Sailing Alone Around the World

“The sea was confused and treacherous. In such a time as this the old fisherman prayed, ‘Remember Lord, my ship is small and thy sea is so wide.'”

It's books like these that make me wish I had a boat. I do not have a boat, and I know that boat ownership is exponentially expensive, and yet this book made me want to hop in one and go sail for the horizon.

This is a travel memoir of a guy with a boat, the Spray, where he gets it into his head to sail around the world in 1895. He encounters standard seafaring things: pirates, storms, fishing, and nonstandard seafaring things, such as his mental encounter with the ghost of the captain of the Nina, who saved his ship while he was sick abed. His tongue-in-cheek humor in these encounters is really what makes this book shine, though. He makes repeated jokes about his “crew” (of only him), makes astute and humorous observations about lands and people he comes across, and all-in-all maintains high spirits throughout his journey. I appreciated being along for his historic voyage.

My only (minor) gripe about the book was its nautical terminology – which is to be expected in a book about, y'know, maritime adventure. There's enough ship terminology to maybe make you Google a word or two, but I felt like I got enough of the jist just from larger context in most places.

All in all, a pleasant, easy-to-read adventure classic.

This book amazed me, as it has amazed many other readers lavishing it with four or five stars. For a book published in 1900 it is incredibly readable - to the point where I am left wondering if it has been tidied up in an edit to modernise (my edition is 1948, so my modernise I mean modernise by 50 years!

In short, Slocum takes us through his process of refurbishing a hundred year old sloop found in a farmers paddock in Fairhaven, near Boston, pretty much replacing every element, modifying and improving as he went. She was 36'9'' long, 14'2'' wide and 4'2'' deep in the hold, and she retained the name of the original sloop - Spray. Fully refitted and set up for fishing, Slocum spent a season, and was not a success, but set upon the idea of a solo journey around the world. The appeal of this was that it had not been done before - and his ship was perfectly suited to this task. He refitted her for this solo journey, he set off.

The route he follows (landfalls only, not those he merely passes by) - USA, Azores, Gibraltar, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Samoa, Australia, Cocos Keeling Isl, Mauritius, South Africa, St Helena, Ascension Isl, Grenada, Antigua, USA. He departs Boston on 24 April 1895 and returns a little over three years later, on 27 June 1898.

Under financial constraint, Slocum had a modest selection of equipment. He was obviously a skilled man, as the things he did spend money on, were very efficient - his stove for example, or the old clock he used for navigation. The books is based on his ships log, which he quotes a few times, but obviously inspired his book. The writing is spirited, but comes across as authentic, and written with some humour (like the time he capsized the dory and ‘forgot that he couldn't swim', or the goat he brought aboard for company, that ate his map), yet still records all the people he meets and places he visits, picking some pertinent facts to share from the exotic locations. I also chuckled each time he referred to himself as ‘the crew' when on land.

There is plenty of excitement - but for such a long journey I think Slocum does really well to shorten the long legs where there isn't a lot happening - he can skip over a months travel in a sentence, or a long ocean crossing in a half page, so that there is no real loss of momentum with the narrative. He also does well to limit his use of too much nautical jargon - there is some, but I found it written in a way that is the word was unknown it didn't really effect the sentence. Overall the language wasn't archaic at all (as noted above, in my edition anyway).

Highly recommended - nothing not to like about this classic adventure tale.
5 stars.