by Spencer, Ann
In Samoa he received another unlikely greeting. Three young women paddled their canoe up to his boat for closer inspection. They did not believe he had sailed the world alone. That he was alone at that point could only mean that he had eaten his companions. When he arrived at the Keeling (Cocos) Islands, his every move was monitored by children. It turned out that an island man had disappeared some years before, and the youngsters were trying to determine whether Slocum was the lost man with a change in skin color. There was further confusion as the captain was busy at work spreading a goopy mixture of coal tar on the Spray. Curious little eyes watched in amazement as he ate a lunch of sea biscuits topped with blackberry jam. Slocum heard them shouting, “The captain is eating coal-tar! The captain is eating coal-tar!” as they ran into the village to spread the wild news.
It is hard today to imagine the world through which Slocum was sailing. Nineteenth-century sailors stayed out of certain waterways for fear of piracy, avoided areas inhabited by cannibals, and were often greeted as the first strangers ever to visit a locale. Unlike the missionaries, who often found their way to remote spots, Slocum had no desire to change how the native people thought; on the contrary, he expressed his disdain of proselytizing in a letter to a friend from the Keeling Islands: “The heart of a missionary is all on fire to reconstruct the religion of this people. If ever one sets foot on this peaceful land, I hope he will not be of the soul-destroying sort that spoiled my early days.” Years later, Slocum’s son Ben Aymar described what his father thought of the missionary spirit: “He didn’t want your ignorance (on religious matters) crammed down his throat.” Slocum himself wrote in a letter that “I myself do not care much for your longfaced tyrannical Christians” and that he “never cared much for the devil after I grew up and got away to sea.”
Notwithstanding his somewhat irreligious attitude, Slocum had some personal pilgrimages to make along the way. While in Montevideo he made a short excursion up the River Plate with an old acquaintance from Cape Cod. Later he would give no reason for this trip, which he acknowledged was made “instead of proceeding at once on [the] voyage,” but he may well have wanted to sail past the cemetery where Virginia was buried. In Cooktown, Australia, he moored the Spray near the monument to Captain Cook. Here, Slocum did go ashore “to feast [his] eyes on the very stones the great navigator had seen, for I was now on a seaman’s consecrated ground.” His love of literature enticed him to stay for over a week on the island where a Scottish sailor, Alexander Selkirk, had asked to be marooned after a violent argument with his ship’s captain. Daniel Defoe had based his novel Robinson Crusoe on Selkirk’s adventures, and Slocum “of course made a pilgrimage to the old lookout place at the top of the mountain where Selkirk spent many days peering into the distance for the ship which came at last.” According to the inscribed rock tablet at the lookout, Selkirk lived in isolation on Juan Fernández for four years and four months. Slocum was so enchanted by the “blessed island” that he could only wonder, “Why Alexander Selkirk ever left you was more than I could make out.” Later, he would remember his final day on the island as quite possibly “the pleasantest on my whole voyage.” He spent his time with the children, who begged him to tell them the English names of objects, repeating them after him in sounds that “made the hills ring with mirth.” It was also on Juan Fernández that Slocum visited the graves, marked with rough lava rocks, of seamen “landed here to end days of sickness and get into a sailors’ heaven.” From Juan Fernández, Slocum left for Samoa on another literary pilgrimage. This time he met Fanny Stevenson, widow of Robert Louis Stevenson. In her he found a kindred spirit: “She told me that, along with her husband, she had voyaged in all manner of rickety craft among the islands of the Pacific, reflectively adding, ‘Our tastes were similar.’” Slocum was honored when she presented him with four volumes of her husband’s sailing directories of the Mediterranean, inscribing the first of them:
To Captain Slocum.
These volumes have been read and reread many times by my husband, and I am very sure that he would be pleased that they should be passed on to the sort of seafaring man that he liked above all others.
Fanny V. de G. Stevenson.
Slocum relished his travels to these remote ports. He was curious about other cultures and for the most part left his Western sensibilities aboard the Spray when he was invited to take part in local celebrations and ceremonies. On Thursday Island he watched dancers dressed and painted as island birds and animals perform amazing leaps over open fires. Slocum was intrigued by the wood and bone musical instruments that accompanied the dancers, but thought their performance was “at once amusing, spectacular and hideous.” He was repulsed, he said, by the aborigines’ facial features. But in Samoa, Slocum “saw nothing to shake one’s faith in native virtue,” although one of their gatherings caused the captain a degree of culinary distress, as he later recalled in a feature article in Good Housekeeping: “I had a curious experience in Samoa. I gave a party of natives some of my salt horse — beef, you know — and they were so highly pleased with the delicacy that they invited me to a feast at their village where they roasted pig in my honor. They roasted the pig whole by putting it on a bed of hot stones and piling hot stones over it. The flesh was crisp outside, but the roasting process was incomplete and no salt was provided. I found the pork under the circumstances rather unpalatable and the next time I was invited to the village I carried along some salt in my pocket, but they failed to have roast pig that time.”
In out-of-the-way ports, the natives were often highly superstitious. On Juan Fernández, the locals told Slocum he would not be allowed to climb on the rocks unless he had eaten goat meat. Apparently it would guarantee his surefootedness and keep him out of harm’s way generally. In Samoa, tradition required him to partake of ava — that is, to drink from a shared coconut-shell bowl, then toss some of the drink over his shoulder, salute the gods, and twirl it across a mat to his hosts. Slocum later allowed that “to the unconventional mind the punctilious etiquette of Samoa is perhaps a little painful.”
It wasn’t only in out-of-the-way settlements that Slocum encountered ideas that defied rational modern thought. In Pretoria he was introduced to President Paul Kruger of the Transvaal, known affectionly as “Oom Paul.” The introduction went sour when Slocum was referred to as the sailor who was on a voyage “around the world.” Kruger became prickly at the notion of such an excursion, proclaiming it impossible. The president believed firmly that the earth was flat: “You don’t mean round the world, it is impossible! You mean in the world.” For Slocum such fiery passion was more enjoyable to watch than the social niceties that surrounded most formal occasions. He had gotten wind of the fanatical “flat-earthers” at an earlier stop in Durban; a small group came up from Pretoria to collect data from him to confirm their flat earth research. He met with “one of the party in a clergyman’s garb, carrying a large Bible.” When Slocum said he could not help them prove their theory by his sailing experience, the clergyman became indignant and started “losing himself in a passion, and making as if he would run me through with an assagai.” Slocum recalled his final showdown with the man: “The next day, seeing him across the street, I bowed and made curves with my hands. He responded with a level, swimming movement of his hands, meaning ‘the world is flat’.” The “good, but misguided fanatic,” as Slocum came to see him, got one last word in by post. Before leaving South Africa, Slocum opened his mail to find a flat-earth pamphlet from the Transvaal geographers.
Slocum often found himself in the company of important people. He dined with governors “in the land of napkins and cut glass.” These elegant dinners caused him to reflect on how he lived aboard the Spray, and he was, as he put it, visited by “the ghosts of hempen towels and of mugs without handles.” On those occasions when he was feted this way, Slocum enjoyed the company, the exchange of wit, and most definitely the honors bestowed. While in South Africa he met the famous explorer Henry Morton Stanley, who questioned
Slocum about the Spray’s seaworthiness and then acknowledged the challenges of his circumnavigation with a matter-of-fact comment, “What an example of patience.” On Thursday Island he sailed into harbor as part of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations. And on the island of Mauritius he visited a horticultural conservatory, where the chief botanist named a newly discovered plant “Slocum” in the skipper’s honor. Another scientist, the astronomer David Gill, impressed Slocum with his discoveries in stellar photography. The two pioneers exchanged ideas concerning time: “He showed me the great astronomical clock of the observatory and I showed him the tin clock on the Spray.” Slocum had the privilege of sharing an evening lecture with Dr. Gill. This recognition guaranteed Slocum a full house and enough money for the rest of his voyage.
The captain had given his first public lecture during his summer cruising around Tasmania. He admitted to being nervous about that event and was offered some pointers by a local public speaker: “Man, man, great nervousness is only the sign of a good brain.” It was an entertaining evening, and Slocum saw the money-making potential of these lectures. He realized that he “had to do something for the expenses of the voyage, other captains might draw bottomary bonds but I lectured the Spray around the world.” His second lecture, in Bowen, Australia, was advertised in the local newspapers, and was also proclaimed by a bell ringer, who cried out about the significance of the voyager sailing from “Boston to Bowen, the two hubs in the cartwheels of creation.” This lecture was illustrated by stereopticon slides. During other lectures he showed lantern slides of some three hundred scenes, and at the Cape Town Normal College he traced out his sea route on a large map of the world. It was reported that he “proceeded to exhibit a large number of excellent Lantern Slides. The large audience was thoroughly appreciative and as heartily cheered the successive views and the Captain’s descriptions — at once humorous, caustic, and racy.” The paper also noted that in the full house in Cape Town, a large number of women were in the audience. The captain was a great success and received enthusiastic reviews. His circumnavigation had become a strong draw on the lecture circuit; evenings with Captain Slocum were billed as “accounts of perilous travels round the world. Instructive and amusing.”
There was trouble in one port along his route. When Slocum arrived in Newcastle, New South Wales, early in the fall of 1896, he received a hero’s welcome. Australians embraced the Canadian-born sailor, whose first wife’s relatives, the Walkers, still lived in Sydney. Slocum decided he would venture on to wait out some of the season in Sydney visiting Virginia’s family and giving tours of the Spray and newspaper interviews. The limelight brought him to the attention of an old enemy, Henry Slater, the bullyman he had disciplined severely thirteen years before on the Northern Light. Slater, who was now living in Sydney, decided to destroy the captain’s credibility by embroiling him in an old controversy. He went to the newspapers and the unsavory affair was aired again in great detail. Slater’s account of the cruelty he allegedly suffered was damning, as this quote from the Sydney Daily Telegraph on October 9, 1896 illustrates:
When I got out on deck I was seized from behind, knocked down, and two pairs of handcuffs were put on my wrists. I was then dragged after to the poop, where shackles were put on my ankles. A chain was then placed round my throat, crossed behind my neck, wound round my body and on through my legs, then up to the back of my neck and made fast. Then a length of chain was made fast to shackles on my ankles, and the whole lot of chain rivetted together, I had then eighty pounds of chain on my body.
Slater went on to describe the extent of his misery: “At first my daily fare was one ship’s biscuit and half a pint of water. That did not kill me, so the same amount of biscuit and about three or four tablespoons of water was tried. Still I did not die. For the first three weeks in this ‘box’ I suffered the tortures of the damned, my hunger and thirst were intolerable. I begged Captain Slocum to give me water and food, but in vain.” The account continued with descriptions of unimaginable horrors. Slater claimed that he was strung up in the air for days by his limbs, that Slocum covered him in melted butter to attract rats, and that at one desperate moment Slater actually squeezed the life out of a rodent and ate it.
Slater noted that he had been arrested and tried for mutiny and been honorably acquitted. Then he put out a challenge to the people of Sydney: “I ask the public before making a god of this man to wait until I am placed face to face with him. I do not make these statements to gain notoriety, or even sympathy, but simply to show my fellow-citizens what kind of a man they are dealing with in Captain Joshua Slocum.”
Slocum had a chance to respond to the fracas while still in New South Wales. The reporter who interviewed the captain wrote that “Captain Slocum declined to make any set statement in reply to the allegations of Slater, but he placed at the disposal of your reporter a book containing a number of clippings from American papers referring to the case of the Northern Light.” The day after Slocum learned of what was brewing, he set sail for Sydney to confront his accuser. The harbor police were waiting and gave him “a pluck into anchorage.” Slocum’s written accounts of what happened next are sparse and cryptic. There is no mention of the Slater affair, only that the police “gathered data from an old scrap-book of mine … Some one said they came to arrest me, and — well, let it go at that.” Newspapers printed accounts of Slocum’s defense made from old stories and clippings kept in his scrapbook. He didn’t deny imprisoning Slater, but told the press he was “disgusted” by Slater’s malicious attack. Slocum made a smart and unexpected first move. He had Slater summoned before a magistrate, before whom Slocum testified that Slater was capable of violence. He pointed out that Slater had once threatened, “This Captain Slocum, God help him when we meet. I’ll not be responsible for my actions. This man you are making an angel of, I’ll make an angel of him when I get hold of him.”
This immediately put Slater on the defensive, as the records of his cross-examination of Slocum illustrate:
Slater: You have been here for ten days, and have I done you any harm?
Mr. Addison: What’s the use of asking such a question?
Slater: Is this not the first time you have seen me for about thirteen years?
Captain Slocum: I have not seen you for about that time.
Slater: Are you afraid of me?
Captain Slocum: Well, you are a most excitable man, and from the language you have used, you might possibly do me an injury. I certainly am, to a certain extent, afraid of you.
Slater: You ought to be at least morally afraid of me.
The magistrate ruled that Slater must pay eighty pounds as security that he would keep the peace for six months. Slater continued the challenge, begging some kind of public debate and forum where he could show the assembled crowds how he had been bound and shackled years ago. It took well over a month for the rotten affair to be cleared up for Slocum, but as the tension faded and talk died down, he was able to enjoy touring about. He set sail in early December after a stay of almost two months in Sydney and worked his way down the Australian coast to Melbourne. Off Cape Bundaroo, people on shore shouted out their Christmas greetings to the passing Spray. He exchanged signals with the lighthouse keepers and continued south for Melbourne, then on for Tasmania.
Generally, Slocum was well cared for wherever he went. People showed respect for his mission with their kind support and monetary gifts, though money was not as important, especially when he moved away from main ports. “As I sailed farther and farther away from the center of civilization, I heard less and less of what would and would not pay,” he wrote of his sojourn in Samoa. Slocum was experiencing the generosity of a give and take, barter and trade world. On Juan Fernández he taught the islanders how to make doughnuts and fried them in the salvaged tallow the Spray was carrying. In payment, Slocum was given ancient coins from the wreck of an old galleon.
Slocum was introduced to such generosity on his arrival in Gibraltar early in the voyage.
The Gibraltar Chronicle noted that the Spray had “received a new coat of paint, sadly needed after more than a month’s knocking about in the Atlantic, and now looks quite smart.” Shipyard reports note that the “repairs to hull and sails of the Spray must have been done unofficially by the Sailors from the Fleet and there is therefore no record.” The Spray was refitted in Cape Town, and Slocum was given a railway pass to travel free throughout South Africa. He was treated royally at every port on his voyage. In Sydney he was presented with a telescope and a badge during a congratulatory address. Also in Sydney he was given a new suit of sails by the yacht club commodore, Mark Foy. Women gave him stores of jams and jellies. He sailed away with clothes, bottles of raspberry wine, fresh fruit and vegetables, cakes, gifts of money and a new stove. One critic felt that the old captain was nothing more than a hustler and called him an “intrepid water tramp.” That may have been true, but he was a charming one. If people wanted to shower him with goods and kindness, he wasn’t going to refuse.
One gift he came to wish he had refused was given to him in St. Helena. As the local Guardian newspaper reported his departure from the island in April 1898, “Captain Slocum left us in his little yacht Spray on Wednesday evening last about 6 o’clock. He took with him a kid and a lamb, but the latter jumped overboard just when leaving the harbour and was unfortunately drown.” Slocum must have wished the goat had met the same fate: it was a complete menace on board. In a humorous passage in Sailing Alone Around the World, he remembered the gift as given “in an evil moment” and recounted the chaos it unleashed: