Alone at Sea : The Adventures of Joshua Slocum (9780385674072) (18 page)

— from Thomas Fleming Day’s tribute to
Joshua Slocum in
The Rudder
, January 1911

Ports of Call

The hope of landfall sustains a sailor on a long ocean passage. But keen as he is to see it, the appearance of land on the horizon may disappoint more than excite, and bring the realization that the destination may not have been why he first set sail.

The sheer scope of Slocum’s voyage meant that he could sail with greater freedom than most sailors: the occasional landfall wouldn’t overshadow his broad vistas. The
Spray
was his home, and his address was wherever she happened to be at the time. Circumnavigation was his definite goal, but he felt no hurry. He had no
prearranged schedules to live up to, and no one was waiting in port for him. He often sailed as the spirit moved him, even when he had been at sea for extended periods. After sailing for days to make an island in the South Pacific, he changed his plans close to landfall. Most people would have been ready to make port after spending more than a month at sea. Not Slocum, who was caught in the rhythm of a good passage and was reluctant to break it to go ashore. “
To be alone forty-three days would seem a long time, but in reality, even here, winged moments flew lightly by, and instead of my hauling in for Nukahiva, which I could have made as well as not, I kept on for Samoa, where I wished to make my next landing. This occupied twenty-nine days more, making seventy-two days in all. I was not distressed in any way at that time.”

Aboard the
Spray
, Slocum was a floating citizen of the world. Any port was home for as long as he wished. With each landfall he entered a completely different world. He sailed into scenes that were exquisite in their beauty, and others just as remarkable for their bleakness. He sailed into pristine harbors with sun-bleached cliffs, steep grassy slopes, volcanic rock formations, and white beaches. Although a seasoned world traveler, some of the changes startled him. On sighting the Keeling (Cocos) Islands after twenty-three days at sea, he recalled the excitement of spotting a coconut tree sticking out of the water directly ahead of him: “I expected to see this; still it thrilled me as an electric shock might have done. I slid down the mast,
trembling under the strangest sensation; and not able to resist the impulse, I sat on deck and gave way to my emotions. To folks in a parlor on shore this may seem weak indeed, but I am telling the story of a voyage alone.”

A sailor of experience and sensitivity knows the signs that land is approaching. Slocum would have noticed the smell of land, often described by people who have made long passages as the scent of vegetation. Or he would have noticed certain seabirds overhead. No matter how prepared, a sailor often feels terribly disconnected on making landfall. There is an exhaustion about getting into port that begins to settle in as soon as the anchor is down. A sailor can feel dulled and overwhelmed once his body registers that it can finally rest. Slocum liked to approach a port on his own terms, to observe it from a distance before getting caught up in the rhythms of life ashore. His pace of adjustment could be slow, as he admitted on casting anchor in Samoa on a summer day around noon: “
My vessel being moored, I spread an awning, and instead of going at once on shore I sat under it till late in the evening, listening with delight to the musical voices of the Samoan men and women.” This was all the contact he wanted after seventy-two days alone at sea.

When he arrived in Cape Town, he again chose not to hurry: “I preferred to remain for one day alone, in the quiet of a smooth sea, enjoying the retrospect of the passage of two capes.” As his trip progressed, he often found that word of his bold endeavors on his seaworthy little boat
had arrived before him. Thus, when Slocum sailed in, there was frequently a crowd assembled to greet him. People wanted to meet the “
plucky Yankee,” as one Australian reporter referred to him, and to cheer him along on his world adventure. At every port that stamped his yacht license, Slocum made quite an impression, and his daring exploits began appearing in the headlines of major papers en route. In Sydney, the
Morning Herald
hailed the captain as “the hero of the solitary voyage around the world,” and added that “he was enthusiastically cheered.” The enthusiasm over his visit was echoed in Tasmania, where the
North West Post
ran this news item: “So much interest has been attached to the daring voyager and levelheaded Yankee skipper, that when it was made known by means of handbills that the
Spray
was to arrive on Sunday, the beaches at Devonport were fairly lined by persons, waiting to catch a glimpse of the tiny boat and its intrepid commander.” Slocum was exciting imaginations everywhere. On the small South Atlantic island of St. Helena, the
Spray
’s visit was a major event, and the local paper caught the exitement of the moment: “The news of her arrival [caused] a commotion among the members of our apathetic community as is seldom witnessed, and crowds of people have gone to see and visit the vessel in which a feat requiring rare pluck and skill has been so successfully accomplished — a feat which, in its extreme daringness, would appear foolhardiness.”

Slocum rose to the challenge of his burgeoning fame
with proper aplomb, seadog charisma and natural flair for making the most of circumstances. The Gibraltar society column for August 23, 1895, reported that “
the gallant Captain’s miniature galley and ‘state room’ were inspected with much interest, and tea for a dozen was made at the small stove.” By all reports he was a traveling showman and raconteur worth coming out to see. A Tasmanian newspaper ran a feature article entitled “An Intrepid Navigator” that described the sea captain’s charm: “Five minutes in his company, and a person feels quite at home, and in drawing out snatches of his history one becomes faced with the fact that for daring this solitary seaman is hard to beat.”

Just how real a glimpse his admirers were getting of the captain is hard to know, for Slocum played many roles with ease. He could be Captain Slocum the old seadog, the intellect, the dashing world adventurer, the lone but gregarious traveler, or simply Joshua Slocum the humble, God-fearing sailor. He also knew how to play a crowd, as evidenced in one story out of Melbourne: “During his sojourn … he was the means of creating much excitement at St. Kilda by capturing a huge shark, 12 ft. long.” He displayed his impressive catch on deck as evidence of yet another spunky deed performed on his voyage.

Traveling from port to port, Slocum could enjoy company for as long as he wished and always on his own terms. When he tired of one place, he had only to pack up and sail away to another, having stayed long enough to
be admired, but not long enough to be known intimately. He controlled his own image, and there were certain aspects of Slocum the solitary sailor that he wanted to keep intact. It mattered greatly to him that people appreciated his navigational skills. His adamant response to a newspaper story that questioned his ability and integrity may have given people a true indication of just how ornery and insecure he could be: “
By the way, some one in Melbourne started a rumor that I could not possibly handle the vessel by myself, and that I had two men with me who were stowed away on arriving at a port. This is quite untrue, and I wish you to state that anyone is at perfect liberty to fumigate, search, or turn steam into the vessel, and I’ll guarantee that nothing will be found.”

Other misconceptions along the way must have given Slocum reason to chuckle to himself. Some of the situations he sailed into were downright ludicrous. His arrival off the island of Rodriguez, in the Indian Ocean east of Mauritius, coincided with the biblical teachings of the local abbé. The islanders were contemplating the coming of the Antichrist when the
Spray
sailed into their harbor like a white apparition, her sails taut before a strong wind. The good folk of Rodriguez scrambled from shore, certain that the Antichrist had arrived. To prove he wasn’t the Evil One, Slocum set about introducing himself, hoping to calm the commotion. Convincing as the old salt could be, fear of the ancient prophecy had a powerful grip on a few souls. He later recollected that
one elderly woman “when she heard of my advent, made for her house and locked herself in. When she heard that I was actually coming up the street she barricaded her doors, and did not come out while I was on the island, a period of eight days.” The governor of the island was entertaining that evening and invited the “destroyer of the world” — as Slocum now jokingly referred to himself — to share some of his adventures.

In Samoa he received another unlikely greeting. Three young women paddled their canoe up to his boat for closer inspection. They did not believe he had sailed the world alone. That he was alone at that point could only mean that he had eaten his companions. When he arrived at the Keeling (Cocos) Islands, his every move was monitored by children. It turned out that an island man had disappeared some years before, and the youngsters were trying to determine whether Slocum was the lost man with a change in skin color. There was further confusion as the captain was busy at work spreading a goopy mixture of coal tar on the
Spray
. Curious little eyes watched in amazement as he ate a lunch of sea biscuits topped with blackberry jam. Slocum heard them shouting, “The captain is eating coal-tar! The captain is eating coal-tar!” as they ran into the village to spread the wild news.

It is hard today to imagine the world through which Slocum was sailing. Nineteenth-century sailors stayed out of certain waterways for fear of piracy, avoided areas inhabited by cannibals, and were often greeted as the
first strangers ever to visit a locale. Unlike the missionaries, who often found their way to remote spots, Slocum had no desire to change how the native people thought; on the contrary, he expressed his disdain of proselytizing in a letter to a friend from the Keeling Islands: “
The heart of a missionary is all on fire to reconstruct the religion of this people. If ever one sets foot on this peaceful land, I hope he will not be of the soul-destroying sort that spoiled my early days.” Years later, Slocum’s son Ben Aymar described what his father thought of the missionary spirit: “He didn’t want your ignorance (on religious matters) crammed down his throat.” Slocum himself wrote in a letter that “I myself do not care much for your longfaced tyrannical Christians” and that he “never cared much for the devil after I grew up and got away to sea.”

Notwithstanding his somewhat irreligious attitude, Slocum had some personal pilgrimages to make along the way. While in Montevideo he made a short excursion up the River Plate with an old acquaintance from Cape Cod. Later he would give no reason for this trip, which he acknowledged was made “instead of proceeding at once on [the] voyage,” but he may well have wanted to sail past the cemetery where Virginia was buried. In Cooktown, Australia, he moored the
Spray
near the monument to Captain Cook. Here, Slocum did go ashore “to feast [his] eyes on the very stones the great navigator had seen, for I was now on a seaman’s consecrated ground.” His love
of literature enticed him to stay for over a week on the island where a Scottish sailor, Alexander Selkirk, had asked to be marooned after a violent argument with his ship’s captain. Daniel Defoe had based his novel
Robinson Crusoe
on Selkirk’s adventures, and Slocum “
of course made a pilgrimage to the old lookout place at the top of the mountain where Selkirk spent many days peering into the distance for the ship which came at last.” According to the inscribed rock tablet at the lookout, Selkirk lived in isolation on Juan Fernández for four years and four months. Slocum was so enchanted by the “blessed island” that he could only wonder, “Why Alexander Selkirk ever left you was more than I could make out.” Later, he would remember his final day on the island as quite possibly “the pleasantest on my whole voyage.” He spent his time with the children, who begged him to tell them the English names of objects, repeating them after him in sounds that “made the hills ring with mirth.” It was also on Juan Fernández that Slocum visited the graves, marked with rough lava rocks, of seamen “landed here to end days of sickness and get into a sailors’ heaven.” From Juan Fernández, Slocum left for Samoa on another literary pilgrimage. This time he met Fanny Stevenson, widow of Robert Louis Stevenson. In her he found a kindred spirit: “She told me that, along with her husband, she had voyaged in all manner of rickety craft among the islands of the Pacific, reflectively adding, ‘Our tastes were similar.’” Slocum was honored when she presented him with
four volumes of her husband’s sailing directories of the Mediterranean, inscribing the first of them: