the case with Slocum a lot of the time. On his arrival at Gibraltar, he described himself as “..thin as a reef-point.”
Strange that only now at age 67 I am reading this book. I remember my Dad recommending it to me as a child, maybe ten or twelve years old. I probably wasn’t interested in “that old stuff”, my attention drawn more to the likes of Tom Swift. My dear 95 year old aunt, my Dad’s younger sister, offered it to me recently and I am thankful for that. I only wish that my Dad could know that I read it and share his respectful appreciation.
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