Joshua Slocum

Joshua A. Slocum ( born February 20, 1844 in Wilmot, Nova Scotia, † November 1909 on the Atlantic lost) was a sailor and travel writer who accomplished the first solo sailing trip around the world. He was Canadian by birth, but had 1865 U.S. citizenship accepted.

Youth and Travel

Born into a seafaring family, he already drove with twelve years as a cabin boy on the fishing boats in the Bay of Fundy. At sixteen, he hired as a sailor in the commercial shipping and rose with 25 years on the captain of his first ship. In 1870 he sailed the barque Washington to Sydney. There he met the American Virginia Albertina Walker and married her on 31 January, 1871. Of their four children were born.

The Washington went in a storm off Alaska by stranding lost, and Slocum brought himself and the team in a home-built whaling boat to Kodiak to safety. His reputation as an able seaman was rather strengthened than impaired by this adventure, and Slocum was given command of several other ships. In 1884 he bought the barque Aquidneck and they sailed to Buenos Aires; there his wife died, Virginia on July 25, 1884. His second wife he married in 1885 Henrietta M. Elliott. In February 1886 he went with his wife and young sons Garfield and Victor on a trip to Montevideo. At the end of 1887, the Aquidneck went in the Brazilian village Guarakasava lost by beaching on a sandbar. Slocum took refuge with his family. From the remains of the Aquidneck he built soon Liberdade, a boat of 35 feet ( 10.7 m) Length with Sampan rig, with which he brought himself and his family back home.

The spray

In the winter of 1892 Slocum got from a friend, Captain Eben Pierce, given a ship in need of repair: the spray, an old oyster fishermen of 11.2 m (36 feet 9 inches ) and 4.3 m wide, already aufgepallt seven years on land had lain. Slocum renewed the boat completely at a cost of $ 553.62 for material. He invested a total of thirteen months of work in this ship. First, the spray was rigged as a gaff cutter, so with a gaff mainsail and jib and outer jib as headsail.

Over the circumnavigation Slocum built the spray for yawl to: He shortened to the mainsail tree and attached to the rear a small mizzen gaff sails on drivers. He also shortened the jib boom to facilitate obtaining the headsail.

The journey

On April 24, 1895 Slocum broke from his home port of Boston, Massachusetts to his journey. In the ports of the U.S. East Coast, he first completed his equipment and sailed in May 1895 by Yarmouth from the Atlantic Ocean, as he initially planned a circumnavigation of the globe in an easterly direction through the Suez Canal. About Horta on Fayal, in the Azores, he reached on August 4, Gibraltar. He was convinced that the southern Mediterranean was too dangerous because of there still prevailing piracy for a single-handed sailor, and opted for the circumnavigation in a westerly direction to the southern hemisphere.

South-west of Gibraltar broke out towards sailed past the Canary Island of Fuerteventura and the Cape Verde Islands, crossed the equator and reached on October 5, Pernambuco in Brazil. After another intermediate stations in Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo and Buenos Aires, he sailed to Punta Arenas in the dreaded Strait of Magellan and reached from there on March 3, 1896 the Pacific at Cape Pilar. There he was driven back by the storm and could not leave until forty days later on 13 April the coast.

About the Robinson Island and Samoa Slocum reached on October 1, 1896 in Newcastle Australia. He remained for half a year, visited Sydney, Melbourne and Tasmania and sat until April 16, 1897 on his journey. He followed the east coast of Australia on the Great Barrier Reef, sailed through the Torres Strait, crossed the southern Indian Ocean on Christmas Island, the Cocos Islands, Rodrigues and Mauritius on November 17, 1897 and reached Port Natal in South Africa. He rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and after a stay in Cape Town he broke on 26 March 1898 back to cross the Atlantic in a northwesterly direction.

His course led him through St. Helena and Ascension, past Trinidad, Grenada and Dominica to Antigua on what he achieved on 1 June 1898. The last stage led him directly to Newport (Rhode Iceland ), where he arrived on 27 June 1898. Slocum had done in three years and two months alone as a sailor, a journey of over 46,000 miles, which took him around the globe.

End of life

Slocum 1899 published his travelogue Sailing Alone Around the World, which quickly a classic of travel, sea and adventure literature was and is, not least, remained for his incisive with plenty of dry, "Yankee humor". His first permanent residence acquired Slocum until 1902, when he bought a farm on the island of Martha 's Vineyard. On November 14, 1909 at the age of 65 years, Joshua Slocum set off on another one-handed voyage to sail to the Orinoco, but where he never arrived. It is believed that his boat was rammed by a whale or overrun by a steamer and he came on this trip were killed. In 1924 he was declared officially dead.

Works

  • The Voyage of the Liberdade (1890)
  • The Voyage of the Destroyer (1894 ) on the delivery of a warship in Brazil
  • Sailing Alone Around the World (1899 )
  • Sailing Alone Around the World ( London - New York 1935)
  • "Just sail around the world " equator Verlag, Munich, 2014: Newly translated and for the first time in German language with original graphics. ISBN 978-3-95737-000-6; also available as an e -book ISBN 978-3-95737-002-0;
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