Sailing Alone Around the World

Classic of sea adventure conveys all the excitement of being the first man to sail around the world, alone, in a small boat. One of the great feats of seamanship told in a delightful manner. 67 illustrations.

List of Illustrations

Introduction by Thomas Philbrick

Suggestions for Further Reading

A Note on the Text and Illustrations

Sailing Alone around the World

CHAPTER I

A blue-nose ancestry with Yankee proclivities — Youthful fondness for the sea — Master of the ship Northern Light — Loss of the Aquidneck — Return home from Brazil in the canoe Liberdade — The gift of a “ship” — The rebuilding of the Spray — Conundrums in regard to finance and calking — The launching of the Spray

CHAPTER II

Failure as a fisherman — A voyage around the world projected — From Boston to Gloucester — Fitting out for the ocean voyage — Half of a dory for a ship’s boat — The run from Gloucester to Nova Scotia — A shaking up in home waters — Among old friends

CHAPTER III

Good-by to the American coast — Off Sable Island in a fog — In the open sea — The man in the moon takes an interest in the voyage — The first fit of loneliness — The Spray encounters La Vaguisa — A bottle of wine from the Spaniard — About of words with the captain of the Java — The steamship Olympia spoken — Arrival at the Azores

CHAPTER IV

Squally weather in the Azores — High living — Delirious from cheese and plums — The pilot of the Pinta — At Gibraltar — Compliments exchanged with the British navy — A picnic on the Morocco shore

CHAPTER V

Sailing from Gibraltar with the assistance of her Majesty’s tug — The Spray’s course changed from the Suez Canal to Cape Horn — Chased by a Moorish pirate — A comparison with Columbus — The Canary Islands — The Cape Verde Islands — Sea life — Arrival at Pernambuco — A bill against the Brazilian government — Preparing for the stormy weather of the cape

CHAPTER VI

Departure from Rio de Janeiro — The Spray ashore on the sands of Uruguay — A narrow escape from shipwreck — The boy who found a sloop — The Spray floated but somewhat damaged — Courtesies from the British consul at Maldonado — A warm greeting at Montevideo — An excursion to Buenos Aires — Shortening the mast and bowsprit

CHAPTER VII

Weighing anchor at Buenos Aires — An outburst of emotion at the mouth of the Plate — Submerged by a great wave — A stormy entrance to the strait — Captain Samblich’s happy gift of a bag of carpet-tacks — Off Cape Froward — Chased by Indians from Fortescue Bay — A miss-shot for “Black Pedro,” — Taking in supplies of wood and water at Three Island Cove — Animal life

CHAPTER VIII

From Cape Pillar into the Pacific — Driven by a tempest toward Cape Horn — Captain Slocum’s greatest sea adventure — Reaching the strait again by way of Cockburn Channel — Some savages find the carpet-tacks — Danger from firebrands — A series of fierce williwaws — Again sailing westward

CHAPTER IX

Repairing the Spray’s sails — Savages and an obstreperous anchor — A spider-fight — An encounter with Black Pedro — A visit to the steamship Colombia — On the defensive against a fleet of canoes — A record of voyages through the strait — A chance cargo of tallow

CHAPTER X

Running to Port Angosto in a snow-storm — A defective sheet-rope places the Spray in peril — The Spray as a target for a Fuegian arrow — The island of Alan Erric — Again in the open Pacific — The run to the island of Juan Fernandez — An absentee king — At Robinson Crusoe’s anchorage.

CHAPTER XI

The islanders of Juan Fernandez entertained with Yankee doughnuts — The beauties of Robinson Crusoe’s realm — The mountain monument to Alexander Selkirk — Robinson Crusoe’s cave — A stroll with the children of the island — Westward ho! with a friendly gale — A month’s free sailing with the Southern Cross and the sun for guides — Sighting the Marquesas — Experience in reckoning

CHAPTER XII

Seventy-two days without a port — Whales and birds — A peep into the Spray’s galley — Flying-fish for breakfast — A welcome at Apia — A visit from Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson — At Vailima — Samoan hospitality — Arrested for fast riding — An amusing merry-go-round — Teachers and pupils of Papauta College — At the mercy of sea-nymphs

CHAPTER XIII

Samoan royalty — King Malietoa — Good-by to friends at Vailima — Leaving Fiji to the south — Arrival at Newcastle, Australia — The yachts of Sydney — A ducking on the Spray — Commodore Foy presents the sloop with a new suit of sails — On to Melbourne — A shark that proved to be valuable — A change of course — The “Rain of Blood” — In Tasmania

CHAPTER XIV

A testimonial from a lady — Cruising round Tasmania — The skipper delivers his first lecture on the voyage — Abundant provisions — An inspection of the Spray for safety at Devonport — Again at Sydney — Northward bound for Torres Strait — An amateur shipwreck — Friends on the Australian coast — Perils of a coral sea

CHAPTER XV

Arrival at Port Denison, Queensland — A lecture — Reminiscences of Captain Cook — Lecturing for charity at Cook-town — A happy escape from a coral reef — Home Island, Sunday Island, Bird Island — An American pearl-fisherman — Jubilee at Thursday Island — A new ensign for the Spray — Booby Island — Across the Indian Ocean — Christmas Island

CHAPTER XVI

A call for careful navigation — Three hours’ steering in twenty-three days — Arrival at the Keeling Cocos Islands — A curious chapter of social history — A welcome from the children of the islands — Cleaning and painting the Spray on the beach — A Mohammedan blessing for a pot of jam — Keeling as a paradise — A risky adventure in a small boat — Away to Rodriguez — Taken for Antichrist — The governor calms the fears of the people — A lecture — A convent in the hills

CHAPTER XVII

A clean bill of health at Mauritius — Sailing the voyage over again in the opera-house — A newly discovered plant named in honor of the Spray’s skipper — A party of young ladies out for a sail — A bivouac on deck — A warm reception at Durban — A friendly cross-examination by Henry M. Stanley — Three wise Boers seek proof of the flatness of the earth — Leaving South Africa

CHAPTER XVIII

Rounding the “Cape of Storms” in olden time — A rough Christmas — The Spray ties up for a three months’ rest at Cape Town — A railway trip to the Transvaal — President Kruger’s odd definition of the Spray’s voyage — His terse sayings — Distinguished guests on the Spray — Cocoanut fiber as a padlock — Courtesies from the admiral of the Queen’s navy — Off for St. Helena — Land in sight

CHAPTER XIX

In the isle of Napoleon’s exile — Two lectures — A guest in the ghost-room at Plantation House — An excursion to historic Longwood — Coffee in the husk, and a goat to shell it — The Spray’s ill luck with animals — A prejudice against small dogs — A rat, the Boston spider, and the cannibal cricket — Ascension Island

CHAPTER XX

In the favoring current off Cape St. Roque, Brazil — All at sea regarding the Spanish-American war — An exchange of signals with the battle-ship Oregon — Off Dreyfus’s prison on Devil’s Island — Reappearance to the Spray of the north star — The light on Trinidad — A charming introduction to Grenada — Talks to friendly auditors

CHAPTER XXI

Clearing for home — In the calm belt — A sea covered with sargasso — The jibstay parts in a gale — Welcomed by a tornado off Fire Island — A change of plan — Arrival at Newport — End of a cruise of over forty-six thousand miles — The Spray again at Fairhaven

APPENDIX

LINES AND SAIL-PLAN OF THE “SPRAY”

Her pedigree so far as known — The lines of the Spray — Her self-steering qualities — Sail-plan and steering-gear — An unprecedented feat — A final word of cheer to would-be navigators

Notes

PENGUIN      CLASSICS

SAILING ALONE AROUND THE WORLD

Joshua Slocum was born in Nova Scotia in 1844. After three years of schooling, he was put to work in the family bootmaking shop. At fourteen he escaped from his father’s tyrannical rule, first to the local fishing fleet, and then to the British merchant marine as an ordinary seaman. In the mid-1860s he was promoted to mate and became a United States citizen. In 1871, by then a shipmaster, he married Virginia Walker, a brave and resourceful Australian woman who was to accompany him on voyages throughout the world, bearing his four children and relishing the hardships and adventure of life at sea. After Virginia died in 1884, Slocum’s career began a sharp descent. His last command was wrecked on the coast of Brazil in 1887. Financially ruined, he and his young cousin Hettie Elliott, whom he had married a few months before, together with two of his sons, returned to the United States in a boat that they fashioned from materials salvaged from the wreck. Unable to find an officer’s berth, Slocum accepted a friend’s offer of the rotting hull of a hundred-year-old oyster sloop, the Spray. After rebuilding the boat and testing her in New England waters, in 1895 he set out upon a single-handed circumnavigation of the globe, the first such voyage ever attempted. Surviving loneliness, storm, and piratical attacks, he returned home in 1898 and wrote his extraordinary narrative, Sailing Alone around the World. Although his voyage and his book made Slocum something of a celebrity, he soon went back to his old ways, making repeated trading trips alone in the Spray along the American coast and to the Caribbean. In 1909 the sea-worn sloop and her aging master headed south from Martha’s Vineyard, never to be seen again.

Thomas Philbrick is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Pittsburgh and a lifelong small boat sailor. He is the author of James Fenimore Cooper and the Development of American Sea Fiction and a study of St. John de Crèvecoeur. He has edited five of Cooper’s novels and travel books for the Cooper Edition, as well as Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast for Penguin Classics.

Sailing Alone
Around The World

CAPTAIN JOSHUA SLOCUM

Illustrated by
THOMAS FOGARTY AND GEORGE VARIAN

Edited with an
Introduction and Notes by
THOMAS PHILBRICK

PENGUIN BOOKS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The “Northern Light” Captain Joshua Slocum, Bound for Liverpool, 1885

Cross-section of the “Spray”

“It’ll Crawl”

“No Dorg nor no Cat”

The Deacon’s Dream

Captain Slocum’s Chronometer

“Good Evening, Sir”

He also Sent his Card

Chart of the “Spray’s” Course around the World—April 24, 1895, to July 3, 1898

The Island of Pico

Chart of the “Spray’s” Atlantic Voyages from Boston to Gibraltar, thence to the Strait of Magellan, in 1895, and finally Homeward Bound from the Cape of Good Hope in 1898

The Apparition at the Wheel

Coming to Anchor at Gibraltar

The “Spray” at Anchor off Gibraltar

Chased by Pirates

I Suddenly Remembered that I could not Swim

A Double Surprise

At the Sign of the Comet

A Great Wave off the Patagonian Coast

Entrance to the Strait of Magellan

The Course of the “Spray” through the Strait of Magellan

The Man who wouldn’t Ship without another “Mon and a Doog”

A Fuegian Girl

Looking West from Fortescue Bay, where the “Spray” was Chased by Indians

A Brush with Fuegians

A Bit of Friendly Assistance

Cape Pillar

They Howled like a Pack of Hounds

A Glimpse of Sandy Point (Punta Arenas) in the Strait of Magellan

“Yammerschooner!”

A Contrast in Lighting—the Electric Lights of the “Columbia” and the Canoe Fires of the Fortescue Indians

Records of Passages through the Strait at the Head of Borgia Bay

Salving Wreckage

The First Shot Uncovered Three Fuegians

The “Spray” Approaching Juan Fernandez, Robinson Crusoe’s Island

The House of the King

Robinson Crusoe’s Cave

The Man who Called a Cabra a Goat

Meeting with the Whale

First Exchange of Courtesies in Samoa

Vailima, the Home of Robert Louis Stevenson

The “Spray’s” Course from Australia to South Africa

The Accident at Sydney

Captain Slocum Working the “Spray” out of the Yarrow River, a Part of Melbourne Harbor

The Shark on the Deck of the “Spray”

On Board at St. Kilda. Retracing on the Chart the Course of the “Spray” from Boston

The “Spray” in her Port Duster at Devonport, Tasmania, February 22, 1897

“Is it A-goin’ to Blow?”

The “Spray” Leaving Sydney, Australia, in the New Suit of Sails Given by Commodore Foy of Australia

The “Spray” Ashore for “Boot-topping” at the Keeling Islands

Captain Slocum Drifting out to Sea

The “Spray” at Mauritius

Captain Joshua Slocum

Cartoon Printed in the Cape Town “Owl” of March 5, 1898, in Connection with an Item about Captain Slocum’s Trip to Pretoria

Captain Slocum, Sir Alfred Milner (with the Tall Hat), and Colonel Saunderson, M. P., on the Bow of the “Spray” at Cape Town

Reading Day and Night

The “Spray” Passed by the “Oregon”

The “Spray” in the Storm off New York

Again Tied to the Old Stake at Fairhaven

Plan of the After Cabin of the “Spray”

Deck-plan of the “Spray”

Sail-plan of the “Spray”

Steering-gear of the “Spray”

Body-plan of the “Spray”

Lines of the “Spray”

INTRODUCTION

“The greatest sailor since our world began”; that is the praise that Herman Melville, quoting Tennyson, accorded Lord Nelson in Billy Budd. Had he lived a decade longer, Melville might have had second thoughts, for by then Joshua Slocum had accomplished a voyage unmatched in maritime history for skill, courage, and determination. In April 1895 he set out alone from Boston in a thirty-six-foot sloop to travel around the world, sailed across the Atlantic to Gibraltar, changed his mind about the direction of his circumnavigation and recrossed the Atlantic to Brazil, fought his way through the Strait of Magellan, sailed west across the Pacific and Indian Oceans, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and, crossing the Atlantic for a third time, reached Newport, Rhode Island, in June 1898. And, to crown the achievement, Slocum wrote an account of his exploit that might well be called, if not the greatest, the most engaging of all voyage narratives.

Both the voyage and the book were the work of a failed and impoverished shipmaster in late middle age. Deprived of his occupation by the disastrous outcome of his last voyage and the approaching extinction of the sailing ship as a vehicle of commerce, Slocum accepted a friend’s offer of an antique sloop named the Spray, beached and derelict like himself, as the only means left to him of salvaging his life. As he slowly rebuilt the Spray, timber by timber and plank by plank, he envisioned earning a modest and conventional living by her in the coastal fishery. Once launched, however, the sloop came to be the repository of a preposterous idea.

To be sure, Slocum tried fishing in the Spray, but less as a serious enterprise than...