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Biography & Autobiography. Travel. Nonfiction. Joshua Slocum is believed to be the first man to sail single-handedly around the world. After a distinguished nautical career, during which he worked his way up from cabin boy to captain, Slocum wrecked his ship off the coast of Brazil. Turning this catastrophe to his advantage, he built a sailing canoe from the wreckage and sailed back to New York. Moreover, he wrote Voyage of the Liberdade, a chronicle of his trip, and earned some literary success. This spurred him to attempt his perilous voyage. Having lost his fortune in the shipwreck, Slocum began his voyage on a shoestring. He was given the Spray, a century-old oysterboat in need of repairs. Two years and $500 later, he had rebuilt the wreck into an oceangoing wonder. On his 40,000-mile, three-year voyage, Slocum visited six of the seven continents, where he met cannibals, presidents, outlaws, and ambassadors. Amazingly, throughout his travels he lived off the land, fishing, trading, and giving lectures to keep his pantry full. He also met some remarkable people, including Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson and Paul Kruger, who, believing the world was flat, warned Slocum not to fall off! This adventure will captivate sailors and landlubbers alike.… (more)
Media reviews
Da han i 1895 hev opp ankeret og forlot Boston, hadde han brukt et drøyt år på å restaurere et nedslitt skrog. Ut fra beskrivelsen må han ha nærmest ha bygget en ny båt, men navnet - Spray - beholdt han.
Slocum seilte avgårde med lite penger og lite utstyr. Han hadde
Slocum skriver med humor og begeistring og har mange filsofiske betraktninger. Og tenk; vi er ikke bare i forrige århundre, vi er i det før der igjen. Selv om boken er godt over hundre år er den skrevet i et språk som vil glede lesere like mye i dag.
Odd Børretzen har skrevet forord til denne utgaven.
User reviews
Many incidents are shared as he travels from place to place and is in and out of danger on several occasions, mostly due to the vagaries of mother nature. Some of those incidents were survived mainly through his own good luck in combination with his sailing experience, for it is clear that nature is more powerful than any sailing vessel, surely one so small as his single manned craft. Early on in his voyage he is chased by pirates, but eludes them and goes on to enjoy the hospitality of the British at Gibraltar. Their would be more hospitality that he would experience during his long three year trip and there would be a deadly encounter with a native, but no more pirates. I was impressed with his devotion to reading which he kept up both with books that he took with him and books that he obtained along the way. This was undoubtedly a life-long habit and it must have been helpful as he sat down to narrate his travels upon his return. I also marveled at the ebb and flow of time as the journey seemed to go more swiftly than one would expect a span of three years to unfold. There was one theme that grew over the course of the story, Joshua was not alone after all. His sailing ship, The Spray, had become much more than a mere container bobbing on the waves. No, it had become his close companion whose heart and soul was one with Joshua - a wonderful occurrence that only seafarers and readers could appreciate. At the conclusion of the book I had admiration for this humble man who took on a challenge that would defeat most men much younger than his fifty-one years and who succeeded.
"If the Spray discovered no continents on her voyage, it may be that there were no more continents to be discovered; she did not seek new worlds, or sail to powwow about the dangers of the seas. The sea has been much maligned. To find one's way to lands already discovered is a good thing" (p 234)
The conversational diary style as well as the theme of solitude remind me of Tom Neale's An Island to Oneself.
The fact that he wasn't, however, lends the story a humble charm. The bulk of the narrative is taken up with describing the people and places he encounters on his voyage around the world. Some romanticized descriptions of islands he visits - he was especially fond of Samoa - seem unlikely for being so idyllic. I read these as the pleasant memories of his stay, the way I might talk about a Carribbean vacation after I'm back at work. The rest is mostly descriptions of the course he sets. It's a fun book to follow along with a map. Beginning with his voyage up the New England coast, a good atlas will show you the harbours and islands he names along the way and you can follow his progress. Around Cape Horn especially, I found this imperative for fully understanding the route he was describing, which is otherwise a bit confusing. I appreciated it again as he set his course around Australia and across the Indian Ocean.
By the time he visits Australia he is being heralded for the bravery of his journey thus far, and roped into making presentations to a long sequence of small communities that probably leaped at the chance for any sort of event to enliven their days. His tone here is only amused rather than proud. Pride only shines through when he is speaking of the Spray's performance, a vessel he built practically from scratch. Its reliability and his lifetime of nautical know-how prove more than a match for every challenge he encounters. The fact that this is primarily the story of whom he met may be the final proof of that. It's not the story I expected, but there's still no way to beat a solo-voyage-around-the-world tale as told by the man who lived it, any way he wants to tell it.
Originally published in 1900, and the prey of reprinters ever since. It's not consciously literary, but has the charm of the immediate.
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910.45 |