Canada’s “Ancient Mariner”

When Joshua Slocum went to sea at 16, the self-governed Nova Scotian colony was enjoying unprecedented prosperity. During the age of wood, wind, and water, the world beckoned and Bluenosers traversed the high seas. In 1875 Nova Scotia, one of the largest seafaring and shipbuilding communities on the ocean, had 2,787 vessels on its registers. With diverse communities clinging to a rugged coastline that looked seaward, Nova Scotians reached out to the horizon in sloops, schooners, brigs, clipper ships, and iron-hulled steamers. Joshua is celebrated as the first man to sail around the world alone between 1895 and 1898.
 

Bluenoser Joshua Slocum rebuilt a 36 foot long oyster sloop named the Spray and sailed it around the world. Travelling some 46,000 miles, Canada’s “ancient mariner” took more than 38 months to prove that one individual could conquer the seven seas – alone! [Photo, courtesy Public Archives of Nova Scotia, 1981-478, Walter Teller Collection #19]

Joshua was born in Mount Hanly, Wilmot Township, in 1844 but moved to the western tip of Nova Scotia at Westport, Brier Island, when a child. He was raised in a traditional seaman’s family whose ancestors were Loyalists from Massachusetts. Sailor, navigator, and sometimes boatbuilder, Slocum developed his skills in American, European, and Far East trade routes. When the majestic wind-driven ships of the oceans were in decline, Slocum turned to writing about his adventures on the seas in the Liberdale which he built in South America and the Destroyer, subjects of books which were published in 1890 and 1894 respectively.

The first ship Slocum owned was acquired in payment for a vessel he built in the Philippines in 1875. His first wife, Virginia Albertina Walker, pregnant with twins and caring for three other children, accompanied the vessel on a Siberian fishing expedition. Her story as a mariner’s wife can only be imagined: she loved the sea as much as he did and bore all seven children on board ship. She died in Sydney, Australia, in 1884.

Opportunities declined for sailors with the scope and experience of Slocum. Labouring in a Boston shipyard, he rebuilt in 1893 a derelict oyster sloop which would become his personal window on the high seas. In the words of biographer Brian D. Murphy, Slocum “withdrew from the human world and made the ocean his country.” On April 24, 1895 he set out in the Spray for a personal trip around the world, one of the last maritime feats not yet accomplished by people in search of adventure. In his 36' 9" long, 14'2" wide, 4'2" deep vessel, only 13 tons gross, he left Boston for a visit to his Yarmouth area home in Nova Scotia before crossing the Atlantic to Gibraltar. Concerned about pirates in the Mediterranean and Red seas, he changed course for the Straits of Magellan and the Pacific Ocean, his reputation preceding him. Religious and romantic, he visited the island where Alexander Selkirk, the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe, was left stranded and also visited the widow of author Robert Louis Stevenson at Upolu in Western Samoa. He spent Australia’s summer giving tours of his boat so that by the time he reached South Africa he had received sufficient notoriety to be received by Boer leader Paul Kruger and explorer Henry Morton Stanley. After 46,000 miles he arrived a celebrity at Newport, Rhode Island, on June 27, 1898.

Slocum’s reputation grew with the publication in 1899 and 1900 of his serialized “Sailing alone around the world” in Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine and with the release of it in book form in 1900. At the turn of the century, Joshua Slocum represented the progressive explorer setting new standards of seamanship while yearning nostalgically for a declining world of wind and sail. The shift of sailing from commercial to recreational spheres provided a platform to celebrate Slocum’s contribution as an individual who challenged the world and to offer new goals in feats of accomplishment. The Slocum Society in the United States perpetuates his memory as one man against the elements, an early breed of navigators sailing for the winds’ sake alone.

Joshua Slocum became an American citizen, suffered personal tragedies that landed him in jail, and retreated from world attention. Nevertheless, he is remembered as a symbol of a Nova Scotian seafaring tradition that reached around the world and as an individualist who challenged one of the last frontiers of unique adventure. On November 14, 1909 he sailed from Massachusetts for the South Seas, but the oceans he had earlier conquered single-handedly reclaimed him. He was never seen again.

Larry Turner