Slocum, Joshua

Joshua Slocum, (born Feb. 20, 1844, Wilmot, Nova Scotia, Can.—died 1909/10, at sea), Canadian seaman and adventurer who was the first man in recorded history to sail around the world singlehandedly.

Slocum joined the crew of a merchant vessel at 16 and from that time on spent most of his life at sea. In 1889 he wrote Voyage of the Liberdade about one of his passages and in 1894 Voyage of the Destroyer about another. In April 1895 he set sail from Boston in the 36-foot 9-inch (11.1-metre) Spray, an old fishing boat built about 1800 that he had rebuilt. He sailed alone, following a route that took him to Nova Scotia, the Azores, Gibraltar, South America, Samoa, Australia, South Africa, the West Indies, and finally, in June 1898, to Newport, R.I., to complete his circumnavigation. He had sailed 46,000 miles (74,000 km) in three years, two months, and two days. In 1899 he wrote Sailing Alone Around the World, which became a classic in the literature of the sea. In 1909 he set sail from New England in the Spray to spend the winter in Grand Cayman and was lost at sea. He was assumed to have been the victim of a collision; he and the Spray were never found, and in 1924 he was declared legally dead.