Sailing Alone Around the World
Sailing Alone Around the World
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 2000003465064 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tantor Media, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 12/12/2006 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
About the Author
Captain Joshua Slocum (1844–1909) was the first person to circle the globe alone entirely by sea. On April 24, 1895, he departed Boston in his 37-foot sloop, Spray, and sailed around the world, returning to Newport, Rhode Island, on June 27, 1898. This remarkable achievement made Slocum the most famous North American sailor of all time.
Read an Excerpt
Sailing Alone Around the World
By Joshua Slocum, Thomas Fogarty, George Varian
Dover Publications, Inc.
Copyright © 1956 Dover Publications, Inc.All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-486-80125-4
CHAPTER 1
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.
IN the fair land of Nova Scotia, a maritime province, there is a ridge called North Mountain, overlooking the Bay of Fundy on one side and the fertile Annapolis valley on the other. On the northern slope of the range grows the hardy spruce-tree, well adapted for ship-timbers, of which many vessels of all classes have been built. The people of this coast, hardy, robust, and strong, are disposed to compete in the world's commerce, and it is nothing against the master mariner if the birthplace mentioned on his certificate be Nova Scotia. I was born in a cold spot, on coldest North Mountain, on a cold February 20, though I am a citizen of the United States — a naturalized Yankee, if it may be said that Nova Scotians are not Yankees in the truest sense of the word. On both sides my family were sailors; and if any Slocum should be found not seafaring, he will show at least an inclination to whittle models of boats and contemplate voyages. My father was the sort of man who, if wrecked on a desolate island, would find his way home, if he had a jack-knife and could find a tree. He was a good judge of a boat, but the old clay farm which some calamity made his was an anchor to him. He was not afraid of a capful of wind, and he never took a back seat at a camp-meeting or a good, old-fashioned revival.
As for myself, the wonderful sea charmed me from the first. At the age of eight I had already been afloat along with other boys on the bay, with chances greatly in favor of being drowned. When a lad I filled the important post of cook on a fishing-schooner; but I was not long in the galley, for the crew mutinied at the appearance of my first duff, and "chucked me out" before I had a chance to shine as a culinary artist. The next step toward the goal of happiness found me before the mast in a full-rigged ship bound on a foreign voyage. Thus I came "over the bows," and not in through the cabin windows, to the command of a ship.
My best command was that of the magnificent ship Northern Light, of which I was part-owner. I had a right to be proud of her, for at that time — in the eighties — she was the finest American sailing-vessel afloat. Afterward I owned and sailed the Aquidneck, a little bark which of all man's handiwork seemed to me the nearest to perfection of beauty, and which in speed, when the wind blew, asked no favors of steamers. I had been nearly twenty years a shipmaster when I quit her deck on the coast of Brazil, where she was wrecked. My home voyage to New York with my family was made in the canoe Liberdade, without accident.
My voyages were all foreign. I sailed as freighter and trader principally to China, Australia, and Japan, and among the Spice Islands. Mine was not the sort of life to make one long to coil up one's ropes on land, the customs and ways of which I had finally almost forgotten. And so when times for freighters got bad, as at last they did, and I tried to quit the sea, what was there for an old sailor to do? I was born in the breezes, and I had studied the sea as perhaps few men have studied it, neglecting all else. Next in attractiveness, after seafaring, came ship-building. I longed to be master in both professions, and in a small way, in time, I accomplished my desire. From the decks of stout ships in the worst gales I had made calculations as to the size and sort of ship safest for all weather and all seas. Thus the voyage which I am now to narrate was a natural outcome not only of my love of adventure, but of my lifelong experience.
One midwinter day of 1892, in Boston, where I had been cast up from old ocean, so to speak, a year or two before, I was cogitating whether I should apply for a command, and again eat my bread and butter on the sea, or go to work at the shipyard, when I met an old acquaintance, a whaling-captain, who said: "Come to Fairhaven and I'll give you a ship. But," he added, "she wants some repairs." The captain's terms, when fully explained, were more than satisfactory to me. They included all the assistance I would require to fit the craft for sea. I was only too glad to accept, for I had already found that I could not obtain work in the shipyard without first paying fifty dollars to a society, and as for a ship to command — there were not enough ships to go round. Nearly all our tall vessels had been cut down for coal-barges, and were being ignominiously towed by the nose from port to port, while many worthy captains addressed themselves to Sailors' Snug Harbor.
The next day I landed at Fairhaven, opposite New Bedford, and found that my friend had something of a joke on me. For seven years the joke had been on him. The "ship" proved to be a very antiquated sloop called the Spray, which the neighbors declared had been built in the year 1. She was affectionately propped up in a field, some distance from salt water, and was covered with canvas. The people of Fairhaven, I hardly need say, are thrifty and observant. For seven years they had asked, "I wonder what Captain Eben Pierce is going to do with the old Spray?" The day I appeared there was a buzz at the gossip exchange: at last some one had come and was actually at work on the old Spray. "Breaking her up, I s'pose?" "No; going to rebuild her." Great was the amazement. "Will it pay?" was the question which for a year or more I answered by declaring that I would make it pay.
My ax felled a stout oak-tree near by for a keel, and Farmer Howard, for a small sum of money, hauled in this and enough timbers for the frame of the new vessel. I rigged a steam-box and a pot for a boiler. The timbers for ribs, being straight saplings, were dressed and steamed till supple, and then bent over a log, where they were secured till set. Something tangible appeared every day to show for my labor, and the neighbors made the work sociable. It was a great day in the Spray shipyard when her new stem was set up and fastened to the new keel. Whaling-captains came from far to survey it. With one voice they pronounced it "A 1," and in their opinion "fit to smash ice." The oldest captain shook my hand warmly when the breast-hooks were put in, declaring that he could see no reason why the Spray should not "cut in bow-head" yet off the coast of Greenland. The much-esteemed stem-piece was from the butAt of the smartest kind of a pasture oak. It afterward split a coral patch in two at the Keeling Islands, and did not receive a blemish. Better timber for a ship than pasture white oak never grew. The breast-hooks, as well as all the ribs, were of this wood, and were steamed and bent into shape as required. It was hard upon March when I began work in earnest; the weather was cold; still, there were plenty of inspectors to back me with advice. When a whaling-captain hove in sight I just rested on my adz awhile and "gammed" with him.
New Bedford, the home of whaling-captains, is connected with Fairhaven by a bridge, and the walking is good. They never "worked along up" to the shipyard too often for me. It was the charming tales about arctic whaling that inspired me to put a double set of breast-hooks in the Spray, that she might shunt ice.
The seasons came quickly while I worked. Hardly were the ribs of the sloop up before apple-trees were in bloom. Then the daisies and the cherries came soon after. Close by the place where the old Spray had now dissolved rested the ashes of John Cook, a revered Pilgrim father. So the new Spray rose from hallowed ground. From the deck of the new craft I could put out my hand and pick cherries that grew over the little grave. The planks for the new vessel, which I soon came to put on, were of Georgia pine an inch and a half thick. The operation of putting them on was tedious, but, when on, the calking was easy. The outward edges stood slightly open to receive the calking, but the inner edges were so close that I could not see daylight between them. All the butts were fastened by through bolts, with screw-nuts tightening them to the timbers, so that there would be no complaint from them. Many bolts with screw-nuts were used in other parts of the construction, in all about a thousand. It was my purpose to make my vessel stout and strong.
Now, it is a law in Lloyd's that the Jane repaired all out of the old until she is entirely new is still the Jane. The Spray changed her being so gradually that it was hard to say at what point the old died or the new took birth, and it was no matter. The bulwarks I built up of white-oak stanchions fourteen inches high, and covered with seven-eighth-inch white pine. These stanchions, mortised through a two-inch covering-board, I calked with thin cedar wedges. They have remained perfectly tight ever since. The deck I made of one-and-a-half-inch by three-inch white pine spiked to beams, six by six inches, of yellow or Georgia pine, placed three feet apart. The deck-in closures were one over the aperture of the main hatch, six feet by six, for a cooking-galley, and a trunk farther aft, about ten feet by twelve, for a cabin. Both of these rose about three feet above the deck, and were sunk sufficiently into the hold to afford head-room. In the spaces along the sides of the cabin, under the deck, I arranged a berth to sleep in, and shelves for small storage, not forgetting a place for the medicine-chest. In the midship hold, that is, the space between cabin and galley, under the deck, was room for provision of water, salt beef, etc., ample for many months.
The hull of my vessel being now put together as strongly as wood and iron could make her, and the various rooms partitioned off, I set about "calking ship." Grave fears were entertained by some that at this point I should fail. I myself gave some thought to the advisability of a "professional calker." The very first blow I struck on the cotton with the calking-iron, which I thought was right, many others thought wrong. "It'll crawl!" cried a man from Marion, passing with a basket of clams on his back. "It'll crawl!" cried another from West Island, when he saw me driving cotton into the seams. Bruno simply wagged his tail. Even Mr. Ben J——, a noted authority on whaling-ships, whose mind, however, was said to totter, asked rather confidently if I did not think "it would crawl." "How fast will it crawl?" cried my old captain friend, who had been towed by many a lively sperm-whale. "Tell us how fast," cried he, "that we may get into port in time." However, I drove a thread of oakum on top of the cotton, as from the first I had intended to do. And Bruno again wagged his tail. The cotton never "crawled." When the calking was finished, two coats of copper paint were slapped on the bottom, two of white lead on the topsides and bulwarks. The rudder was then shipped and painted, and on the following day the Spray was launched. As she rode at her ancient, rust-eaten anchor, she sat on the water like a swan.
The Spray's dimensions were, when finished, thirty-six feet nine inches long, over all, fourteen feet two inches wide, and four feet two inches deep in the hold, her tonnage being nine tons net and twelve and seventy-one hundredths tons gross.
Then the mast, a smart New Hampshire spruce, was fitted, and likewise all the small appurtenances necessary for a short cruise. Sails were bent, and away she flew with my friend Captain Pierce and me, across Buzzard's Bay on a trial-trip—all right. The only thing that now worried my friends along the beach was, "Will she pay?" The cost of my new vessel was $553.62 for materials, and thirteen months of my own labor. I was several months more than that at Fairhaven, for I got work now and then on an occasional whale-ship fitting farther down the harbor, and that kept me the overtime.
CHAPTER 2Failure 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.
I SPENT a season in my new craft fishing on the coast, only to find that I had not the cunning properly to bait a hook. But at last the time arrived to weigh anchor and get to sea in earnest. 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 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 flag 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 that there could be no turning back, and that I was engaging in an adventure the meaning of which I thoroughly understood. I had taken little advice from any one, for I had a right to my own opinions in matters pertaining to the sea. That the best of sailors might do worse than even I alone was borne in upon me not a league from Boston docks, where a great steamship, fully manned, officered, and piloted, lay stranded and broken. This was the Venetian. She was broken completely in two over a ledge. So in the first hour of my lone voyage I had proof that the Spray could at least do better than this full-handed steamship, for I was already farther on my voyage than she. "Take warning, Spray, and have a care," I uttered aloud to my bark, passing fairylike silently down the bay.
The wind freshened, and the Spray rounded Deer Island light, going at the rate of seven knots. Passing it, she squared away direct for Gloucester, where she was to procure some fishermen's stores. Waves dancing joyously across Massachusetts Bay met the sloop coming out, to dash themselves instantly into myriads of sparkling gems that hung about her breast at every surge. The day was perfect, the sunlight clear and strong. Every particle of water thrown into the air became a gem, and the Spray, making good her name as she dashed ahead, snatched necklace after necklace from the sea, and as often threw them away. We have all seen miniature rainbows about a ship's prow, but the Spray flung out a bow of her own that day, such as I had never seen before. Her good angel had embarked on the voyage; I so read it in the sea.
Bold Nahant was soon abeam, then Marblehead was put astern. Other vessels were outward bound, but none of them passed the Spray flying along on her course. I heard the clanking of the dismal bell on Norman's Woe as we went by; and the reef where the schooner Hesperus struck I passed close aboard. The "bones" of a wreck tossed up lay bleaching on the shore abreast. The wind still freshening, I settled the throat of the mainsail to ease the sloop's helm, for I could hardly hold her before it with the whole mainsail set. A schooner ahead of me lowered all sail and ran into port under bare poles, the wind being fair. As the Spray brushed by the stranger, I saw that some of his sails were gone, and much broken canvas hung in his rigging, from the effects of a squall.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum, Thomas Fogarty, George Varian. Copyright © 1956 Dover Publications, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of Dover Publications, Inc..
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Table of Contents
CHAPTER I
A blue-nose ancestry with Yankee proclivities
Youthful fondness for the sea
Master of the ship Nothern 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
Amoung 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
A bout 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 to 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 flight
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 achorage
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 Vailma
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 Cooktown
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 Kelling 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 Rodiguez
Taken for Antichrist
The govener calms the fears of the people
A lecture
A convent in the hills
CHAPTER XVII
A clean bill of health at Mauritus
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 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
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