by Derek Wilson
I squared the matter by charging people sixpence each for coming on board, and when this business got dull I caught a shark and charged them sixpence each to look at that. The shark was twelve feet six inches in length, and carried a progeny of twenty-six, not one of them less than two feet in length. A slit of a knife let them out in a canoe full of water, which, changed constantly, kept them alive one whole day. In less than an hour from the time I heard of the ugly brute it was on deck and on exhibition, with rather more than the amount of the Spray’s tonnage dues already collected.27
However, the traveller did not find all Australians mean. An anonymous lady sent him five pounds ‘as a token of her appreciation of his bravery in crossing the wide seas on so small a boat and all alone without human sympathy to help when danger threatened’.28
Once again Slocum found himself having to give the ‘wide seas’ best. He had planned to travel south round Australia but foul weather and ice drifting up from the Antarctic obliged him to go the other way about the continent. He spent the rest of the summer on a pleasant cruise round Tasmania and, on 9 May 1897, set sail once more from Sydney.
Anyone who loves travel and thrills to nature in her more grandly beautiful moods, should sail, at least once, the long lagoon between the rugged coast of Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef. Even now, when the tourist industry has filled every port with entrepreneurs offering fishing trips and scuba diving expeditions, this stretch of water provides unparalleled vistas both above and below the waves. For Slocum, sailing single-handed and non-stop from Great Sandy Cape to Cooktown it was a voyage of wary delight. He exulted in ‘the waters of many colours studded all about with enchanted islands’ but always kept a sharp lookout for outcrops of jagged coral and trusted to ‘the mercies of the Maker of all reefs’.29 He stopped at Port Denison (modern Bowen) then made for Cooktown, the settlement recently sprung up on the Endeavour River to serve the nearby goldmines. For Slocum this was a pilgrimage, for Cooktown was built around the harbour where Captain Cook had brought his ship for repair in 1770 after brilliantly negotiating the hazards of the Barrier Reef. From there the Endeavour had made her way through uncharted Torres Strait between Queensland and New Guinea and thither the Spray followed. But not before her captain had witnessed a tragedy: ‘I saw coming into port the physical wrecks of miners from New Guinea, destitute and dying. Many had died on the way and been buried at sea.’30 In 1877 New Guinea had experienced its own ‘gold rush’. Hopeful prospectors from Australia and farther afield had flocked to the Mai-Kusa river in pursuit of exaggerated rumours of mineral wealth. The failure of the pioneers had not dampened the optimism of others, and successive contingents of adventurers crossed to the island (divided up and annexed by Holland, Germany and Britain in 1884–5). The results were almost always dismal scenes such as Slocum witnessed. He was sufficiently moved to deliver a lecture to the local people at which a subscription was taken up for the miners.
The 22 June 1897 found Joshua Slocum on tiny Thursday Island, off the northern tip of Queensland. And in that remote and insignificant outpost of empire he represented the United States of America in the celebrations marking the diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria. The main attraction was a corroboree, a dance festival performed by four hundred aborigines specially brought over from the mainland by the resident magistrate. The frenzied dancing went on, by the light of fires, late into the night. It was, in Slocum’s words, ‘a show at once amusing, spectacular, and hideous’.31 Two days later he quitted Australian waters and twenty-three days later, after a magnificent run before the trade winds, he reached Cocos Keeling Islands, 2,700 miles away. It was during this run that he notched up the single-handed speed record of 1,200 miles in eight days.
As we have already observed, the ‘South Sea Islands’ were no sooner discovered than various adventurers – misfits, social outcasts, younger sons of the nobility, and the like – began settling them in the hope of discovering or creating their own tropical paradise. One of the most successful escapists was undoubtedly Captain John Clunies Ross RN who, on retiring from active service, in 1827, took his family to live on the Cocos Keeling Islands. The only occupants were fellow adventurer Alexander Hare and forty concubines and slaves he had recently brought from Malaysia. Ross swiftly established his ascendancy and when Slocum arrived, seventy years later, he found a well-ordered community under the leadership of Sidney Clunies Ross, the founder’s grandson.*
Slocum found the islands swarming with Malay and Eurasian children. At first they feared the solitary seaman, believing him to be a spirit from the deep. But, largely with bribes of ship’s biscuit thick-spread with blackberry jam, he won them over. For days on end they sat on the beach and watched wide-eyed as Slocum re-tarred and caulked his vessel.
One of the unique features of Cocos Keeling is the giant clams (the largest in the world) which are found in its waters. It was while on an expedition to collect some of these that Slocum came closer to death than he had been when alone in mid-ocean or battling with breakers off treacherous shores:
I found myself with a thoughtless African negro in a rickety bateau that was fitted with a rotten sail, and this blew away in mid-channel, in a squall that sent us drifting helplessly to sea.
The dinghy had no oars and, while there was an anchor there was ‘not enough rope to tie a cat’:
With Africa the nearest coast to leeward, three thousand miles away, with not so much as a drop of water in the boat, and a lean and hungry negro – well, cast the lot as one might, the crew of the Spray in a little while would have been hard to find.32
Slocum could not escape the crisis by leaping overboard and striking out for the shore, because, like many ancient mariners, he could not swim. Fortunately, he discovered a pole in the bottom of the boat. Plying this as a makeshift paddle, he was able to work the craft into shallow water.
A trouble-free run before the trade winds from 22 August to 8 September brought him to the British island of Rodriguez, where the natives all fled in panic at his approach. It transpired that the local priest had recently warned his largely Roman Catholic flock of the imminent appearance of Antichrist. A lone figure emerging from the sea seemed to fit the bill perfectly. At Mauritius, which he reached on 19 September, Slocum decided to see out the rest of the winter so as to have good weather for rounding the Cape. Thus it was 17 November before he reached Durban.
We find little reference to major political events in Slocum’s account of his travels. Like most adventurers, he considered himself an individualist above, or at least outside, the realm of international statesmanship. But now he was walking into the world’s number one trouble spot. President Kruger was feverishly rearming the Boer republics and open war between them and England was only months away. Slocum spent four months in South Africa, where being by now a major celebrity, he met several leading personalities, including Kruger, Sir Alfred Milner, the British High Commissioner, and the explorer H. M. Stanley, who was back in Africa to work on his latest book (Through South Africa).
In both Natal and Cape Town Slocum found a tense atmosphere and one constantly exacerbated by the press of both sides. Despite himself, he was caught up in this political tennis match. On the occasion of his meeting with Paul Kruger, Slocum was introduced as the captain who was sailing round the world. Like most Boers, the president was a biblical fundamentalist who stubbornly held to the view that the earth was flat. ‘You don’t mean round the world,’ he snapped, ‘It is impossible. You mean in the world.’ And he walked away muttering ‘Impossible! Impossible!’ A local journal, the Cape Town Owl picked up the story and made it the subject of a wicked political cartoon.
This was not the first brush Slocum had had with the ‘flatearthers’ in the Cape. He had already crossed swords with fanatics who had taunted him publicly and told him that whatever else he had been doing for the last thirty-two months he had not been sailing round the world. Slocum did not allow this to colour his impression of the Afrikaner race as a whole:
/> While I feebly portray the ignorance of these learned men, I have great admiration for their physical manhood. Much that I saw first and last of the Transvaal and the Boers was admirable. It is well known that they are the hardest of fighters, and as generous to the fallen as they are brave before the foe. Real stubborn bigotry with them is only found among old fogies, and will die a natural death.33
Which suggests that Joshua Slocum was a better mariner than a prophet.
On 26 March 1898, Spray put out from Cape Town on the last leg of her odyssey. As she whipped along under set sails her captain read books acquired in South Africa or watched the porpoises, dolphins and flying fish which cavorted all around his vessel. All seemed now, quite literally, plain sailing. But the sea kept one of its master strokes till last.
Having crossed the Atlantic by way of St Helena and Ascension, then put in at Grenada and Dominica, Slocum sailed from his last port of call on 5 June 1898 and set course for New York. On the tenth he was becalmed in the Sargasso Sea for eight days. Then, with a suddenness typical of this unpredictable quarter, windlessness gave way to a south-westerly gale. Suddenly, the tough little Spray, which had withstood so much, began to succumb to the battering of wind and waves: ‘Under a sudden shock and strain her rigging began to give out. First the main-sheet strap was carried away, and then the peak halyard-block broke from the gaff.’ Slocum did makeshift repairs but, two days later: ‘Just as I was thinking about taking in sail the jibstay broke at the masthead, and fell, jib and all, into the sea.’ Without its stay the mast wiggled about like a reed but Slocum managed to hold it with a block and tackle. For days and nights together he battled to hold his boat on course through intermittent storms, till he was ‘tired, tired, tired of baffling squalls and fretful cobble-seas’.34 But there was no respite. As Spray drew nearer to land she ran into cannonades of hail and a lurid electrical storm. Although he did not realise it until later, he was running into a celebrated hurricane that had just torn across New York, doing immense damage. At length it fell upon Spray in all its fury. Slocum lashed everything down, took in all sail, put out a sea anchor and wedged himself into his bunk. Spray lunged and bucked like a tethered colt. The wind shrieked. Thunderbolts hurtled into the sea. When the storm had passed, the sloop was still there. Wearily Slocum changed course and made for the nearest anchorage on Long Island.
On 27 June 1898, at one o’clock in the morning, Joshua Slocum brought his boat into Newport RI after a voyage of 46,000 miles. But the voyage was not quite over:
I had myself a desire to return to the place of the very beginning . . . So on July 3, with a fair wind, [Spray] waltzed beautifully round the coast and up the Acushnet River to Fairhaven, where I secured her to the cedar spile driven in the bank to hold her when she was launched. I could bring her no nearer home.35
What does a man do who has accomplished the ultimate in his chosen sphere of endeavour? The experience inevitably leaves him with empty horizons unless he can find some fresh challenge. For Joshua Slocum there were months of acclaim and excitement. He received a rapturous welcome. He wrote and published his account of the voyage. He enjoyed the celebrity and the congratulations. He gave lecture after lecture, until he grew tired of his own anecdotes. Then, bit by bit, the excitement surrounding his great exploit died down and left him just another man facing the prospect of old age. That was a state of affairs he could not tolerate.
A modern psychiatrist, himself a yachtsman, has described the category of sailor into which Joshua Slocum most assuredly fits as one who has:
. . . a relationship with the sea that has a dominating effect on his life . . . the relationship can be described in terms of a lifelong love affair with the sea. Sailors seek, and maybe occasionally find, in this relationship something which never seems accessible to them on land. It is hard to say precisely what it is they seek or experience out at sea, but clearly it is an attraction powerful enough to draw them time and again back to the apparently lonely expanses of the ocean. This fascination can make them restless on land, and many sailors lead unfulfilled lives ashore because they put little energy into anything not directed towards the next journey over the horizon. It is almost as though there were an irresistibly alluring woman beckoning to them from somewhere beyond the reach of land.36
She beckoned Slocum again one day in 1909, when he and Spray once more slipped anchor. They headed south from Bristol, Rhode Island and disappeared from the world of the living.
It was a fitting end, a poetic end, for one who had overcome everything the sea could throw at him and won a unique place in the annals of maritime adventure.
* Author italics.
* Although the islands were brought under British protection in 1857, the Ross family received a grant of them in perpetuity from Queen Victoria in 1886.
11
THE OCEAN WITHIN
The first solo circumnavigation marked the end of the great epoch of round-the-world sailing but by no means did it put a stop to mariners sailing round the world. That apparent contradiction in terms is simply explained. Circumnavigation voyages after 1900 (or more accurately after 1918) had a different character from all of those that had gone before. To be sure, the dangers and the thrills were still there. The cruel sea had not become more benign. For all the advantages of twentieth-century technology, modern sailing vessels were still minute, vulnerable craft alone in an alien environment. What was different was the passing of the ‘unknown’. The surface of the planet no longer included mystery zones. The oceans had been charted and, if there remained any tiny islands or atolls unvisited by voyagers, satellite mapping had pinpointed them before the century’s end. There was nothing ‘out there’ to be discovered or claimed as a colonial prize or probed with a naive curiosity. Air travel enabled millions in the world’s more affluent nations to take holidays in distant lands. Creeping globalisation ensured that what they discovered at their destinations would be, in many respects, what they had left behind them in their home towns and cities. Circumnavigation in the modern age is still an adventure but an adventure located on the ocean within.
The ‘war to end wars’ was a profound shock to the system of western society. It left many survivors with a malaise, a cynicism, an emotional void, a compulsion to go in search of meaning or perhaps just to escape from an environment that had none. ‘After the war I could neither work in a city nor lead the dull life of a businessman. I wanted freedom, open air, adventure.’1 So wrote one ex-World War I flying ace who turned to the sea for the thrills he now needed. Another restless young man, who refitted an old square-rigger for his venture explained that he and his companions ‘looked upon our voyage as a gesture of defiance in a gloomy world’.2
The sense of adventure was strong among young men who had survived the war or had stayed at home while friends and brothers went to the front or had been too young to be sacrificed on the altar of human folly. New Englander Bill Robinson named his 32-foot ketch-rigged yacht Svaap, which is Sanscrit for ‘Dream’ before setting out to escape from humdrum reality. His meandering around the world certainly brought him life-enhancing experiences in plenty. They included a passionate affair with a Norwegian girl in the Galapagos, an extensive tour of the South Sea Islands, eating human flesh at a cannibal banquet, being nearly swamped by a waterspout and being abducted by Arab tribesmen on the Red Sea coast.
The advent of the popular press and the newsreel turned several of these long-distance sailors into celebrities. Some, like French military aviator Alain Gerbault, craved fame. After the war he did everything he could to stay in the limelight. He became a national tennis champion and also represented his country at the bridge table. When those pastimes palled he deliberately took up yachting as a means of staying in the headlines. His westabout meandering from Cannes to Le Havre between 1923 and 1929 was an extended publicity tour. He sent messages on ahead to ensure that cheering crowds and reporters would be at every quayside to greet him. He gave interviews, played demonstration tennis matches
, delivered after dinner speeches and produced a steady stream of articles and books. Returning to a hero’s welcome, he was decorated with the Légion d’honneur by a grateful nation for raising the profile of France with such panache. Ordinary people increasingly looked for, and perhaps needed, vicarious thrills and glamour, and circumnavigating free spirits took their place among film stars, cricketers and baseball players in the popular hall of fame. Not all sailors, however, thrived on such adulation. Stiff-upper-lip George Muhlhauser, a genuine naval hero of World War I, hated it. Wherever he and Amaryllis went he was mobbed and fêted. In Sydney he was made the subject of a newsreel film and in Alexandria the yacht club greeted him with a guard of honour formed from the local scout troupe. But his own country was more nonchalant. No medal ceremony awaited him when he slipped almost unobserved into Dartmouth at the end of his epic voyage.
A few of the new breed of deep ocean sailors managed their adventures on a shoestring or worked their way round the world, but yachting was essentially a rich man’s hobby and the majority of circumnavigators between the wars were millionaire socialites, competing with each other to own the most luxurious vessels and travel in the greatest comfort. Their yachts were miniature versions of their Manhattan or Mayfair mansions. Their crews were treated in the same way as the below-stairs staff of their country estates. Ernest Guinness of the famous brewing dynasty took his family on a round the world cruise in Fantome I, the first of three boats of the same name which, with all mod cons including central heating and air conditioning, were among the most advanced craft afloat. Several stories are told about this genuine but eccentric yachtsman whose wealth was a barrier between him and the real world. Arriving at the ramshackle jetty of a tiny Caribbean island, Ernest landed with his companions and instructed his butler to locate suitable accommodation. The man prodded a slumbering waterside drifter into wakefulness with the words, ‘Kindly conduct these gentlemen to the first class waiting room.’
