June 27

Joshua Slocum was born in the middle of the 19th century. I stumbled upon him when I was looking for the wreck of the General Slocum, a steamship that caught fire and burned to the waterline on June 15, 1904, resulting in the deaths of over 1,000 people. This just goes to show you that key-word searches are sometimes wildly off base. There was however a bit of the mariner in Joshua Slocum, quite a lot actually. But simply having the last name Slocum does not make for a connection with the steamship General Slocum tragedy. The steamship was not named for Joshua or anyone in his family. I enjoyed finding Joshua however because I learned that on the 27th in 1898 Joshua Slocum, at the helm of his 37’ sloop-rigged sailboat, pulled into the harbor in Newport, Rhode Island. His journey had begun with his sailing, alone, out of Fairhaven, Massachusetts on April 24, 1895. His arrival in Rhode Island marked the end of the first solo circumnavigation of our world. In 1900, he wrote the book Sailing Alone Around the World. Slocum disappeared in November 1909 when sailing his boat, the Spray, through Strait of Magellan.