Alone at Sea : The Adventures of Joshua Slocum (9780385674072) (6 page)

Embalming a child in liquor, as Slocum did, was a common seafaring practice. Aboard a temperance vessel the method of preserving was to coat the child in tar. Both practices allowed a grieving family to bury their own in a home port. A return to San Francisco would probably have strengthened Virginia’s health, but she improved without it. By the next year she was back by her husband’s side on deck. As they sailed under full sail into Hong Kong harbor, they had to steer clear of three warships and a full-rigged vessel. Everyone expected an epic collision, but Slocum made it into port safely. Ben Aymar later wrote what had given him the courage:
“
Father took the wheel — mother stood by him. Her silence gave him confidence.” Slocum apologized to one of the British admirals for the close call. He had cleared the warship only by inches. The admiral replied by commending his great navigational skills: “Any man who can sail a ship under full sail through a passageway too dangerous to contemplate need not apologize to the entire British Navy.” Slocum and “the lady who stood beside” were invited aboard.

In March 1881, the seafaring couple and their three small children sailed again into Hong Kong harbor. Here Virginia gave birth to her last child, a son named James Abram Garfield Slocum. They were off again at the end of the month, and poor Virginia must have dreaded the destination — once again she would be in Laguemanac with an infant. But this time all went well, and early that May the family arrived back in Hong Kong with a load of lumber. On May 23, a Captain Kenney arrived in Hong Kong from Cardiff on a boat that caught Captain Slocum’s eye. Slocum was smitten by her. She was the
Northern Light
, built in 1873 at Quincy, Massachusetts. The 220-foot ship indeed looked grand, with her three masts and three decks and the added elegance of a figurehead.
“As beautiful as her name” is the way Slocum viewed her. The square rigger was easily five times the size of Slocum’s vessel.

Slocum could not resist, and a transaction was made in Hong Kong harbor. Slocum sold his family’s home, the
Amethyst
, and became part-owner of the
Northern Light
. Years later, Slocum would reflect on his years as captain of the tall-masted ship as “his best command.” He added, “I had a right to be proud of her, for at that time — in the 1880’s — she was the finest American sailing vessel afloat.”

The succession of boats had been a strange environment for raising young children: livestock in pens on the deckhouse roof, a grand piano bolted to the floor, and
Slocum’s vast library of over five hundred books. According to Victor, the orderly bookcases made the cabin
“very much like the study of a literary worker or a college professor.” Slocum also read poetry, the classics and essays, but his passion was for books of sea adventure: “He simply revelled in the tales of Sinbad the Sailor,” Victor would remember.

At the age of thirty-seven, Captain Joshua Slocum seemed to be leading a charmed life. As a master mariner, he had reached the pinnacle of his career. His professional success had come without apparent domestic sacrifice. There is no doubt that his wife was the reason he had attained this rare balance and could live life on his own terms with few compromises. Virginia was the perfect wife for Joshua, an adventurous and hardworking traveling companion. She educated the children, holding lessons every day from nine until noon, and buying books at ports along the way. Victor recalled a German comic book being purchased in Hong Kong, for educational purposes. She also had the children memorize classical poetry. Slocum was their inspiration, as he was a great reciter and knew several verses of Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by heart. He also made scrap-books with amusing and odd bits of news pasted in. Jessie remembered her father doing “a lot of chuckling over them” and that the books were used as part of their schooling. “Father and mother always encouraged us in reading any and all books,” was Jessie’s memory of her
English classes on board ship. Virginia was musical and played the piano, harp and guitar; she also sang and danced. On Saturdays she enforced a
“field day,” during which the children were expected not only to clean and tidy up but also to mend. And she taught them their Anglican catechism during the shipboard Sunday school. When it came to disciplining her lively charges and keeping order in the floating schoolhouse, Virginia kept a switch prominently displayed over a picture in the cabin.

Virginia’s energy and verve were matched by her fearlessness. Ben Aymar remembered how he lured sharks to the stern of the boat with a tin can tied on a string; Virginia would then shoot them with her .32 caliber revolver. Her son wrote of her prowess: “How I loved to see her do it — and without any signs on her part of showing superior skill.” Of her culinary abilities, he recalled, “She was an excellent cook of the rough and ready sort.” Jessie wrote, “Mother was a remarkable woman, not many had the stamina she had and I might add, there are none today who lived as she had to. She lived truly as the Book of Ruth says …”

After Garfield’s birth, the
Northern Light
sailed to Manila to load a cargo of sugar and hemp. The Slocums and their crew of twenty-five stopped in Java for supplies of fresh produce, and Victor recalled the bountiful spectacle of a “deck piled with yams, sweet potatoes, baskets of eggs and crates of chickens.” He also remembered how the rat population was kept under control: “
We had
monkeys galore as well as musk deer and a civet, called a musk cat.” The
Northern Light
made Liverpool by Christmas, boasting the largest single shipment of sugar into port. Victor recalled the glorious sound of church bells ringing through the fog and what a joyous effect it had on everyone aboard after six months at sea with little more than passing glimpses of land. Virginia, who never lost a teaching opportunity, took the children to see the sugar refinery as well as the factory where the hemp was made into twisted ropes and cordage.

After the
Northern Light
had her barnacles removed and bowsprit replaced, the vessel crossed the Atlantic for New York. She docked at Pier 23 after sailing under the new and soon to be opened Brooklyn Bridge. On their arrival back in the
Northern Light
’s home port, the Slocums were the toast of New York City. A reporter for the New York
Tribune
gave an account of their shipboard lifestyle in a feature titled “An American Family Afloat.” Virginia and Joshua were glowingly portrayed as the “typical American sailor who has a typical American wife to accompany him on his long voyages, and to make his cabin as acceptable a home as he could have on shore.” The article went on to give a rather glamorized account of life afloat for this “typical” American couple: “The tautness, trimness and cleanliness of this vessel, from keelson to truck and stem to stern, are features not common on merchant ships. The neat canvas cover over the steering-wheel bearing the vessel’s name and hailing port, worked
with silk, is the handiwork of the captain’s wife. Descending to the main cabin, one wonders whether or not he is in some comfortable apartment ashore.”

The New York welcome was a moment of glory for Slocum, and he wanted his father to witness this tangible evidence of his wayward son’s success. John Slocombe, now in his seventies, together with his second wife and their teenage daughter, Emma, arrived from their home outside Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. The reunion of father and son was filled with pleasant memories from twenty-two years earlier, the last time they had seen each other on Brier Island. Emma stayed for seven weeks with the captain and his family and was moved by Virginia’s hospitality. Years later, she recalled the impact that Virginia’s generous and energetic spirit had on a young country girl:
“Virginia was most kind to me … took me sight seeing to the Historical and Art Museums, also bought some nice things for me. I’d seen nothing but happiness between Josh and Virginia, perhaps I was too young to discern anything else.” Virginia and the captain gave her a memorable vacation. “Two incidents come to mind — one was a visit to the Harper Publishing House with Captain Slocum, Virginia and myself. We were escorted all through the plant which was great to me. I understand Josh done some writings that Harper published — the other are going to Coney Island and Manhattan Beach and hearing Sousa’s band of 100 pieces — that also was great.”

Emma returned to Nova Scotia, and the
Northern Light
set sail in August 1882 for Yokohama with a hold full of case oil. The trip had minor troubles from the beginning. In the glowing account of life portrayed in the
Tribune
feature, one line stands out as foreshadowing the dangers ahead for the Slocum family on the
Northern Light
. The reporter reflected on
“two striking thoughts, one that American sailing ships are becoming obsolete and the other, that so few American sailors can be found.” The latter was a hard truth for Slocum. Finding a hardworking and reputable American crew was next to impossible, for young men with the gumption and necessary wit were heading West. Slocum was left with less than choice pickings: an array of social outcasts, from drunkards to ex-convicts. To make matters worse, the shipping rings found in every port were still in tight control, and the crews they recruited were often delivered to the ship drunken and unwilling. Slocum knew that these were the men who would accompany his young family around the world, and he may well have seen trouble on the horizon.

A malfunctioning rudder brought them into New London, Connecticut, for minor repairs. Once in port, a cocky portion of the crew took liberties with the rules outlined by the shipping rings. They argued that the voyage was technically over once they made port and that they were entitled to leave ship with their advanced wages. Hell broke loose, and mutiny was in the air. Within
minutes, the chief officer of the
Northern Light
was fatally stabbed in a scuffle to subdue the mutineers’ ringleader. A swift-thinking and courageous Virginia was at her husband’s side, covering him with a revolver in each hand. The crew was searched, the Coast Guard was called in, the mutineers were arrested and the remaining troublemakers were incarcerated aboard ship. Slocum secured a new chief officer.

In December the discordant crew and their troubled captain were given a strange opportunity to bond together in a humanitarian act. Two weeks before Christmas, as they were sailing through the South Sea Islands, a small open craft was spotted floating in the middle of the ocean. As the
Northern Light
drew near, Slocum saw five desperate-looking souls aboard. When they were thrown a line and hoisted up to the
Northern Light
’s deck, the gravity of the situation became apparent. The four men and one woman were starving and near death. The survivors were offered brandy to warm them, but two refused, even in their weakened state, explaining that they were missionaries. (At that time in the South Seas, “missionary” meant anyone who had adopted the Christian faith.) After being given the chance to rest, they told their gruesome tale.

They had begun as a party of twelve Gilbert Islanders on a mission from their king to a neighboring Polynesian island. On their return trip they encountered a storm that set their twenty-one-foot open boat drifting. For over
a month the islanders had been
“at the scant mercy of a changing monsoon.” All that time they had lived on dried bananas, what flying fish landed aboard and the diminished remains of their water supply. Over one-third of their water had been lost immediately when a jug smashed. Slocum wanted to return the survivors to their island, but the
Northern Light
was drifting westward on a strong equatorial current. The party refused to be put off on another island along the way, so Slocum took them to Japan. He felt he had no other moral choice in the matter and was inspired by the fictional adventures of Sinbad the sailor. The passage he recalled read, “When we behold a ship-wrecked person on the shore of the sea, … we take him with us and feed him and give him drink, and if he be naked we clothe him, and when we arrive at the port of safety we give him something of our property as a present, and act toward him with kindness and favor for the sake of God whose name be exalted.”

They arrived in Japan in mid-January. The little band was impressed by the look of the snowy countryside, but the cold winter “racked their joints with pain.” Virginia had been attending to the needs of the one lady islander; now, with this change of climate she found warmer clothing for the five of them. The odd assortment of old coats and poorly fitting mismatched suits for the men, and the dress and woollen shawl for the woman, came from the family’s “slop chest.” Slocum confessed that he was “at a
loss to know what to do with these waifs of the ocean”; they seemed so helpless and out of place in Japan. Finally, he secured passage for them to their home island on the mission ship
Morning Star
.

After unloading the cargo of case oil in Japan, the
Northern Light
headed for the Philippines to pick up a cargo of hemp and sugar bound for Liverpool. Sailing through the Sunda Strait in August 1883, she passed by Krakatoa, a volcanic island that was then erupting. Although the initial eruption had been in May, “paroxysmal explosions” were still occurring. Stones and ash were shooting seventeen miles or farther out of the volcano’s mouth, whipping up the seas and causing fifty-foot waves to crash around the
Northern Light
. Ben Aymar later reflected on the treacherous passage: “Had we been three days later in that region we would have been suffocated by the fumes.” For many days to follow, an ash-covered
Northern Light
made her way in a dense haze through seas of floating pumice stone.