Alone at Sea : The Adventures of Joshua Slocum (9780385674072) Read online

  Victor was unaware of the many dangers of sailing in the early 1880s. There were still cannibals in the New Hebrides and on the Solomon Islands. In Sydney, locals still told the horrendous and tragic tale of John Williams, the missionary who was killed by cannibals in the New Hebrides in 1839. The sailing life on Chinese and Malaysian seas was rife with danger. Besides cannibal attacks, there were sudden typhoons to fear. On top of this, crews were always on the lookout for pirates, who preyed on boats that were in trouble — perhaps becalmed, or aground on a sandbar. Having found one, they would swoop down, vulturelike, and kill all on board. Pirate ships figured in many stories told on those waters. One was of the clipper ship the Living Age, bound for New York from Shanghai with a rich cargo of silks and teas. She ran aground on a reef in the East China Sea for almost two months, during which time a Chinese junk came into view. The crew’s panic, while extreme, was justified by past accounts of the pirates’ savagery. The second mate of the Living Age later recalled, “The cry arose at once: ‘The pirates are waiting for daylight to come aboard and murder us.’ … The crew gave way to despair … and one old sailor went raving crazy. The poor old man, with white hair streaming in the wind, stood up on a spar singing and shrieking at the top of his voice, adding to the terror of the rest.” The sighting proved to be a false one, but such was the fear that pirates inspired. Slocum and Virginia well knew the treacheries found in those waters. Slocum met up with one renowned ruffian, Bully Hayes, who regaled the captain and his wife with tales of his unscrupulous deeds and pitiless acts. Hayes bragged about the part he played in South Sea slavery, which he called “black-birding.” At one point he lured an entire congregation aboard his ship in the name of fellowship, then immediately shackled them and boarded them up in the hold.

  A third child was born to the Slocums in June 1875. Jessie Lena arrived while the boat was lying at anchor in a Philippine harbor. In Manila, shortly after the birth, the company sold the B. Aymar and asked Slocum to stay in the Philippines long enough to build a ship for inter-island trading. For the third time in his career, Slocum was happily employed as a shipwright. Since the best timber was most plentiful outside Manila, Slocum and his young family made a sixty-mile trek to the seaside village of Olongapo. Slocum’s first task was to construct a safe and livable jungle hut. He built an elevated nipa-thatched house with a floor seven feet above the ground. There was ample room beneath it for pigs and fowl to roam, and its height gave some measure of security. Even so, Victor recalled their modest domain as creeping with venomous creatures: “Up through the cracks in the split bamboo flooring could crawl centipedes, scorpions, and even a small boa if it took a notion to come in at night and hang down from the rafters, tail first. We found that both centipedes and scorpions had a habit of crawling into our clothes and getting into our shoes while they were not in use, so it was routine to shake and search everything while dressing in the morning.” The air was stifling, and everyone, especially the children, was cranky from the heavy, damp heat. Virginia not only had her everyday motherly duties but also had to keep her inquisitive little pack from touching or eating poisonous plants and tangling with boas and other reptiles. Victor remembered thick forest noises rising up from the crocodile-filled swamps, which only fueled his normal childhood fantasies and fears. He later recalled, “Only in forests like those in the Philippines can one hear such a nocturnal roar.”

  How Virginia survived such conditions with an infant, a toddler and a six-year-old is hard to fathom. Perhaps what saved her was her love of the wilderness. As a new bride she had been enthusiastic at the prospect of seeing Alaska, and she seemed to continue to welcome new and rugged experiences. She was part Native American on her mother’s side, and her son Ben Aymar recalled her being proud of her “Indian blood.” Virginia was a horsewoman and loved to be in the outdoors. Ben Aymar described horses as his mother’s passion, one that began during her childhood in Australia, where she “was trained to ride horses and on weekends, she rode with associates into the Blue Mountains, exploring and sleeping on the ground much as the natives did. She told of cooking eggs in a piece of cloth held in a boiling hot spring.”

  In the oppressive Philippine jungle with her three small charges she was every bit as resilient. She was ever resourceful and alert to dangers, and her instincts were usually dead on. Some of the Chinese workers in the area resented Captain Slocum’s shipbuilding commission and plotted to murder his family in their sleep while he was away in Manila. Virginia awoke to shouting and the light of torches all around the hut. To her relief, it was a group of friendly Tagals come to protect her and the children. They had gotten wind of the plot and rallied to the family’s defense.

  The next target for the angry Chinese faction was the launching of Slocum’s vessel. They blocked the launch by shifting the ways out of line. Again the Tagals came to the Slocums’ rescue, this time with their teams of water buffalo, which they lined up to drag the ship down to the water. As payment for the steamer, Slocum was given a seventy-two-foot schooner, the Pato, which is Spanish for duck. The Pato had neither deck nor cabin, but the family agreed that life aboard a much smaller boat than they had been used to was preferable to life on shore in Olongapo. Virginia, pregnant with twins, boarded the Pato. Slocum picked up work immediately, and over the next months they made numerous inter-island trips. After salvaging a cargo of tea, camphor and silks from a British bark stranded on a reef, the Pato continued to Hong Kong, where Slocum decided to take the small boat and his family into the codfishing waters of the Sea of Okhotsk. During the fishing trip Virginia gave birth to her twins. In a letter to a business associate, Slocum betrayed little fatherly sentiment in his recollection of the event: “Two of my children were born on this voyage while at Petropolanska; they were two months old when we arrived at Oregon — four days old when we began to take in fish … Yes Sir, we had a stirring voyage and altogether a delightful time on the fishing grounds for every codfish that came in over the rail was a quarter of a dollar — clear.” Slocum pronounced the fishing trip “a great success”; the Daily Astorian for September 21, 1877, listed the Pato’s catch as 23,000 fine cod. But the rough fishing life had a price for Slocum’s family — the twins died in infancy. Years later Ben Aymar could only reflect that “the ocean is no place to raise a family.”

  Slocum made life a little more livable aboard the Pato. With the fishing money he bought a small cargo of wood and built a good cabin for the vessel. He wrote that he also “made all comfortable outfits necessary.” The Pato sailed from Oregon on March 30, 1878 bound for Honolulu. The Hawaii Public Archives place the schooner Pato on three runs between Honolulu and Kohala though May and early June. On one arrival in Honolulu, Slocum impressed a crowd on the docks. He raced to catch a departing mail boat that had left behind a bag of mail. She was sailing at a fast clip, but the Pato easily caught up to her. The small triumph brought this fast little schooner a moment of glory, and Slocum accepted an offer of five thousand dollars for her. He wrote to a friend that the payment was “all in twenty dollar gold pieces, ugh! if I had them now.”

  With their family home sold, the Slocums returned by steamer to their home port of San Francisco, where the captain bought his next command, the 109-foot bark Amethyst. For the next three years they travelled the Pacific with timber, coal, and even a hold full of gunpowder out of Shanghai. This voyaging was over many rough seas, and Slocum was well aware of the Amethyst’s age. Built in 1822, she would have been one of the oldest American vessels still sailing those seas. These were difficult passages for Virginia, who was again pregnant. Slocum engaged his brother Ingram as the ship’s cook and his sister Ella to be with Virginia. Virginia had a second daughter in 1879. The baby lived only a short time, her death coming in a small Philippine port where the Amethyst was loading a cargo of timber. The death of her child in this squalid foreign port hit Virginia hard. Her grief was excruciating and she made a slow recovery. She poured out her sorrow to the only person who might understand i
ts depths — her own mother. On July 17, 1879, from Laguemanac in the Philippines, a frail and distraught Virginia wrote:

  Dearest Mother & all

  You must excuse for writing you so short a letter. I have been verey sick ever since the 15 of last month. I feel a little better now it is such a strange sicken. I have not been able to eat anything till lately. Dear Josh has got me every thing he can think of my hand shakes so now I can hardley write. Dear Mother my Dear little baby died the other day & I expect that is partley the cause. every time her teeth would start to come she would cry all night if I would cut them through the gum would grow togather again. the night she died she had one convulsion after another I gave her a hot bath and some medecine and was quite quiet infact I thought she was going to come around when she gave a quiet sigh and was gone. Dear Josh embalmed her in brandy for we would not leave her in this horid place she did look so pretty after she died Dearest Mother I canot write any more

  /s/ Virginia

  Embalming a child in liquor, as Slocum did, was a common seafaring practice. Aboard a temperance vessel the method of preserving was to coat the child in tar. Both practices allowed a grieving family to bury their own in a home port. A return to San Francisco would probably have strengthened Virginia’s health, but she improved without it. By the next year she was back by her husband’s side on deck. As they sailed under full sail into Hong Kong harbor, they had to steer clear of three warships and a full-rigged vessel. Everyone expected an epic collision, but Slocum made it into port safely. Ben Aymar later wrote what had given him the courage: “Father took the wheel — mother stood by him. Her silence gave him confidence.” Slocum apologized to one of the British admirals for the close call. He had cleared the warship only by inches. The admiral replied by commending his great navigational skills: “Any man who can sail a ship under full sail through a passageway too dangerous to contemplate need not apologize to the entire British Navy.” Slocum and “the lady who stood beside” were invited aboard.

  In March 1881, the seafaring couple and their three small children sailed again into Hong Kong harbor. Here Virginia gave birth to her last child, a son named James Abram Garfield Slocum. They were off again at the end of the month, and poor Virginia must have dreaded the destination — once again she would be in Laguemanac with an infant. But this time all went well, and early that May the family arrived back in Hong Kong with a load of lumber. On May 23, a Captain Kenney arrived in Hong Kong from Cardiff on a boat that caught Captain Slocum’s eye. Slocum was smitten by her. She was the Northern Light, built in 1873 at Quincy, Massachusetts. The 220-foot ship indeed looked grand, with her three masts and three decks and the added elegance of a figurehead. “As beautiful as her name” is the way Slocum viewed her. The square rigger was easily five times the size of Slocum’s vessel.

  Slocum could not resist, and a transaction was made in Hong Kong harbor. Slocum sold his family’s home, the Amethyst, and became part-owner of the Northern Light. Years later, Slocum would reflect on his years as captain of the tall-masted ship as “his best command.” He added, “I had a right to be proud of her, for at that time — in the 1880’s — she was the finest American sailing vessel afloat.”

  The succession of boats had been a strange environment for raising young children: livestock in pens on the deckhouse roof, a grand piano bolted to the floor, and Slocum’s vast library of over five hundred books. According to Victor, the orderly bookcases made the cabin “very much like the study of a literary worker or a college professor.” Slocum also read poetry, the classics and essays, but his passion was for books of sea adventure: “He simply revelled in the tales of Sinbad the Sailor,” Victor would remember.

  At the age of thirty-seven, Captain Joshua Slocum seemed to be leading a charmed life. As a master mariner, he had reached the pinnacle of his career. His professional success had come without apparent domestic sacrifice. There is no doubt that his wife was the reason he had attained this rare balance and could live life on his own terms with few compromises. Virginia was the perfect wife for Joshua, an adventurous and hardworking traveling companion. She educated the children, holding lessons every day from nine until noon, and buying books at ports along the way. Victor recalled a German comic book being purchased in Hong Kong, for educational purposes. She also had the children memorize classical poetry. Slocum was their inspiration, as he was a great reciter and knew several verses of Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by heart. He also made scrap-books with amusing and odd bits of news pasted in. Jessie remembered her father doing “a lot of chuckling over them” and that the books were used as part of their schooling. “Father and mother always encouraged us in reading any and all books,” was Jessie’s memory of her English classes on board ship. Virginia was musical and played the piano, harp and guitar; she also sang and danced. On Saturdays she enforced a “field day,” during which the children were expected not only to clean and tidy up but also to mend. And she taught them their Anglican catechism during the shipboard Sunday school. When it came to disciplining her lively charges and keeping order in the floating schoolhouse, Virginia kept a switch prominently displayed over a picture in the cabin.

  Virginia’s energy and verve were matched by her fearlessness. Ben Aymar remembered how he lured sharks to the stern of the boat with a tin can tied on a string; Virginia would then shoot them with her .32 caliber revolver. Her son wrote of her prowess: “How I loved to see her do it — and without any signs on her part of showing superior skill.” Of her culinary abilities, he recalled, “She was an excellent cook of the rough and ready sort.” Jessie wrote, “Mother was a remarkable woman, not many had the stamina she had and I might add, there are none today who lived as she had to. She lived truly as the Book of Ruth says …”

  After Garfield’s birth, the Northern Light sailed to Manila to load a cargo of sugar and hemp. The Slocums and their crew of twenty-five stopped in Java for supplies of fresh produce, and Victor recalled the bountiful spectacle of a “deck piled with yams, sweet potatoes, baskets of eggs and crates of chickens.” He also remembered how the rat population was kept under control: “We had monkeys galore as well as musk deer and a civet, called a musk cat.” The Northern Light made Liverpool by Christmas, boasting the largest single shipment of sugar into port. Victor recalled the glorious sound of church bells ringing through the fog and what a joyous effect it had on everyone aboard after six months at sea with little more than passing glimpses of land. Virginia, who never lost a teaching opportunity, took the children to see the sugar refinery as well as the factory where the hemp was made into twisted ropes and cordage.

  After the Northern Light had her barnacles removed and bowsprit replaced, the vessel crossed the Atlantic for New York. She docked at Pier 23 after sailing under the new and soon to be opened Brooklyn Bridge. On their arrival back in the Northern Light’s home port, the Slocums were the toast of New York City. A reporter for the New York Tribune gave an account of their shipboard lifestyle in a feature titled “An American Family Afloat.” Virginia and Joshua were glowingly portrayed as the “typical American sailor who has a typical American wife to accompany him on his long voyages, and to make his cabin as acceptable a home as he could have on shore.” The article went on to give a rather glamorized account of life afloat for this “typical” American couple: “The tautness, trimness and cleanliness of this vessel, from keelson to truck and stem to stern, are features not common on merchant ships. The neat canvas cover over the steering-wheel bearing the vessel’s name and hailing port, worked with silk, is the handiwork of the captain’s wife. Descending to the main cabin, one wonders whether or not he is in some comfortable apartment ashore.”

  The New York welcome was a moment of glory for Slocum, and he wanted his father to witness this tangible evidence of his wayward son’s success. John Slocombe, now in his seventies, together with his second wife and their teenage daughter, Emma, arrived from their home outside Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. The reunion of father a
nd son was filled with pleasant memories from twenty-two years earlier, the last time they had seen each other on Brier Island. Emma stayed for seven weeks with the captain and his family and was moved by Virginia’s hospitality. Years later, she recalled the impact that Virginia’s generous and energetic spirit had on a young country girl: “Virginia was most kind to me … took me sight seeing to the Historical and Art Museums, also bought some nice things for me. I’d seen nothing but happiness between Josh and Virginia, perhaps I was too young to discern anything else.” Virginia and the captain gave her a memorable vacation. “Two incidents come to mind — one was a visit to the Harper Publishing House with Captain Slocum, Virginia and myself. We were escorted all through the plant which was great to me. I understand Josh done some writings that Harper published — the other are going to Coney Island and Manhattan Beach and hearing Sousa’s band of 100 pieces — that also was great.”

  Emma returned to Nova Scotia, and the Northern Light set sail in August 1882 for Yokohama with a hold full of case oil. The trip had minor troubles from the beginning. In the glowing account of life portrayed in the Tribune feature, one line stands out as foreshadowing the dangers ahead for the Slocum family on the Northern Light. The reporter reflected on “two striking thoughts, one that American sailing ships are becoming obsolete and the other, that so few American sailors can be found.” The latter was a hard truth for Slocum. Finding a hardworking and reputable American crew was next to impossible, for young men with the gumption and necessary wit were heading West. Slocum was left with less than choice pickings: an array of social outcasts, from drunkards to ex-convicts. To make matters worse, the shipping rings found in every port were still in tight control, and the crews they recruited were often delivered to the ship drunken and unwilling. Slocum knew that these were the men who would accompany his young family around the world, and he may well have seen trouble on the horizon.