Sailing Alone Around the World, Joshua Slocum

Don’t read this book. You will end up wasting away yours days day-dreaming of your own Spray, the sloop with which Slocum made the world’s first and most famous circumnavigation. Or worse, buy the book and risk departing on your own solo circumnavigation … it’s happened to better people.

Oh, all right, read the book.  It’s a prime example of the best of its genre.  Adventure Literature writ large.

Sailing Alone Around the World: Excerpt

“Mr. Stanley was a nautical man once himself, - on the Nyanza, I think, - and of course my desire was to appear in the best light before a man of his experience. He looked me over carefully, and said, ‘What an example of patience!’

‘Patience is all that is required,’ I ventured to reply.

He then asked if my vessel had water-tight compartments. I explained that she was all water-tight and all compartment.

‘What if she should strike a rock?’ he asked.

‘Compartments would not save her if she should hit the rocks lying along her course,’ said I; adding, ’she must be kept away from the rocks.’

After a considerable pause Mr. Stanley asked, ‘What if a swordfish should pierce her hull with its sword?’        

        

Sailing Alone Around the World: Publisher’s Marketing

First published in 1900, Joshua Slocum’s autobiographical account of his solo trip around the world is one of the most remarkable — and entertaining — travel narratives of all time. Setting off alone from Boston aboard the thirty-six foot wooden sloop Spray in April 1895, Captain Slocum went on to join the ranks of the world’s great circumnavigators — Magellan, Drake, and Cook. But by circling the globe without crew or consorts, Slocum would outdo them all: his three-year solo voyage of more than 46,000 miles remains unmatched in maritime history for courage, skill, and determination.                 

Sailing Alone Around the World recounts Slocum’s wonderful adventures: hair-raising encounters with pirates off Gibraltar and savage Indians in Tierra del Fuego; raging tempests and treacherous coral reefs; flying fish for breakfast in the Pacific; and a hilarious visit with Henry (”Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”) Stanley in South Africa.A century later, Slocum’s incomparable book endures as of the greatest narratives of adventure ever written.                

Sailing Alone Around the World: Reviews

Sailing Alone Around the World could have been written yesterday. It flows free and easy and is filled with amusing anecdotes….Any sailor who loves the sea will be brought up short from time to time by the quiet eloquence of Slocum’s writing. — Small Boat Journal, August/September 1988                

Surely one of the all-time classic sailing narratives, this is more than just an account of a fascinating and often arduous journey, it has also given rise to a mythology all its own. — Classic Boat, November 1996                 

I can’t imagine any literate boat lover who hasn’t read Slocum’s classic book about his voyage. I can remember when and where I bought my first copy of Sailing Alone Around the World, the weather conditions that day, how much I paid, and the color of the cover….I can’t remember how long it took me to read the book, but I do remember turning pages through a sleepless night and then raving like a lunatic at the breakfast table about how I was going to chuck it all and hit the high seas. “Not before you take out the trash and mow the lawn,” my old man said. If you haven’t read Sailing Alone, don’t tell me about it. Buy a copy and get on with the job. — WoodenBoat, March/April 1994                 

A classic book….Slocum’s writing is as elegant as his thirty-seven-foot sloop, Spray, whose crossing of the Atlantic he describes vividly. — The New Yorker, September 7, 1998

Product Details

ISBN: 0140437363

Format: Paperback, 320pp

Pub. Date: June 1999

Publisher: Penguin Classics                

Outside Magazine, January 2003: 25 Best Adventure Books of the Last 100 Years

Adventure Magazine, July/August 2001: 100 Best Adventure Books                

Illustrated with maps.

First published in 1900