Joshua Slocum Sailing Alone Around the World

Once I met a writer who, after saying and writing beautiful things about the sea, found himself in the middle of a hurricane in the Pacific and completely changed his mind. But, after all, where would the poetry of the sea be without the violence of its waves?

Joshua Slocum (1844-1909), a Canadian sea captain naturalized American, spent much of his life at sea, commanding some of the most beautiful and largest merchant ships of his time. At the end of his career, he became legendary as the first sailor in history to circumnavigate the globe alone. The book “Sailing Alone Around the World,” a sort of diary of his journey with the sloop Spray lasting three years (1895-1898), is a classic of nautical literature. On November 14, 1909, Joshua Slocum set sail again from New England with his sloop bound for the West Indies. But neither the captain nor the Spray ever returned.