Alone at Sea : The Adventures of Joshua Slocum (9780385674072) (22 page)

A portrait photograph of Slocum taken at Marion, Massachusetts. His family and neighbors were beginning to see his true eccentricity. Unknown photographer (1903)

Back on the water, Slocum moors the
Spray
at Port Antonio, Jamaica. Edward Brooks (1907)

Slocum emerges from the companionway of the
Spray
while moored in Washington. D.C. Winfield Scott Clime (1907)

While in Washington, Slocum regaled school children with stories of his adventures on the high seas. Unknown photographer (1907)

Occasionally lapsing into the lingo of the sea, but often varying his speech with words of sonorous sound and length that seem to argue an earnest and painstaking study of either the chef d’oeuvre of one Webster, or an intimate acquaintance with the best writers of history, the mariner’s flow of language is of a sort to impress, and at the same time affords an admirable vehicle for the tales of solitary ocean travel, which make him an A 1 entertainer, and which give to his lectures on his voyage round the world a unique charm
.

— a reporter’s description of Joshua
Slocum after his return

That Intrepid Water Tramp

Slocum had been back all of five days when he wrote a ranting letter to the New Bedford
Evening Standard
expressing a fervent desire to defend and fight for his country: “I want to give your people an earache. I’m not coming to say, ‘Oh! I’ve played the deuce, listen while I tell’; life is too short and there is too much to be done for that. I burn to be of some use now of all times. I spent the best of my life in the Philippine islands, China and Japan, but there is some life still in the old man … I am not fanatically suffering for a fight, but I am longing to be useful. Does Mr. McKinley want pilots for the Philippines
and Guam? If more fighting men were wanted I would be nothing loth.”

So he continued for over a dozen more lengthy sentences, before concluding with a gush of patriotism: “
But my heart is too full to write. I only blurr the paper. America is all right! After seeing much of the world this choice part of it is good enough for me! I’ll fight for it! But it is peace we want, not war! And peace we’re going to have, if we have to lick all creation to get it!”

Whenever Slocum was at loose ends, he looked to create purpose in his life. After taking on a trip around the world, he tended to think big. Four months later he unveiled the latest Slocum scheme to an audience in Carnegie Hall. His idea was to train young men in the science of navigation aboard a college ship. However, not just any ship would do. He wanted to build a vessel based on the most glorious of American clipper ships, with modifications to accommodate the three hundred students who would be making this two-year study voyage around the world. He hoped to attract educated young men who were already at college, rather than apprentice sailors. Perhaps courses in astronomy and literature could also be given aboard ship. He did not see the trip as
all
work, and mentioned to the Boston
Sun:
“the time to be spent in steady, practical work and the desirable recreation that visits to Oceanica [sic] and the Orient would supply.” His goal, he added, was “to equip [his students] as navigators, capable of handling and directing
sailing and steam ships, including men of war.” He envisioned a college ship that would “
induce people not primarily out for instruction in navigation to go on its cruises.” Slocum felt strongly that women should also be given the opportunity to sail, and made this curious admission, paraphrased by the reporter: “In fact, just as once on his voyage in the
Spray
he refused to stop at an island he might have made, although then 43 days out, because they wouldn’t have women there [Slocum passed Nukahiva of the Marquesas Islands preferring to stop at Samoa, another twenty-nine days away], so he says, he wouldn’t have anything to do with the scheme he has originated if women could not be included in its benefits.”

Nothing came of this grand dream, and Slocum responded as might be expected — by dreaming harder. He had always been an entrepreneur, and sometimes an outright huckster. And just as often he had nothing financially to show for it. He boldly told audiences everywhere, “I am not ashamed to say that when I started my enterprise [I had] $1.50 to my name …” Anyone who had known him long must have wondered what harebrained scheme the old skipper would come up with next. And they would have remembered him in the early days, as a merchantman hustling codfish. Then he had placed an ad in the
Morning Oregonian
proclaiming his codfish to be “pure.” Slocum knew how to put a spin on things, and marketed the ugly white fish as a kind of wonder food. It wasn’t technically a hoax, but all the word “pure” really
meant was that Slocum hadn’t processed the cod. Without realizing it, he had become one of the first purveyors of natural foods.

The captain had the freelancer’s shrewd knack for turning everything to some good. His son Victor wrote years later that his father’s skill in trading came from acting on intuition and general impressions. But he recalled one unfortunate deal involving ostrich feathers that Slocum had brought from Cape Town to New York City. The captain arrived in the American city to learn that a new law forbade decorating hats with bird feathers, and he was forced to store them. Throughout his career he was a tinker, always ready to fix or trade anything. He salvaged goods from shipwrecks to sell or barter at ports wherever he stopped. Slocum claimed that he had arrived home from his circumnavigation with “
several tons of freight on ship’s account, which will pay me ship master’s wages and more for the whole voyage.” In an article of June 12, 1898, a reporter for the New York
Herald
who boarded the
Spray
noted the treasures he saw in the sloop’s cabin: “
Curiosities of all sorts and from distant parts of the world hung on the walls, books and papers in profusion lay on all sides, besides many other objects, which at once impressed the fact on my mind that Cpt. Slocum is no mere foolhardy adventurer …” Slocum had always had a flexible mind and could readily adapt whatever was at hand to meet the needs of the situation. In the Grand Caymans he saw conch shells that he wanted
to add to his collection of well over a thousand. The shells were difficult to collect, and he turned his mind to a solution. Recalling the quahog rakes that were used in New England to harvest clams, he made his own rake from stiff wire from aboard the
Spray
. Not only did he have the desired shells but he also had a good story.

For Slocum was a brilliant storyteller. He even looked the part. The
New York Times
summed up his appearance: “Captain Slocum is fifty-four years old and is a perfect type of the weather-beaten, knockabout sailor.” Slocum knew he was on to something that could make him money. He had tested out his storytelling along the way, and summed up his successes in that department in a letter to the
Times of London
toward the end of the
Spray
’s circumnavigation: “It is not ‘the greatest-show-on-earth’ sort of scheme, neither am I a dime-museum navigator. If I can stand up and interest intelligent people by speaking to them of the world as I have seen it, I will be satisfied. I have already given many lectures in the places I have put into and while I have not made a fortune out of my voyage, I made more money than I did when I was sole owner and commander of a little bark.” He made this same point repeatedly in interviews upon his return. Now back in America, Slocum seemed destined for the role of raconteur cum lecturer.

Slocum had arrived home with an impressive array of clippings from newspapers around the world. He compiled some of the most complimentary and intriguing
of these in a publicity flyer, “
Press Comments — Captain Slocum’s Lectures.” Slocum must have felt it sounded a bit formal and crossed out the word “lectures,” scribbling instead “Talks — 100 slides of places visited and of peoples met on the voyage, savage and otherwise.” By most accounts, the skipper was an act worth catching: “The Captain has a droll, quaint humor and a characteristic Yankee turn of phrase which will add interest to a story intrinsically entrancing and well worth listening to,” reported the Natal
Mercury
during his November 1897 stay in South Africa.

The publicity worked. Slocum didn’t stop to rest from the trip before he began lecturing again. He gave his first talk just days after arriving back in Fairhaven, at the New Bedford City Hall. His show was illustrated by some three hundred lantern slides, most probably made from photos people had given him along the way. Slocum stood by his product, saying that his best slides would be “called first class in New York or London.” New Bedford’s
Standard
must have agreed. It commented on his lecture, “The views were very fine, equal to anything ever before presented in this city.”

By all reports, an evening with the captain was guaranteed to be entertaining. His manner may have been dry, but he knew instinctively how to tell a good yarn and keep an audience laughing: “I soon found that people wanted to help me. They wanted to laugh — not cry. I managed invariably to keep my audiences from falling
asleep.” Slocum was being modest — in fact, he knew how to hold them in the palm of his hand. He described the winds in the Strait of Magellan as strong enough to “blow the hair off a dog’s back.” Then, with superb timing, he added as an afterthought, “I left my hat there,” and rubbed his bald head. Audiences loved his tales of adventures, and word of his comedic gifts spread. One newspaper account related what Slocum ingenuously claimed to be the real reason he sailed alone. It was “because ‘her’ [Hettie] he wanted to come wouldn’t come, and those who were willing to come with him he didn’t want,” and also “because he could not get a captain to suit him.”