She wasn’t much to look at at firstĪfter outfitting her he set sail around the world by himself in April 1895.

Joshua was 50 when he found an old, derelict sailing scow and decided to rebuild it.

Yet he was known as a kind man and was highly sought after to run vessels.Īnd with all that, the big story is even more astounding. Ships sunk under him in hurricanes and were seized in mutinies. Joshua was a general cargo hauler, a fur merchant, a spice shipper and a fisherman. It leaked so badly that even with manning the pumps day and night they barely survived and once it arrived in Brazil it failed to fire. One in particular was an ironclad warship with the first underwater torpedo system. His exploits are so numerous that a perusal of his Wiki page is pretty rewarding Captain Slocum He was a very successful captain with his longest home port being San Francisco. Over many years the family helmed ships owned by others but eventually Joshua built his own boats and ships. Slocum’s ancestors had fled the US as Loyalists to King George during the Revolutionary War but Slocum, Virginia and their children were Americans through and through. She bore seven children and all were delivered on board or in foreign ports.

He met and married his match in Virginia Walker. So at his first opportunity, he shipped out as cabin boy to Liverpoop (just south of Liverpool) At 14 he jumped at the opportunity to ship out as a cabin boy and from then on spent most of his life at sea or in ports of call. One of 11 children, he was born in Nova Scotia in 1844 but soon became bored making shoes in the village for his father. If he had not accomplished this he would still be notable, as he was truly a sailor’s sailor. On June 27 th, 1898 Joshua Slocum became the first person to sail around the world by himself in his vessel, the Spray.

Slocum sail around the world