Publisher's Synopsis
Slocum attracted significant international interest by his journey, especially once he had entered the Pacific. He was awaited at most of his ports of call and delivered lectures and lantern-slide shows to well-filled halls. His journal is published here in this lavishly illustrated book. Slocum tells his story as a sequence of adventures, understating his part and giving credit to the Spray. He invents a crew-member, an assumed pilot of Columbus' Pinta, to take credit for the protection of the vessel while he sleeps. The trip route was as follows: Fairhaven, Boston, Gloucester, Nova Scotia, Azores, Gibraltar, (Morocco), Canary Islands, Cape Verde Islands, Pernambuco, Rio de Janeiro, Maldonado, Montevideo, Strait of Magellan, Cockburn Channel, Port Angosto, Juan Fernandez, Marquesas, Samoa, Fiji, Sydney, Melbourne, Tasmania, Cooktown, Christmas Island, Keeling Cocos, Rodrigues, Mauritius, Durban, Cape Town, (Transvaal), St Helena, Ascension Island, Devil's Island, Trinidad, Grenada, Newport, Fairhaven. The Spray highlights of the tour included perils of sailing blue water, such as fog, gales, the danger of collision, loneliness, doldrums, navigation, fatigue, gear failure. Other dangers of coastal navigation included pirates, attack by 'savages, ' embayment, shoals and coral reefs, stranding, and shipwreck. Passing by Tierra del Fuego and warned about the possibility of attacks by the native Yahgan Indians in the night, so he sprinkled nails on the deck. He was awakened in the middle of the evening by yelps of pain. He was impressive of resourcefully defending himself. He devised a method of lashing the wheel into a kind of mechanical autopilot. He took satisfaction in the fact that the Spray sailed 2000 miles west across the Pacific without his once touching the helm
