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Summary
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 Australia--where 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, Massachusetts--by himself--in the Spray, 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 more--and was never seen again.
Geoffrey Wolff captures this singular life and its flamboyant times--from the Golden Age of Sail to a shockingly different new century--in vivid, fascinating detail.
Author Notes
Geoffrey Wolff (born 1937) is an American author and professor emeritus of English at the University of California, Irvine, where he directed the university's M.F.A creative writing program until 2006.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In Wolff's (Edge of Maine) biographical sketch of Joshua Slocum, a 19th-century mariner explorer and entrepreneur, accounts of Slocum's bold exploits abound, and abound, and abound. After a rigid and dreary childhood, Slocum applied his substantial engineering genius to a capricious, boat-dwelling lifestyle. "Again and again, when Slocum found himself in a fix he would boat-build his escape." According to Wolff, who all but deifies his subject, Slocum was a "carpe-diem kind of fellow... remarkable even in such a carpe-diem period in our carpe-diem country's history." He was a calculating gambling man with economic savoir faire, an awareness of the world, and a lucky-streak as wide as his wake. Ultimately, however, despite his resourcefulness, courage, and cunning, it's difficult to ignore his personal shortcomings; Wolff cannot write around Slocum's arrogance and general unpleasantness as a man. Nor can Wolff write himself out of a dull portrayal of his subject, and his biography often reads more like a reference book for turn-of-the-century folly. While Wolff may succeed in inspiring a spirit of adventure in some, it's hard to imagine him not alienating others. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Legendary sailor Joshua Slocum is the subject of this easily digestible biography-as-travel-narrative. Slocum's claim to fame rests on his solo circumnavigation of the globe, the first person to do so, and his account of his achievement, Sailing Alone around the World (1900), was, according to author Wolff, more than enough to secure his standing as a great writer, navigator, and adventurer, our American Sinbad. Slocum grew up in coastal Nova Scotia under a strict father. Childhood employment in a tannery came to a blessed end at age 16, when he escaped, rather naturally, to the sea. He aimed at eventually securing a captaincy of a commercial vessel this in the golden age of sailing, the early to mid-1800s and he achieved his goal at an astonishingly early age. Unfortunately, Wolff's self-conscious and cliché-ridden style is a stumbling block to full reader enjoyment. ( Few of his enterprises better dramatize what a carpe diem kind of fellow he was, remarkable even in such a carpe diem period of our carpe diem country's history. )--Hooper, Brad Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
I GREW up loving Joshua Slocum's "Sailing Alone Around the World." It was "Walden" without the training wheels. Whereas Thoreau made so much of his precious solitude in a shack only a couple of miles from his home in Concord, Slocum actually put himself at risk. In his 50s, pistol-whipped by fate, he set out in a largely self-built 36-foot sailboat and somehow managed to circumnavigate the earth. He might have been without a crew, but he was hardly alone; he had the magical Spray for a companion: a vessel that could literally steer herself for hundreds of miles at a time while he reclined contentedly in his book-lined cabin eating salt cod and reading "Don Quixote." For a landlocked teenager who had both nautical and literary ambitions, Slocum was almost too good to be true. I also developed an early appreciation for the writer Geoffrey Wolff, whose 1979 book "The Duke of Deception" remains one of my favorite memoirs. When I learned that Wolff had written a biography of Slocum, it seemed an ideal pairing. But a disturbing doubt began to creep into my consciousness. Did I really want to know more about Joshua Slocum? No real person could possibly measure up to the narrator of "Sailing Alone Around the World." And as Wolff writes in one of the many fascinating notes in his new book, there is no accounting for how a reader will react to the subject of a biography. "The responses of book reviewers to subjects of biography are as unpredictable as the responses of a friend to someone introduced with the assurance 'You'll love her.'" I needn't have worried. "The Hard Way Around" is the best of books: a literary biography that also happens to be an adventure story. As it turns out, Slocum's back story is just as enthralling, if not more so, than anything that happened to him aboard the Spray. Indeed, portions of his life read like a novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. Instead of subjecting Slocum to the needless third degree, Wolff approaches his subject as an unapologetic fan. At one point, he recounts his initial, completely unexpected response to an early passage in "Sailing Alone Around the World": "I stumbled on this run of language, bearing its load so easily, and the emotional burden it discharges so cunningly. Taking my breath away, it made me feel what I can only describe as love." Wolff does not fall victim to the modern obsession with having to find a new, never-before-glimpsed scrap of useless information about a time-worn topic; he is content, and self-confident enough, to provide his own view of the existing record. Instead of being intimidated by the many researchers and writers who have come before him in the search for Slocum, he embraces their labors. He even concludes with a passage from another author. After finishing this little book (which I did not want to end), I decided it was worthy of the admonition the British children's writer Arthur Ransome directed toward prospective readers of Slocum's narrative: those "who do not like this book ought to be drowned at once." Part of what makes Slocum, who was bom in Nova Scotia in 1844, such a mesmerizing figure was his determination to be a sailor at a time when steam power was clearly where the maritime future lay. Was Slocum, a willful anachronism, being foolhardy or simply true to an imperishable ideal? Wolff has fun with exploring the issue: "Doesn't everyone know that in our beginning is our end? But So what doesn't account for his plunge off the deep end. Almost any calling that might be considered - poet or autoworker or jazz pianist - seems from the perspective of common sense to be quixotic and probably doomed. Maybe it is enough to say So what?" Which raises the question: Was Slocum's golden age of sail all that golden? Well, yes and no. Many of the crews of these big and beautiful square-riggers were, according to at least one account, filled by "moronic bipeds" - drunken, violent lowlifes with no other options. And yet, Wolff points out, the skills required to work these ships were considerable. "Anyone who has struggled - from the comfort of a cozy easy chair in front of a cheering fire - to comprehend the names and purposes of the parts aboard one of Patrick O' Brian's ships will appreciate the complexity of a novice seaman's task." In the end, Wolff, like most of us with a soft spot for the sea, cannot contain his enthusiasm for the bygone days when huge commercial sailing vessels paused briefly in the harbors of the world like "greyhounds straining sleekly at their heavy chain leashes, about to weigh anchor and fill the sky with canvas and go to the other side of the earth at speeds more appropriate to a locomotive than a boat." At the age of 26, during a stop in Sydney, Australia, Slocum fell almost instantly in love with the pretty and determined Virginia Walker. In two weeks' time they were married. Thus began one of the great, ultimately tragic love stories of the sea. Virginia followed her husband from command to command: fishing for salmon in the northern Pacific, building a boat in the boa-infested jungles of the Philippines and standing at his side as he spectacularly shoehorned the 100-foot bark Amethyst into the crowded anchorage at Hong Kong under the very nose of a British admiral. Not long after, Slocum became part owner and master of one of the largest and most beautiful sailing vessels afloat, the Northern Light. Slocum considered this command to be the highlight of his career, but not Wolff, who rightly points out that "hardheaded prudence often enjoys a holiday when sailboats are being considered." Although big and beautiful, the Northern Light was anything but well built - an essential fact that Slocum seems to have stubbornly ignored. A poisonous combination of breakdowns and crew problems soon ensnared him in a variety of legal difficulties that ultimately forced him to sell his share of the vessel. With the prices of large, antiquated square-riggers plummeting, Slocum managed to buy the 138-foot Aquidneck at auction. Soon after, however, while the ship was anchored off Buenos Aires, Virginia succumbed to what may have been a congenital heart defect and died at the age of 34. Slocum had lost the love of his life. "Father's days were done with the passing of mother," his son Benjamin, who was one of four children, remembered. "They were pals." WOLFF'S account of his hero's subsequent, more familiar career as a solo sailor is adroitly and economically told. Wolff speaks of the "imperviousness of Slocum's emotional bulkheads, tightly sealed against the penetration of despair or complaint." But as he also points out, "grief is not date-stamped," and the sadness hidden within Slocum during his globe-girdling voyage is what drives much of the emotional energy of "Sailing Alone Around the World." After the publication of his narrative, Slocum's sadness got the better of him. He purchased a farm for himself and his second wife, Henrietta, on Martha's Vineyard but seems to have spent most of his days continuing to sail alone on the increasingly dilapidated Spray, heading south in the winter and cruising the Cape and islands in the summer. He was last seen departing the Vineyard in November 1908. What happened after that will never be known. One theory holds that he and the Spray were run down and sunk in the shipping lanes by one of the iron-hulled steamers he so despised - "that in effect," Wolff writes, "he was murdered by modernity." In his 50s, Slocum set out in a 36-foot sailboat and somehow managed to circumnavigate the earth. Nathaniel Philbrick is the author of "In the Heart of the Sea," "Mayflower" and, most recently, "The Last Stand."
Kirkus Review
An exhilarating depiction of the adventurer, shipbuilder and writerJoshua Slocum, who spent nearly his entire life at sea and was the first man to sail solo across the globe.It's tough to gauge which accomplishment merits more admirationthat Slocum left home at age 16 to start a heralded career as a deepwater captain or that in the twilight of life, he transformed a decaying sloop into a snug, fast vessel in which he sailed around the planet. Both require unimaginable stamina, courage, intelligence and love, and Slocum had plenty, as recounted in dynamic detail by Wolff (The Edge of Maine, 2005, etc.). Amid the steam revolution, Slocum held unrelenting loyalty to sailing ships, despite the frequent challenges and setbacks he and his family faced while traveling great distances to deliver cargo. On his honeymoon, he was forced to build a rescue boat from his own shipwreck. As a captain aboard theNorthern Light, he faced mutiny, and on theLiberdade, smallpox. Throughout, towering storms and touchy international relations made each voyage extremely difficult. Slocum didn't attempt a life on land until 1889, but he felt emotionally distant from both the culture and his second wifethiswas an unsurprisingly brief period in which he spent most of his time rebuilding an old wreck given to him by an acquaintance. Literally and figuratively, the author writes, "when Slocum found himself in a fix he would boat-build his escape." By 1895, the sloop was reborn as theresplendentSpray, ready for the ocean and equipped (somewhat unbelievably) with the ability to self-sail. This boat took Slocum on his three-year solo trip around the world, a feat unrivalled for more than 25 years afterward. Wolff explores both the global political atmosphere of the time and Slocum's complicated emotional state during inconceivable periods of isolation.The author frequentlylauds Slocum's autobiographical worksespecially Sailing Alone Around the World (1899)describing his writing as fresh-voiced and richly nuanced, and he quotes from these publications to add context to the narrative.A rewarding tale of life on the high seas.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
The Tales He Could Have Told Joshua slocum's Sailing 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) and The 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 the Washington. 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 the Washington was 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 the Pato , 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 the Pato's rail with her infant son, Victor, hand-lining thehuge fish aboard. It was a great catch, and once the Pato was 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 the Northern 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 clipper Northern 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 the Northern Light sailed to Manila, Liverpool, and New York, where her progress up the East Riverwas blocked by the Brooklyn Bridge. She had to have her top masts dismantled to pass under this monumental connection in the web of land routes and steam-powered conveyances that were rushing together to end Slocum's calling. Having refurbished his ship, Slocum began his voyage tothe Pacific with a crew that makes of "motley" an encomium. They gotas far as New London, Connecticut, before the Northern Light exhibited acharacter flaw, the failure of her rudder. The crew mutinied. The Coast Guard intervened, but not before a mutineer stabbed the first mate to death. Slocum wrote about none of this, nor about forging aheadwith the same awful crew, seeing the prophetic Great Comet of 1882, and passingnear Krakatoa after its initial eruptions in May 1883 and before its finalcataclysm in August but in time to sail into a sea of boiling pumice. He did commit to paper his rescue of Gilbert Island missionaries adrift for more than forty days in an open boat, and his transport of these grateful castaways to Yokohama, where he attempted unsuccessfully to have members of his restive crew removed. He sailed on for the Cape of Good Hope, where the ship'srudderhead-the same mechanism that had brought such dismay near NewLondon-twisted off. Huge seas then opened other weaknesses of hull structure, and only furious pumping kept the ship afloat, till it was noticed that the pumps' discharge was slowing, a trickling brown syrup as thick as molasses,which in fact was what they were pumping-a gummy slurry of the hold's cargo ofsugar and seawater. In newspaper interviews and court depositions, Slocum didrecord what befell him next. He reached a lucky haven in Port Elizabeth, wherethe Northern Light was patched up and he hired as a mate an ex-convict, Henry Slater, who was traveling under forged papers. Sailing for New York, the crewagain mutinied, and Slater was put in irons and confined to the hold on a dietof bread and water for fifty-three days. Upon arrival, Slater was freed and Slocum arrested, charged with excessive and unjust punishment of his prisoner.The trial was theatrical, with reversals of fortune and conflicting testimony,and the New York Times editorial page, rushing to misjudgment, vilified Slocumas a barbarian unfit to command a ship. He was fined and lost his ownership ofthe Northern Light , which was worth less in any case than repairs to her hulland rigging would cost. She was dismasted, sold as a coal barge, and tuggedport to port by a steamboat, sooty as the dust clouds from Krakatoa. It's no wonder Slocum didn't wish to tell this sad tale,which nevertheless deserves telling. What he did write was more than enough tosecure his standing as a great writer, navigator, and adventurer, our AmericanSinbad. The historian Bruce Catton wrote of Slocum in 1959 that it was fittingto "mention Slocum on the same page with Columbus, because all truevoyages of discovery are basically alike." And what makes a voyage "true"? Above all, it must be inward, "concerned first of all with something in himself, if it be nothing more than the conviction that if hesearches long enough he can make the world give him something he has not yet had." Excerpted from The Hard Way Around: The Passages of Joshua Slocum by Geoffrey Wolff All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents
| Part 1 Sailing into the World | |
| Prologue The Tales He Could Have Told | p. 3 |
| 1 Unafraid of a Capful of Wind | p. 7 |
| 2 Coming Aboard Through the Hawse-Hole | p. 13 |
| 3 Master Slocum | p. 33 |
| 4 Love Stories | p. 47 |
| 5 Enterprises | p. 61 |
| 6 Northern Light | p. 77 |
| 7 Mutiny | p. 87 |
| 8 Stranding | p. 113 |
| Part 2 Sailing Around It | |
| 9 Salvage | p. 131 |
| 10 Destroyer and Poverty Point | p. 141 |
| 11 The Great Adventure | p. 157 |
| 12 What Came After | p. 191 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 215 |
| Bibliography of Sources Cited | p. 217 |
