A dramatic portrait of the legendary sea commander traces his rapid rise from an uneducated Dickensian childhood in mid-19th-century Nova Scotia to the leader of ships that experienced high-danger adventures including a first documented solo journey around the world. By the award-winning author of The Duke of Deception. 50,000 first printing. A portrait of the legendary sea commander traces his rapid rise from an uneducated childhood in mid-nineteenth-century Nova Scotia to the leader of ships that experienced high-danger adventures, including the first documented solo journey around the world. A masterful biographer now gives us a thrilling, definitive portrait of the most legendary icon of adventure.Joshua Slocum escaped a Dickensian childhood in Nova Scotia in 1860, at the age of sixteen, as an ordinary seaman. Despite his third-grade education, Slocum’s rise through the ranks was mercurial: just a decade later he was commander of his own ship, the first of many. His journey had already taken him nearly everywhere—Asia, South America, Australia—and through hurricanes, shipwrecks, pirate attacks, cholera, two marriages, and seven children.But his crowning glory was yet to come. In 1895 he set sail—by himself—in the small sloop Spray. More than three years and forty-six thousand miles later, he became the first man to circumnavigate the globe solo, a feat that wouldn’t be replicated for another quarter century. His account of that voyage, Sailing Alone Around the World, soon made him famous. A decade later, he set off alone once more—and was lost at sea.Wolff captures this singular life and its flamboyant times so vividly that readers with any historical imagination are sure to be swept away.
