Starting with that frightening fall aboard AGRA that should have ended his life, Slocum had always sailed with an angel upon his shoulder. But, deep down, Joshua Slocum knew that something else lay behind a portion of his success. That he’d made his remarkable voyage in what then seemed to most people to be a foolishly small boat was confirmation of his superior seamanship. One can only guess what Slocum thought about as he awaited the shutter’s click. When he did so, Slocum usually, though not always, presented his scar-free right side to the camera. Thanks to his 1895–98 solo circumnavigation in his 36′9″ sloop SPRAY and his 1900 book about the experience, Sailing Alone Around the World, Slocum would become a famous man, and he was called upon at times to sit for a portrait.
His fall was broken and his life saved by collision with the main yard, which he struck on his head, cutting a gash over his left eye, which is the only mark of disfigurement on his face.” He “was gathering in the sail, when a gust struck him, and pitched him off. In April 1895, some 30 years after he scampered aloft that day, Slocum told a Boston Herald reporter the shocking thing that happened to him. The crew is ordered aloft and one of them, a young seaman named Joshua Slocum, begins climbing nimbly to AGRA’s main upper topsail yard. Shaw tells his mate it is time to reduce sail. Now, as the wind gusts become stronger, Capt. She has turned in runs of 350 miles per day, only about 50 miles less than the fastest clipper ships. She is of a type known as a “moderate clipper,” designed to carry more cargo at some sacrifice in speed compared to the “full” clippers, whose heyday is all but finished. Foster & Co., the 174′ AGRA is still a relatively new vessel. Launched in 1862 at the redoubtable Medford, Massachusetts, yard of J.T. Slocum's poetic perception of the world and his graceful descriptions of his vision of reality have caused this classic to be compared favorably to Thoreau's "Walden." Slocum and "Spray" disappeared at sea in 1909.Īn essential first edition in any serious sailing collection.Somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, probably sometime in 1866, a ship named AGRA faces a rising wind. He rebuilt her and sailed from Boston westward around the world by way of hte Straits of Magellan and the Cape of Good Hope. "Spray" was a wreck of a boat given to Slocum by a fellow sea captain.
Slocum was the first person to single-handedly circumnavigate the earth, doing so in his gaff-rigged sloop, "Spray," between April 1895 and June 1898. Bright first edition of this landmark sailing narrative. Slight browning to frontispiece and title page.
A few slight extremity rubs and a small prior owner label at top fore corner of front pastedown, some darkening along fore edge of lower board. Illustrated by Thomas Fogarty and George Varian. Slocum, Captain Joshua (1844-1909) Sailing Alone Around the World
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