Alone at Sea : The Adventures of Joshua Slocum (9780385674072) Read Online Free PDF Page B

the
Constitution
heading back to America from Sydney, arriving in San Francisco on May 4 with a cargo of coal and tomatoes. The newlyweds were in port for only two days before setting sail again in a new home.Shipping records show that Slocum assumed a second Bichardcommand, the
Washington
, a 110-foot, 332-ton bark. Slocum’s proposal of a honeymoon fishing trip in Alaska would have been considered far from romantic by most young brides, but Virginia was intrigued. The salmon fishing went well, although Slocum and his crew were sailing in relatively unknown waters and the ship ran aground on unmarked shoals. Records indicate that around June 21, 1871, the
Washington
dragged her anchors. Two hundred miles from Kodiak, on the southern Alaska coast, she became stranded in a gale. She was pushed high up on a sandbar at Cook Inlet, and there she sat. Slocum set out immediately to solve the problem. Transporting the salmon catch before it spoiled was a mammoth task, but Slocum was undaunted. He thrived on challenges, and built the first of his makeshift rescue boats, a thirty-five-foot whaleboat, in the camp.
    The Alaskan portion of the honeymoon ended with the appearance of a revenue cutter (a forerunner of the Coast Guard), which offered assistance. Virginia boarded the cutter and sailed on to Kodiak while her husband stayed behind with the
Washington
. He oversaw the transfer of the salmon catch from the bark to the whaleboat and into the holds of a couple of sealers. While the sealers left for San Francisco with his cargo, Slocum set out to rejoin Virginia. The newlyweds ended their honeymoon cruise aboard a Russian bark, which took them and their crew home safely.

Mrs. Slocum sat busily engaged with her little girl at needlework. Her baby boy was fast asleep in his Chinese cradle. An older son was putting his room in order and a second son was sketching. The captain’s stateroom is a commodious apartment, furnished with a double berth which one might mistake for a black walnut bedstead: a transom upholstered like a lounge, a library, chairs, carpets, wardrobe, and the chronomets. This room is abaft the main cabin, which is furnished like a parlor. In this latter apartment are the square piano, center table, sofa, easy chairs and carpets, while on the walls hang several oil paintings
.
    In front of the parlor is the dining room, which together with the other rooms, exhibit a neatness of which only a woman’s hand is capable. The captain’s baby is the captain’s pride and bears an honored name. General Garfield acknowledged the compliment in an autographed letter to the child
.
    — From “An American Family Afloat,”
New York
Tribune
, 1882

3
True Love and a Family Afloat
    Father took the wheel — mother stood by him. Her silence gave him confidence
.
    — Ben Aymar Slocum
    Virginia Albertina Walker Slocum was as perfect a partner for Joshua Slocum as he could ever have imagined. She was beautiful and courageous, cultured and practical, strong-willed and gentle, and she was his strength. She was also adventurous enough to abandon big-city comforts and diversions for a rugged shipboard life as wife and mother. For as long as she lived, Virginia sailed the seas with her husband and stood loyally and inspirationally by his side through storms, mutinies, sorrows, blessings, losses and triumphs.
    Virginia was an exceptional sea mate — and an ablenavigator — but she was only one of scores of captain’s wives who spent their lives at sea with their husbands. This trend was dictated in large part by the fact that the age of sail was dying. With steamers taking over the merchant trade, sailing vessels had to abandon their most common routes. Just to survive, captains had to take on freight wherever a cargo could be found and carry it to whichever out-of-the-way port it was bound. Captains and their crews were thankful for the work, but often it meant years sailing unpredictable routes, to ports too small and isolated to