Between 24 April 1895 and 27 June 1898, Joshua 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 return to Massachusetts after a journey of 46,000 miles.
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Full text: Sailing Alone Around the World - Internet Archive
From Dennis A. Berthold’s Introduction to Sailing Alone Around the World :
There is nothing in sea literature like Sailing Alone Around the World, nor can there ever be again. Only one man was the first to sail around the world alone, and only one book recounts that astonishing voyage in his own words. This is that book.
When Joshua Slocum left Boston on April 24, 1895, to sail around the world alone in the Spray, a 37-foot sloop he reconstructed himself, Mabel Wagnalls wrote in his log, “The Spray will come back”. Those words proved prophetic in more ways than one. Of course the Spray did come back three years later, anchoring on June 27, 1898, in Newport, Rhode Island. No one had ever circumnavigated the globe alone until Slocum did it, and not many have done so since.
As important as are the material reincarnations of the Spray, her voyage would be far less memorable if she had not also returned as a literary artifact, the inspiration and heroine, if you will, of one of the greatest sea narratives ever written. Like the Spray, Sailing Alone Around the World is Slocum’s original creation, and it has enjoyed a long life in many editions, reprintings, and retellings. It first appeared in serial form in Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, a popular periodical published in New York. As soon as the magazine series ended, Slocum’s tale was produced in book form, complete with the Century illustrations by Thomas Fogarty and George Varian. It sold 7,000 copies in its first year, and its original edition eventually sold more than 27,000 copies. Since 1956 it has been widely available in paperback. There is probably no time during its history that it has been out of print, an honor it shares with such American classics as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).
So for all his seeming obscurity in the world of American literature, Slocum’s journey has fostered a world unto itself, a place where dedicated men and women spend years studying details of his boat; rebuilding it out of wood, fiberglass, reinforced concrete, aluminum, or steel; replicating his journey in whole or in part; and reading again and again the story of his amazing voyage.
Throughout Sailing Alone Slocum appears honest, forthright, and direct, like Henry David Thoreau in Walden (1854), a man who cared more for truth than money, love, or fame. Slocum is much more modest and unassuming than Thoreau, however. His writing style is straightforward and lucid, his nautical terminology is appropriate and precise, and he achieves a consistent humor by gently mocking himself as well as others. He admits his shortcomings as well as his accomplishments, as when he confesses to getting lost at Cape Horn, or feeling anxious about lecturing, or being so afraid of meeting pirates in the Mediterranean that he completely reverses his itinerary by sailing west around Cape Horn instead of going east through the Suez Canal. Thoreau described how he single-handedly built a cabin for only $28; similarly, Slocum describes building the Spray for only $553. But Thoreau does not include any plans. Slocum does, along with a detailed account of how he built the boat. His diagrams of the Spray’s profile, deck plan, and rigging are reprinted in nearly every edition. They lend his narrative authenticity and credibility and reinforce the impression of Slocum’s sincerity. He presents himself as the real thing, an honest-to-goodness Yankee ship captain with a yarn to share and the salty language for telling it.
