Sailing Alone Around the World
Joshua Slocum 1900
This personal account follows the first solo voyage around the world, made in the small sailing boat Spray. Slocum describes scattering carpet tacks on deck to keep barefoot intruders away.
257 pages 4h 59m reading time
- One of the most loved sea adventure books ever written, and a classic of travel writing.
- Shows that one patient, skilled person in a small wooden boat can cross the world's oceans alone, relying on careful seamanship more than luck or modern tools.
- Tells the voyage with dry humor and calm good sense, treating storms, loneliness, and danger as problems to be solved, not as reasons for fear.
- Helped create solo long-distance sailing as a pursuit, and later lone sailors have often named it as the book that made them want to try.
- Inspired many sailors to build copies of the Spray, and boats based on her design are still built and sailed today.
A ghost at the helm
Sick from plums and cheese near the Azores, Slocum wrote that a pilot from Columbus's ship Pinta steered for him.
Built from a gift wreck
The Spray began as a rotting old oyster boat a friend gave him, and he rebuilt it by hand.
First told in a magazine
The story first came out in parts in The Century Magazine before it was printed as a book.
Sold from the boat itself
Slocum sold copies of the book on board the Spray while showing the boat to visitors at fairs.