"Joshua Slocum spent a lifetime at sea. He ran away from his Nova Scotia home at the age of 14 and for the next 35 years he sailed the world holding every shipboard rank. When a ship under his command was wrecked on the coast of Brazil in 1887, it seemed that his maritime career had ended in disgrace. Not one for retiring to earthly pastures, Slocum rebuilt a hundred- year-old sloop and set off for Boston in 1895 on the first single-handed circumnavigation...

"In June 1898, a little more than three years after departing Boston in his rebuilt oyster sloop Spray, Captain Joshua Slocum made landfall in New England and became the first person ever to sail alone around the world. The voyage capped a lifetime of adventure for the indomitable Slocum, who had advanced from seaman to captain and owner during the challenging final years of commercial sail, surviving hurricanes, mutinies, shipwreck, financial ruin,...

"This book is widely regarded a classic of sailing literature because it is an account written by the sailor who made the first solo navigation of the globe under sail. A biography of Joshua Slocum would make riveting reading in its own right, for inherent in him were all the attributes of the ideal seaman of the latter half of the nineteenth century. An unquenchable spirit of adventure propelled him through many voyages and hairsbreadth escapes from...