The Boston Globe has an interesting interview with Geoffrey Wolff, who has written a new biography of Joshua Slocum, The Hard Way Around: The Passages of Joshua Slocum. The book also got a rave review by Nathaniel Phibrick in the New York Times Sunday Book Section.

While the biography sounds intiguing, reading the interview made me want to go back to reread Slocum’s classic Sailing Alone Around the World. Joshua Slocum was the first person to sail around the world alone in1897  in his 37-foot sloop, the Spray.  He wrote Sailing Alone Around the World, a masterpiece of nautical literature, in 1900 on the return from his epic voyage.

From the Boston Globe interview:

Wolff’s nonfiction works include “The Duke of Deception’’ and biographies of Harry Crosby and John O’Hara. He is also the author of six novels. Wolff spoke from his home in Bath, Maine.

Q. Where does Slocum fit in the rank of mariners such as Shackleton and Bartlett?

A. I think Joshua Slocum was the greatest sailor in modern history, chiefly because he followed his path with so little fuss, and because he was such a bravura and accurate navigator. After 5,000 miles at sea, 43 days out of sight of land, he hit the Marquesas within 5 miles. In 1896 this was extraordinary, particularly since he was a lunar navigator, a method rewarding in accuracy but incredibly painstaking. Usually it required three people to establish a fix, but he did it alone. In “Sailing Alone Around the World’’ there’s a moment of epiphany, when Slocum had been beaten back through the Strait of Magellan, then beaten back around Cape Horn, then survived the rock-strewn Milky Way at night, then battered by foul tides and contrary wind as he inched forward toward the Pacific. He was in a fair contest, a game, really, with nature. The sea he saw as a worthy opponent rather than an enemy. He also seemed to ask, “What’s the hurry?’’ That too made him different. So many of the great sailors were sailing against deadlines or speed records. That wasn’t Slocum’s spirit. In the wildness of Tierra del Fuego he became a sea creature.

One side note, for those who care about such things, relates to Slocum’s use of “lunars,” which is to say the calculation of longitude by  “lunar distances.”   How frequently Slocum actually used lunars is the subject of some discussion.   Here is one viewpoint:  Joshua Slocum’s navigational methods

There is no doubt that Slocum used lunars on one afternoon in the Pacific. And there is no doubt that he wrote an eloquent epitaph for the old lunar distance method. But the idea that Slocum completed his circumnavigation *because* he used lunars, or that he must have used lunars extensively *because* he had no chronometer is, in fact, mistaken. Slocum kept his longitude by dead reckoning and says so rather clearly, I think, in his book. His single lunar observation one afternoon in the Pacific was not so different from a modern navigator’s use of lunars –something done for fun, challenge, historical experience, but not an essential component of navigation today.

For those who haven’t read it, Sailing Alone Around the World is available free online in Kindle format which is readable on the free Kindle reader on PC, Mac, Android, and iPhone and iPad.   It is available free online in most other formats here.