Hard Way Around : The Passages of Joshua Slocum

by WOLFF, GEOFFREY

• ISBN13: 9781400043422
• ISBN10: 1400043425
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-10-19
• Publisher: Knopf

Summary

A masterful biographer now offers a thrilling, definitive portrait of one of history's most legendary icons of adventure. In 1860, sixteen-year-old Joshua Slocum escaped a hardscrabble childhood in Nova Scotia by signing on as an ordinary seaman to a merchant ship bound for Dublin. Despite having only a third-grade education, Slocum rose through the nautical ranks at a mercurial pace; just a decade later he was commander of his own ship. His subsequent journeys took him nearly everywhere: Liverpool, China, Japan, Cape Horn, the Dutch East Indies, Manila, Hong Kong, Saigon, Singapore, San Francisco, and Australiawhere he met and married his first wife, Virginia, who would sail along with him for the rest of her life, bearing and raising their children at sea. He commanded eight vessels and owned four, enduring hurricanes, shipwrecks, pirate attacks, cholera, smallpox, a mutiny, and the death of his wife and three of his children. Yet his ultimate adventure and crowning glory was still to come. In 1895 Slocum set sail from Gloucester, Massachusettsby himselfin theSpray,a small sloop of thirty-seven feet. More than three years and forty-six thousand miles later, he became the first man to circumnavigate the globe solo, a feat that wouldn't be replicated until 1925. His account of that voyage,Sailing Alone Around the World, soon made him internationally famous. He met President Theodore Roosevelt on several occasions and became a presence on the lecture circuit, selling his sea-saga books whenever and wherever he could. But scandal soon followed, and a decade later, with his finances failing, he set off alone once moreand was never seen again. Geoffrey Wolff captures this singular life and its flamboyant timesfrom the Golden Age of Sail to a shockingly different new centuryin vivid, fascinating detail.

Author Biography

Geoffrey Wolff is the author of four works of nonfiction and six novels. In 1994 he received the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Bath, Maine.

Table of Contents

Sailing into the World
Prologue The Tales He Could Have Told	p. 3
Unafraid of a Capful of Wind	p. 7
Coming Aboard Through the Hawse-Hole	p. 13
Master Slocum	p. 33
Love Stories	p. 47
Enterprises	p. 61
Northern Light	p. 77
Mutiny	p. 87
Stranding	p. 113
Sailing Around It
Salvage	p. 131
Destroyer and Poverty Point	p. 141
The Great Adventure	p. 157
What Came After	p. 191
Acknowledgments	p. 215
Bibliography of Sources Cited	p. 217
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

 The Tales He Could Have Told

Joshua slocum'sSailing Alone Around the World(1900),his account of his audacious achievement as the first to complete a solocircumnavigation, is a tour de force of descriptive and narrative power. Histwo previous accounts of his voyages-The Voyage of the "Liberdade"(1890) andThe Voyage of the "Destroyer"(1893)--are less remarkableonly for the huge shadow cast by his masterwork. To know what he achieved is tounderstand why the National Geographic Society, learning about Charles Lindbergh's solo transatlantic flight in 1927, elevated Lucky Lindy to a smallpantheon that included such notable voyagers as Dr. David Livingstone, SirGalahad, and Joshua Slocum. To read Slocum is to understand why GeorgePlimpton, in a charming personal essay about the most intriguing men and womenknown to history, wrote that Slocum would be one of the few he'd bring backfrom the grave to share a dinner and conversation. And what Plimpton knew ofhim didn't include the books that he'd been too busy to write.

Slocum might have made a grand adventure story of daring, catastrophe, and self-salvage from the facts of his honeymoon voyage as masterof theWashington.Following his wedding in Sydney, Australia, to Virginia-theAmerican daughter of a gold prospector-the couple sailed to Cook Inlet a coupleof years after the United States bought Alaska from the Russians. Seward'sIcebox (aka Seward's Folly) teemed with salmon that Slocum and his crew meant to catch, and did, but theWashingtonwas driven aground and destroyed during agale. Slocum rescued his crew and their haul by building small boats from thewreckage, then daring to make the difficult passage to Kodiak Island and thenceto Seattle and San Francisco, where the fish were sold at a pretty price.

And it would be a thrilling study of enterprise andexotic geography to read Slocum's account of his adventures with the Pato, asmall packet that he and his family came by in Subic Bay as recompense for theyear they spent on a crocodile-infested beach, searching the branches above forboa constrictors and shaking centipedes and scorpions from their boots. Slocumhad been hired to build a steamship hull, but instead of his promised paymenthe was given thePato, without a deck or cabin. Never mind: he built what heneeded to float his family and to trade in the Pacific, and soon they sailedthe schooner from Manila to Hong Kong and the Okhotsk Sea to fish for cod. Fourdays before the fishing began, Virginia gave birth to twin girls, but she thenstood undaunted at thePato'srail with her infant son, Victor, hand-lining thehuge fish aboard. It was a great catch, and once thePatowas so loaded shebarely floated, Slocum sailed to Portland, where he sold the fish door-to-door.The twins died. The Pato next sailed for Honolulu, where his boat was shown offin an informal race against the fastest packet in Hawaiian waters, and won, where upon Slocum sold her for a small fortune in gold pieces.

And it should be wished that Slocum had written theserial tragedy of his voyages with his family aboard theNorthern Light,theapogee of his merchant-shipping career. At Hong Kong in 1881, aged thirty-seven, he became one-third owner and master of "this magnificentship, my best command," as he uncharacteristically boasted. The medium clipperNorthern Light, built eight years before and after the age of clipperships had passed, had a length of 233 feet, a beam of 44, and three decks. Itwas not only huge, spreading acres of canvas, but also built to demand attention: "I had a right to be proud of her," Slocum wrote,"for at that time she was the finest ship afloat."

Students of tragedy will recognize these words as aforeshadowing prologue, the pride that cometh before the proverbial sadheadline. Slocum's hubris at first seemed justified as theNorthern Lightsailed to Manila, Liverpool, and New York, where h