Alone at Sea : The Adventures of Joshua Slocum (9780385674072) (23 page)

Slocum had kept logs throughout his voyage, and on arriving back in Massachusetts he began corresponding with an editor at
Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine
. The captain had received a telegram from its editor, Richard Watson Gilder, asking him whether he would consider writing his story for the magazine. Gilder and his brother Joseph had a fast reply from the captain: an enthusiastic letter addressed to “Mr. Editor, Century Magazine.” “I have a fund of matter to be sure,” Slocum wrote, “but have not myself, had experience in writing magazine articles — I have very decided literary tastes and could enter into such parts as I am able to do with a great deal of energy.” He told them he was tired of feeling misunderstood and being misquoted by the newspapers, and added that he was certain his were tales worth telling: “Without say Slocum Slocum all the time — that I do
not care for I know the whole story will be hard to beat.” In this same letter Slocum made it clear that he intended to write a book.

While the captain’s letter was still en route to
Century
, Richard Watson Gilder wrote Slocum a quick note asking which parts of the circumnavigation story had already appeared in print, and whether there was any truth to the rumors that there were diamonds on board the
Spray
. Slocum replied promptly in a letter dated July 1, 1898. He acknowledged that “
one or two short letters” had appeared in New York
World
, but did not mention his letters home to the Boston
Globe
. He also glossed over that the syndicate had given up on him as a correspondent. Instead he told Gilder, “These I discontinued for my own reasons long ago.” As for the diamonds, Slocum set the record straight: “If my countrymen have hinted at diamonds coming in on the
Spray
, it is hardly fare of them to do that I had but $1.50 when I began to build my ship I hadnnt much to trade one or even for luxuries for the cabin for a long time.” He admitted that he had considered bringing one diamond back, but had instead brought home enough gold from Johannesburg to pay his old debts. He assured Gilder that the “vessel has in a cargo, tobesure, but clean open and above board.” One thing would have been clear to Gilder from Slocum’s passionate defense: while the old captain could certainly get his ideas across, spelling and punctuation were not his strong points. Slocum knew his literary limitations, and confided
to Gilder, “
There were indeed features of my trip striking enough to interest anybody. It would take the pen of a poet to tell some of the voyage — That of course is beyond me!”

Slocum and Hettie had spent most of the autumn in New York, taking rooms on the Lower West Side. With nothing to keep them there, they moved back to East Boston to find cheaper lodging with one of Hettie’s sisters. Over the winter, Slocum began writing for the
Century
. He was reliving the adventure, and by January 1899 he could inform the assitant editor, C.C. Buel, “My ‘type-writer’ and I are working along around Cape Horn now and will soon have some work ready to submit.” Having long ago survived those tempestuous waters, Slocum was now battling storms of syntax and grammar and trying to stay afloat as a writer. Slocum was taken out of school at age ten and had never learned proper spelling and punctuation. He continued writing while on the move. He sailed back to New York that spring, mooring the
Spray
in South Brooklyn. After delivering his manuscript to the
Century
he sailed up to Cape Cod to visit relatives on Martha’s Vineyard, where he marked his letters
“Spray
, Cottage City, Mass.”

It is obvious from a letter he wrote to an associate at the
Century
that he found the editing process exacting and the whole project a trifle worrisome: “Mr. Johnson I dare say has slaughtered, judiously and liberally … I am most anxious to see a clear story appear in both Magazine
and book with no superfluous matter … I have tried the editors patience, I dare say … Magazine work, as you know is intirely new to me, the great Century being the first I ever tackled … be patient with me still.” His insecurities concerning his writing were echoed in his desire to add enough touches so as to “
make it not the worst marine story in the world.”

The magazine editors allayed his fears, encouraging the reluctant captain to supply them with more details. On one occasion, Slocum jotted down the answers to their nautical questions about the
Spray
’s alterations on their letter as he read it. His notes included these: Yes, he had shortened the mast by seven feet, and the mast by five feet at Buenos Aires. Yes, he also shortened the boom inboard four feet at Pernambuco and the outboard had lost four feet at Port Angosto. His editors wanted him actively involved, and were concerned with accuracy, pointing out to the captain, “When you see an error in a picture we want you to speak up.”

Years later, the publisher’s daughter, Constance Buel Burnett, claimed that her father had taken “a prominent part in the publication of … Joshua Slocum’s own account of his solitary cruise” and recalled that the
Spray
had spent a good deal of the summer of 1899 moored in front of their summer home. By mid-August, with the pressure mounting, Slocum was on the move. This time he wrote from Woods Hole, Massachusetts: “I write to assure you that I am not neglecting this interest … I can
do the work better away where it is quiet.” It must not have been quiet enough, for two days later Slocum wrote his editor from Fairhaven to confess, “
I find it rather difficult to condense the variety of experiences while sailing free over the smooth sea from Good Hope. It was all ripple ripple. However the editor will know how to slaughter my pet.”

In September 1899 the
Century
published the first installment of “Sailing Alone Around the World.” The captain’s story ran through to March 1900, with illustrations by Thomas Fogarty and George Varian. Slocum was moved to write Buel concerning the publication, “I congratulate the Century and myself.” Then he was on to other projects. He had moved out of the lodgings that he and Hettie had been sharing with another of her East Boston sisters and was living quietly by himself in a New York hotel. There he put the finishing touches on the book-length account of his voyage.
Sailing Alone Around the World
was launched on March 24, 1900; the first edition was attractively bound in heavy navy-blue cloth embossed with two seahorses on either side of an anchor. Inside was the dedication, “To the one who said: ‘The
Spray
will come back’.” In later years, Hettie told biographer Walter Teller that the dedication was for her, but Mabel Wagnalls’s copy, given to her by Slocum, was inscribed, “To Mabel Wagnalls who said, ‘The
Spray
will come back’ and who first read the manuscript of the Voyage. With sincere good wishes. Joshua Slocum New York April 8, 1900.”

Slocum was still questioning his worth as an author and worried about how the book would be received. Anxiously, he waited for the reviews. He expressed his insecurities in a letter to Buel: “I have heard nothing from the critics about my ‘fine writing’ and hope to hear nothing … If they’ll only pass me this time I’ll steer clear of like shallows in the future … I was considerably interested in the story at the time of telling it and didn’t see the enormous sunken ledges that I see now.”

The reviews were soon in, and Slocum could breathe a sigh of relief: the critics loved
Sailing Alone. Bookseller
magazine proclaimed it to be “
one of the most remarkable narratives of actual adventure ever penned.” Some compared his account to sea classics like
Robinson Crusoe
and
Treasure Island
. It was proclaimed “a nautical equivalent of Thoreau’s account of his life in the hut at Walden.” Sir Edwin Arnold was moved by Slocum’s honest accounts: “The tale is true from first to last, written in a style plain as a marlin-spike, and yet full of touches which show what hidden poetry and passionate love of Nature were in the soul of this ‘bluenose’ skipper.” Some suspected that the captain’s poetic style may have been improved considerably by his editors; however, the reviewer for the New York
Evening Post
acknowledged that the voice of the sailor was clearly audible: “Absence of literary finish and florid word-painting sinks into insignificance compared with the overwhelming impression his story conveys of dominant courage and placid
self-reliance.” The reviews were more than a celebration of a book — they were a recognition of a great voyage. The
Nautical Gazette
considered the captain’s place in history: “
There is no question as to his name being handed down to posterity as one of the most intrepid of navigators.”

The praise and recognition he had earned for his writing gave Slocum the confidence to dream about new possibilities for a man of his skills. He was flattered by an introduction given by his cousin Joel Slocum to a lecture he delivered in Concord, New Hampshire, and later wrote to his admiring relative, “You see I had, with my many accomplishments (excuse me) forgotten that I was a poet … and the words came up new and crisp. You said ‘prophetic’ and you were entirely right.” The same month his book came out, Slocum was considering some kind of submarine adventure. He wrote to C.C. Buel, “I hope that the
Century
will not forget me and my Iceland trip! It may not be of absorbing interest — but I have a voyage in mind that will fasten itself upon all classes of readers and to realize that voyage I am looking to the disposal, first, of the
Spray;
people buy things rare in history someone may buy my old boat and so help me into my submarine explorer.”

Once again, nothing came of his plan, and Slocum grew increasingly restless. He and Hettie again took rooms in New York, where he paced and tried to arrive at a new plan. One scheme was outlandish even for Slocum: he thought he might try his hand at aviation,
and sent a naive letter of inquiry to Professor Otis Mason at the Smithsonian Institution. “
I am not the old fossil that some take me for,” he asserted, “and I am not for old ideas when new are better.” Mason was a colleague of aviation pioneer Samuel Pierpont Langley, who had gained worldwide attention with his unmanned free flights. Slocum saw himself as holding a second mate’s position on a flying ship, and pointed out his qualifications: “I consider the human mind above all else that we know of in this world. You will see that at any rate I could trust even my own poor head to find my way about independent of the machine we call chronometer. I sailed scientifically, too.” What Professor Mason made of Slocum’s proposal isn’t known.

Son Garfield, who was living on the
Spray
during the winter of 1901, believed that his father needed to be alone, away from Hettie. He summed up the matter simply: “I assume that he and Hettie did not pull on the same rope.” Finally, Slocum came up with a plan: he would take the
Spray
to Buffalo to exhibit at the Pan-American Exposition. The
Spray
had always been an attraction, and at every stop on his circumnavigation Slocum had picked up curios to display. A New York
Post
reporter marveled at the treasures he had found aboard: “The cabins of the
Spray
are now an instructive museum. He shows you a piece of rock which was taken from Robinson Crusoe’s cave, native weapons, mats from the several islands he has visited, and also a fair-sized canoe
hewn out of the solid wood. He has marine curiosities in abundance, the collection of coral being especially good.” Another reporter remarked on “
a hold full of curiosities, shells, sea fans, canoes, bamboo sticks … He has several books full of newspaper clippings.” Others recalled seeing a Hammond typewriter, an Australian boomerang and a Zulu spear. Some remembered how Slocum welcomed visitors and showed them around the
Spray
for the price of an autograph in her visitors’ book. But not always — others recalled paying ten cents to board and that Slocum later upped the entry fee to a quarter.

Slocum exhibited the
Spray
in Buffalo from May to November 1901. Traveling there and back was complicated. He purchased a lifeboat, and a small engine to power it, to tow the sloop up the Hudson River as far as Troy; there it entered the Erie Canal with its mast unstepped and secured to the deck. In Buffalo the
Spray
was hauled out, raised in a sling and loaded onto a dray to be pulled by horses to the exposition’s lakeside site. The
Spray
was moored in one of the fairground lagoons, just past the Electric Tower and the performance stadium. A sideshow atmosphere prevailed. Slocum shared the limelight with Chiquita the Human Doll, an infant incubator, a hula dancer, and Eskimos (as they were then billed) exhibited in imitation snow igloos. The “Bennett Illustrated Souvenir Guide Pan-American Exposition, 1901” advertised Slocum as “A Daring New England Yankee.” As for why one would want to visit him, the brochure explained,
“
The captain made ports where none were ever made before and picked up numberless curios which constituted the cargo of the ‘Spray’ when he once more hove to in Boston harbor. This curio collection, as well as his vessel, he has brought with him to the Exposition, and it will be to the profit of every visitor to shake hands with the gallant captain, a man of stout heart and steady nerve, a veteran of the salt sea, and a man of mighty mould and character.” After paying an admission fee, fair-goers were rowed out in the
Spray
’s dory to meet the captain, who regaled them with tales from his travels, the “carpet tacks on the deck” yarn being a big crowd pleaser.

Always eager to make a buck, Slocum came up with an ingenious bit of marketing. He had saved the old sail that had taken the
Spray
as far as Australia. He cut it up and inserted small pieces of it — “A piece of her original mainsail, which was torn, beyond repair, in the gale off Cape Horn, 4th to 8th of March, 1896 — a fierce tempest!” — inside the booklet he sold. Thus, the real reason for buying the booklet was to acquire the little “Sloop
Spray”
souvenir that accompanied it. For some admirers this was like buying a piece of the true cross.