© 2022 WikipediaHere’s my favorite scene from Sailing Alone Around the World, which isn’t about ocean sailing at all, but rather, docking. “He was one of eight invited speakers at a dinner in honor of Mark Twain in December 1900.” “ Sailing Alone won widespread fame in the English-speaking world,” says Wikipedia. Arthur Ransome, the author of Swallows and Amazons, said, “Boys who do not like this book ought to be drowned at once.” “ was well compensated for participating in the fair” in the wake of his book’s success. Spray is hauled up the Erie Canal to the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. Sailing Alone Around the World continues to inspire sailors of all stripes. The legacy that Joshua Slocum left behind is unparalleled in the sailing universe, in both his feat as a mariner and his lasting prose as a writer. Slocum was declared legally dead in 1924. In July 1910, Slocum’s wife Henrietta told local reporters that she believed the famed captain had been lost at sea. Joshua Slocum never arrived in the Caribbean in 1909. For it is more than a record of an epic voyage: It is a masterpiece of vivid story telling.

“Some persons living today may remember when it was required reading in public schools. Slocum went on to pen the best-seller Sailing Alone Around the World, a seminal book that earned him critical and financial success. “The book rapidly became a bestseller and was reprinted many times,” says the introduction of SAATW. It was one of Slocum’s “typical winter voyages,” and practically a daysail for the man who, 20 years earlier, had completed the first-ever singlehanded circumnavigation of the world. On November 14, 1909, Captain Joshua Slocum set sail from Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, for the Caribbean aboard his 36-ft cutter Spray.

Slocum sail around the world