Sailing Alone Around the World

Written by Joshua Slocum

Narrated by Alan Sklar

Joshua Slocum is believed to be the first man to sail single-handedly around the world. After a distinguished nautical career, during which he worked his way up from cabin boy to captain, Slocum wrecked his ship off the coast of Brazil. Turning this catastrophe to his advantage, he built a sailing canoe from the wreckage and sailed back to New York. Moreover, he wrote Voyage of the Liberdade, a chronicle of his trip, and earned some literary success. This spurred him to attempt his perilous voyage.

Having lost his fortune in the shipwreck, Slocum began his voyage on a shoestring. He was given the Spray, a century-old oysterboat in need of repairs. Two years and $500 later, he had rebuilt the wreck into an oceangoing wonder.

On his 40,000-mile, three-year voyage, Slocum visited six of the seven continents, where he met cannibals, presidents, outlaws, and ambassadors. Amazingly, throughout his travels he lived off the land, fishing, trading, and giving lectures to keep his pantry full. He also met some remarkable people, including Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson and Paul Kruger, who, believing the world was flat, warned Slocum not to fall off! This adventure will captivate sailors and landlubbers alike.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Mar 23, 2009
• ISBN: 9781400179350

Joshua Slocum

Born in Nova Scotia, Canada, Joshua Slocum was the first man to sail single-handedly around the world. An international bestseller, Sailing Alone Around the World was a critical success upon its publication in 1900. Slocum enjoyed widespread fame in the English-speaking world, including an invitation to speak at a dinner in honor of Mark Twain, until his disappearance while aboard his boat the Spray in 1909. At the time, it was believed his boat had been run down by a steamer or struck by a whale, however it was later determined that the Spray could also have easily capsized. Despite a lifetime at sea, Slocum never learned to swim. He was declared legally dead in 1924.

Reviews for Sailing Alone Around the World

[hmskip · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Simply written, but great literature. Captain Slocum simply went around the world in a one-man ship, 19 feet long, and kept me thoroughly entertained with the story of it.

[martyb_22 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Written in the antique language of the turn-of-the century this book has a slightly stilted feel to it. For example, the original inhabitants of a place are referred to as savages. For all this, it is still a good sailing story, all the more so for it being, supposedly, the first single-handed circumnavigation of the world. It echos modern day sailing adventures in many ways - the same beauty of the sea, the delight in sea animals, the sense of grandeur and solitude, the pride of coping with the elements.

[kenno82 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

 Despite the years that have passed, this is still an engaging read and all the more interesting for the voyage's place in history.

[schmerguls · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This sets out the amazing facts on the trip the author took a boat he reconstructed around the world, The boat was 37 feet long and 13 feet wide, and while he had some awesome perils to face, he makes it seem like a breeze most of the time--claiming the boat did not need a helmsman for great portions of his trip. The trip began Apr 24, 1895, and was completed 27 Jun 1898. Especially in the early portions of the book it is grippingly exciting.

[Michael Neeper · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Really loved the book, but the recording was quite bad. Very quiet and you could hear the narrator smacking and swallowing in the mic. Great voice though

[darlingtrk_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a classic in the truest sense. It's a true account written by a man who did it. Not a fiction, which would be impressive enough, but the reflections of a pioneer on what he considered important. He does not present himself as an introspective post-modern, but an explorer gentleman whose priorities are not the day to day minutia of sailing, but the impact of his innovation on people. He is to be admired because he saw something new to be done and had the expertise and courage to do it. His book is to be admired because he had a pittance of education but spent his voyage reading and writing his account.

[smiley_13 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Charming, readable turn of the last century true sailing adventure. The perfect book to read when you can't affored to go anywhere on vacation.

[maritimer_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Sailing Alone Around the World is a fine read. Slocum travelled 46,000 miles in 3 years, averaging about 40 miles per day. This slow progress is reflected in the tone and pace of the book - the account definitely includes lots of rose smelling along the way. The reader should not expect scary tales of roaring seas and rogue waves. As Slocum says, his purpose is not to "pow-wow" about the dangers of the "much maligned sea". Too much delight however can translate into too much cute and in so doing become a dull and trying reading. This book does come close to this at times. From my first reading of this book 30 years ago, I could not recall much other than his encounters with the villain Black Pedro and the astounding account of Slocum scrambling up the mast as a huge Atlantic wave completely submersed his boat below. Upon rereading I find again that while pleasurable, there is not much memorable in the book. Anticipating this, I chose the annotated version to read, thinking that Slocum's mannered understatement would find a perfect counterpoint in some well researched annotations. In principle this was a good idea, but this annotated version does not present all that much useful supplementary detail (for example in one annotation, Rod Scher confirms that Slocum's assertion that "islanders are always the kindest people in the world" does seem to be true). Not all but a good part of the annotation is lame commentary or filler. Having annotations also necessitates a format that reduces the size and detail of the maps and illustrations and squeezes the primary text. If you are going to read this book, read an unannotated version. To paraphrase Joshua Slocom: 'there is a great deal of fun in it".

[jpsnow · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Slocum was the first person recorded to have sailed solo around the world. It was such a feat a the time that various harbor masters and others he encountered along the way refused to believe it. His adventures included warding off hostile pirated through a combination of force and misdirection. He struggled against stormy seas and a miscreant goat. Despite these challenges and weeks at a time of solitude, he seemed to have enjoyed every bit of the nearly three-year journey. What I enjoyed most about his written account was the sagacity and humor he used to convey the magnitude of his achievements, all while coming across as quite humble. This book is an enjoyable tale of exploration and adventure, and an interesting character study.

[cecrow · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is written in a breezy manner and with some narrative skill, but readers looking for a adventure tale about the rigours of the voyage will only get small tastes of that. As first suggested when he makes his oh-so-casual decision to undertake the voyage - there must have been more to this? - I think Mr. Slocum skims over the risks and dangers of his undertaking more than most writers would. Threats encountered are usually acknowledged and dismissed within a paragraph or two. This journey might have yielded a more gripping tale if its author had exposure to today's dramatizing. The fact that he wasn't, however, lends the story a humble charm. The bulk of the narrative is taken up with describing the people and places he encounters on his voyage around the world. Some romanticized descriptions of islands he visits - he was especially fond of Samoa - seem unlikely for being so idyllic. I read these as the pleasant memories of his stay, the way I might talk about a Carribbean vacation after I'm back at work. The rest is mostly descriptions of the course he sets. It's a fun book to follow along with a map. Beginning with his voyage up the New England coast, a good atlas will show you the harbours and islands he names along the way and you can follow his progress. Around Cape Horn especially, I found this imperative for fully understanding the route he was describing, which is otherwise a bit confusing. I appreciated it again as he set his course around Australia and across the Indian Ocean. By the time he visits Australia he is being heralded for the bravery of his journey thus far, and roped into making presentations to a long sequence of small communities that probably leaped at the chance for any sort of event to enliven their days. His tone here is only amused rather than proud. Pride only shines through when he is speaking of the Spray's performance, a vessel he built practically from scratch. Its reliability and his lifetime of nautical know-how prove more than a match for every challenge he encounters. The fact that this is primarily the story of whom he met may be the final proof of that. It's not the story I expected, but there's still no way to beat a solo-voyage-around-the-world tale as told by the man who lived it, any way he wants to tell it.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

More than one hundred years ago at the end of the century prior to the last a fifty-one year old man set sail for a trip around the world. Joshua Slocum capped his sea-going career with this trip in a sail boat, named The Spray, that he built himself and, upon his return, he memorialized his trip by writing the narrative of his trip, Sailing Alone around the World. His career had waned with the gradual demise of large sail-going ships and he put all of his years of experience on them, plus some help from friends and strangers along the way, into this voyage. The story he told about it still has power to grip the reader's imagination yet today. Many incidents are shared as he travels from place to place and is in and out of danger on several occasions, mostly due to the vagaries of mother nature. Some of those incidents were survived mainly through his own good luck in combination with his sailing experience, for it is clear that nature is more powerful than any sailing vessel, surely one so small as his single manned craft. Early on in his voyage he is chased by pirates, but eludes them and goes on to enjoy the hospitality of the British at Gibraltar. Their would be more hospitality that he would experience during his long three year trip and there would be a deadly encounter with a native, but no more pirates. I was impressed with his devotion to reading which he kept up both with books that he took with him and books that he obtained along the way. This was undoubtedly a life-long habit and it must have been helpful as he sat down to narrate his travels upon his return. I also marveled at the ebb and flow of time as the journey seemed to go more swiftly than one would expect a span of three years to unfold. There was one theme that grew over the course of the story, Joshua was not alone after all. His sailing ship, The Spray, had become much more than a mere container bobbing on the waves. No, it had become his close companion whose heart and soul was one with Joshua - a wonderful occurrence that only seafarers and readers could appreciate. At the conclusion of the book I had admiration for this humble man who took on a challenge that would defeat most men much younger than his fifty-one years and who succeeded. "If the Spray discovered no continents on her voyage, it may be that there were no more continents to be discovered; she did not seek new worlds, or sail to powwow about the dangers of the seas. The sea has been much maligned. To find one's way to lands already discovered is a good thing" (p 234)

[leslie398 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As a person who doesn't read much nonfiction, I was pleasantly surprised by how readable these memoirs were. Slocum doesn't overdo the technical aspects of the voyage, focusing more on the people he encounters along the way - from hostile natives near Tierra del Fuego to friendly natives on various islands to British colonial governors & settlers.

[aliceanna-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Pretty entertaining. Could have been really dry, but Slocum showed a lot of humor and insight into human nature. He sailed in the mid to late 1890's facing pirates, cannibals, flat earthers, and a particularly nasty goat. It would make a great period movie.

[dinadansfriend · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Joshua Slocum did it, he wrote it up.Originally published in 1900, and the prey of reprinters ever since. It's not consciously literary, but has the charm of the immediate.

[chworm_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A book, more written more than one hundred years ago, yet so current. I really enjoyed this, it dwarfs most of today's "Look, what a cool guy I am!" type adventure novels. It's amazing what Slocum achieved, without any modern (or not so modern) technology.