Sailing Alone Around The World | Page 3

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" 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"

[Illustration:]
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.
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.
[Illustration: Drawn by W. Taber. The Northern Light, Captain Joshua
Slocum, bound for Liverpool, 1885.]
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