Joshua Slocum (February 20, 1844 – on or shortly after November 14, 1909) was the first person to sail single-handedly around the world. He was a Nova Scotian-born, naturalised American seaman and adventurer, and a noted writer. In 1900 he wrote a book about his journey, Sailing Alone Around the World, which became an international best-seller. He disappeared in November 1909 while aboard his boat, the Spray.
Nova Scotian childhood Joshua Slocum was born on February 20, 1844, in Mount Hanley, Annapolis County, Nova Scotia (officially recorded as Wilmot Station), a community on the North Mountain within sight of the Bay of Fundy. The fifth of eleven children of John SlocombGeoffrey Wolff, The Hard Way Around: The Passages of Joshua Slocum, p. 8: spelling of family name given as "Slocombe". and Sarah Jane Slocombe née Southern, Joshua descended, on his father's side, from a Quaker known as "John the Exile", who left the United States shortly after 1780 because of his opposition to the American War for Independence.Geoffrey Wolff, The Hard Way Around: The Passages of Joshua Slocum, p. 11 As part of the Loyalist migration to Nova Scotia, the Slocombes were granted of farmland in Nova Scotia's Annapolis County.
Joshua Slocum was born in the family's farmhouse in Mount Hanley and learned to read and write at the nearby Mount Hanley School. His earliest ventures on the water were made on coastal schooners operating out of the small ports such as Port George and Cottage Cove near Mount Hanley along the Bay of Fundy.
When Joshua was eight years old, the Slocomb family (Joshua changed the spelling of his last name later in his life)Geoffrey Wolff, The Hard Way Around: The Passages of Joshua Slocum moved from Mount Hanley to Brier Island in Digby County, at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy. Slocum's maternal grandfather was the keeper of the lighthouse at Southwest Point there. His father, a stern man and strict disciplinarian, took up making leather boots for the local fishermen, and Joshua helped in the shop. However, the boy found the scent of salt air much more alluring than the smell of shoe leather. He yearned for a life of adventure at sea, away from his demanding father and his increasingly chaotic life at home among so many brothers and sisters.
He made several attempts to run away from home, finally succeeding, at age fourteen, by hiring on as a cabin boy and cook on a fishing schooner, but he soon returned home. In 1860, after the birth of the eleventh Slocombe child and the subsequent death of his kindly mother, Joshua, then sixteen, left home for good. He and a friend signed on at Halifax as ordinary seamen on a merchant ship bound for Dublin, Ireland.
Early life at sea From Dublin, he crossed to Liverpool to become an ordinary seaman on the British merchant ship Tangier (also recorded as Tanjore), bound for China. During two years as a seaman he rounded Cape Horn twice, landed at Batavia (now Jakarta) in the Dutch East Indies, and visited the Maluku Islands, Manila, Hong Kong, Saigon, Singapore, and San Francisco. While at sea, he studied for the Board of Trade examination, and, at the age of eighteen, he received his certificate as a fully qualified Second Mate. Slocum quickly rose through the ranks to become a Chief Mate on British ships transporting coal and grain between the British Isles and San Francisco.
In 1865, he settled in San Francisco, became an American citizen, and, after a period spent salmon fishing and fur trading in the Oregon Territory of the northwest, he returned to the sea to pilot a schooner in the coastal trade between San Francisco and Seattle. His first blue-water command, in 1869, was the barque Washington, which he took across the Pacific, from San Francisco to Australia, and home via Alaska.
He sailed for thirteen years out of the port of San Francisco, transporting mixed cargo to China, Australia, the Spice Islands, and Japan. Between 1869 and 1889 he was the master of eight vessels, the first four of which (the Washington, the Constitution, the Benjamin Aymar and the Amethyst) he commanded in the employ of others. Later, there would be four others that he himself owned, in whole or in part.
Family at sea
On 9 January 1871, Slocum and the Constitution put in at Sydney.Constitution, American schooner, 362 tons, Slocumb [sic], from San Francisco, [left on] 3rd November. Passengers – 20 in the steerage. Laidley, Ireland, and Co., agents. Evening News 9 January 1871
The Constitution, from San Francisco, is a large American schooner of 362 tons. She has made a good passage of sixty-five days, and brings a cargo of lumber, fish, &c. Captain Slocom [sic] reports having sailed on the 3rd November; had light N.E. winds until reaching the vicinity of Norfolk Island; from thence strong S.W. winds. Empire 10 January 1871
Constitution described by the local shipping agent as a clipper barquentine. The Sydney Morning Herald 12 Jan 1871 There he met, courted, and married Virginia Albertina Walker. They were married on January 31, 1871 and the couple left Sydney on the Constitution the following day.SLOCUM–WALKER – January 31, by the Rev. James Greenwood, Captain Joshua Slocum, ship Constitution, Boston, Mass. U.S., to Virginia Albertina, daughter of William H. Walker, Survey Department. The Sydney Morning Herald 24 Feb 1871CLEARANCES – February 1. Constitution, schooner, 362 tons, Slocum, for San Francisco. Passengers – Mrs. Slocum, Mrs. Thompson, Misses Thompson (2). Evening News (Sydney) 2 February 1871 Miss Walker, quite coincidentally, was an American whose New York family had migrated west to California at the time of the 1849 gold rush and eventually continued on, by ship, to settle in Australia. She sailed with Slocum, and, over the next thirteen years, the couple had seven children, all born at sea or foreign ports. Four children, sons Victor, Benjamin Aymar, and James Garfield, and daughter Jessie, survived to adulthood.
In Alaska, the Washington was wrecked when she dragged her anchor during a gale, ran ashore, and broke up. Slocum, however, at considerable risk to himself, managed to save his wife, the crew, and much of the cargo, bringing all back to port safely in the ship's open boats. The owners of the shipping company that had employed Slocum were so impressed by this feat of ingenuity and leadership, they gave him the command of the Constitution which he sailed to Hawaii and the west coast of Mexico.
His next command was the Benjamin Aymar, a merchant vessel in the South Seas trade. However, the owner, strapped for cash, sold the vessel out from under Slocum, and he and Virginia found themselves stranded in the Philippines without a ship.
The Pato While in the Philippines, in 1874, under a commission from a British architect, Slocum organized local workers to build a 150-ton steamer in the shipyard at Subic Bay. In partial payment for the work, he was given the ninety-ton schooner, Pato (Spanish for "Duck"), the first ship he could call his own.
Ownership of the Pato afforded Slocum the kind of freedom and autonomy he had never previously experienced. Hiring a crew, he contracted to deliver a cargo to Vancouver in British Columbia. Thereafter, he used the Pato as a general freight carrier along the west coast of North America and in voyages back and forth between San Francisco and Hawaii. During this period, Slocum also fulfilled a long-held ambition to become a writer, and became a temporary correspondent for the San Francisco Bee.
The Slocums sold the Pato in Honolulu in the spring of 1878. Returning to San Francisco, they purchased the Amethyst. He worked this ship until June 23, 1881.Geoffrey Wolff, The Hard Way Around: The Passages of Joshua Slocum, pp. 70–75
The Slocums next bought a third share in the Northern Light 2. This large clipper was 233 feet in length, 44 feet beam, 28 feet in the hold. It was capable of carrying 2000 tons on three decks. Although Joshua Slocum called this ship "my best command", it was a command plagued with mutinies and mechanical problems. Under troubling legal circumstances (caused by his alleged treatment of the chief mutineer) he sold his share in the Northern Light 2 in 1883.Geoffrey Wolff, The Hard Way Around: The Passages of Joshua Slocum, pp. 76–111
The Aquidneck The Slocum family continued on their next ship, the 326-ton Aquidneck. In 1884, Slocum's wife Virginia became ill aboard the Aquidneck in Buenos Aires and died. After sailing to Massachusetts, Slocum left his three youngest children, Benjamin Aymar, Jessie, and Garfield in the care of his sisters; his oldest son Victor continued as his first mate.Berthold p. xix
In 1886, at age 42, Slocum married his 24-year-old cousin, Henrietta "Hettie" Elliott. The Slocum family, with the exception of Jessie and Benjamin Aymar, again took to the sea aboard the Aquidneck, bound for Montevideo, Uruguay. Slocum's second wife would find life at sea much less appealing than his first. A few days into Henrietta's first voyage, the Aquidneck sailed through a hurricane. By the end of this first year, the crew had contracted cholera, and they were quarantined for six months.Berthold p. xx Later, Slocum was forced to defend his ship from pirates, one of whom he shot and killed; following which he was tried and acquitted of murder. Next, the Aquidneck was infected with smallpox, leading to the death of three of the crew. Disinfecting of the ship was performed at considerable cost. Shortly afterward, near the end of 1887, the Aquidneck was wrecked in southern Brazil.
The Liberdade After being stranded in Brazil with his wife and sons Garfield and Victor, he started building a boat that could sail them home. He used local materials, salvaged materials from the Aquidneck, and worked with local workers. The boat was launched on May 13, 1888, the very day slavery was abolished in Brazil, and therefore the ship was given the name Liberdade, the Portuguese word for freedom. It was an unusual junk-rigged design which he described as "half Cape Ann dory and half Japanese sampan".Slocum (1890), Voyage of the Liberdade He and his family began their voyage back to the United States, his son Victor (15) being the mate.
After fifty-five days at sea and 5510 miles,Victor Slocum (1950), p. 193 the Slocums reached Cape Roman, South CarolinaCape Roman and continued inland to Washington D.C. for the winter and finally reaching Boston via New York in 1889. This was the last time Henrietta sailed with the family. In 1890, Slocum published his accounts of these adventures in Voyage of the Liberdade.Berthold pp. xxi–xxii
Voyage of the Destroyer In the northern winter of 1893–94, Slocum undertook what he described as, at that time, being "the hardest voyage that I have ever made, without any exception at all." It involved delivering the steam-powered torpedo boat Destroyer from the east coast of the United States to Brazil.
Destroyer was a ship in length, conceived by the Swedish-American inventor and mechanical engineer John Ericsson, and intended for the defence of harbours and coastal waters. Equipped in the early 1880s, with sloping armour plate and a bow-mounted submarine gun, it was an evolution of the Monitor warship type of the American Civil War. Destroyer was intended to fire an early form of torpedo at an opposing ship from a range of , and was a "vessel of war partially armored to attack bows-on at short range."
Despite the loss of the Aquidneck, and the privations of his family's voyage in the self-built Liberdade, Slocum retained a fondness for Brazil. During 1893, Brazil was faced with a political crisis in Rio Grande do Sul, and an attempt at civil war that was intensified by the revolt of the country's navy in September.