Alone at Sea : The Adventures of Joshua Slocum (9780385674072) (9 page)

The voyage of the
Liberdade
covered 5,500 miles and took fifty-five days. It had taken them up the coast of South America, through the Caribbean, past the Carolinas,
up to Norfolk and then to Washington. When the family arrived on December 27, 1888, Hettie must have wanted to kiss the ground. Asked if she planned to go on another voyage, she quickly answered,
“Oh, I hope not. I haven’t been home in over three years, and this was my wedding voyage.” Perhaps Hettie’s reluctance to set sail again with Joshua was due to more than the discomforts and hardships of her voyage. She may have realized by then that her husband’s heart was too often with his “dear friend” Virginia. As the
Liberdade
came to the equator he said a poignant goodbye. Of his gaze heavenward to the stars, he wrote that he had “left those of the south at last, with the Southern Cross — most beautiful in all the heavens — to watch over a friend.” Virginia haunted him on at least one other occasion on that voyage north. He wrote of a specter that appeared to him one night while on watch. It was of the vessel she had died on: “A phantom of the stately
Aquidneck
appeared one night, sweeping by with crowning skysails set, that fairly brushed the stars.”

As Slocum made this final leg of the trip to bring his family back home, he must have felt mixed emotions. There would have been, of course, a sense of triumph and personal satisfaction in pulling off such an adventure, but he must also have felt a certain emptiness. He was closing the book on his youth and his professional career. Adjusting to life on new terms was to be his next challenge.

What Was There for an Old Sailor to Do?

When Slocum left the United States over three years before, he had been a gainfully employed captain and the owner of his own command. On his return in a homemade canoe, he was an unemployed drifter. Years later, Joseph Chase Allen recalled the impact the eccentric appearance of the
Liberdade
made on the people of Martha’s Vineyard. “She was canoe-shaped, sharp at both ends with some sheer. The predominating color on and about her was brown, the brown of plug tobacco, or dried autumn leaves … Her cabin was a hut, of the type seen in pictures of tropical countries, for its rounded ‘crowned’ top was
thatched with some variety of broad leaf, lapping and over-lapping to make it weatherproof, although why these leaves did not lift as the wind struck them seemed remarkable.”

The
Liberdade
may have looked like an alien craft, but it got the Slocums home, and in doing so it brought them some notoriety. After wintering in Washington, D.C., the
Liberdade
and her crew sailed down the Potomac and into New York harbor. There the press was waiting, but the New York
World
reporter did not want to talk to the captain; he was on the waterfront that day to capture his wife’s thoughts on this unique voyage. Hettie was in the spotlight for once, and the article provided a curious yet complimentary portrayal of her as a strong young woman of gentle manner with
“full brow, bright hazel eyes, a remarkably well-formed ‘nez’, a frank smiling mouth, and a chin expressing both firmness and tenderness … Here is the face of a woman who would be capable of the most devoted, intrepid deeds, done in the quietest and most matter-of-fact way, and never voluntarily spoken of afterwards.” The interview was conducted in the “wee cabin on a plank running the length and raised about three inches from the deck. A sitting posture was the only attitude possible unless one chose to lie down.” This article showed just how very different the second Mrs. Slocum was from the first. Virginia had brought a sense of aesthetics to a grand ship. Readers of “An American Family Afloat,” about the Slocums’ voyages on the
Northern Light
,
were surely enchanted by the romance of being a captain’s wife; readers of the
Liberdade
article must have shaken their heads and muttered “that poor Mrs. Slocum.” Virginia was portrayed as a goddess of efficient domesticity and motherhood in a vessel that the reporter compared to a
“comfortable apartment ashore.” Hettie gave the
World
reporter a tour of her domestic setup, and readers got the picture: “‘Just there’ — pointing outside the entrance — ‘stood two big water casks. Behind them provisions were stowed. There’s the stove over which we did our cooking.’ It was a small iron pot on three legs, in which a handful of charcoal could be kindled.” When asked how she felt about the voyage, she said, “It is an experience I should not care to repeat.” Asked if she intended to go on another, she answered, “Oh, I hope not,” and added, “I have had enough sailing to last me for a long time.”

Hettie had reflected on the voyage earlier that winter in a letter to her friend Mrs. Alfred McNutt, dated January 28, 1889. The Slocums had met Captain and Mrs. McNutt in Barbados before their wild canoe excursion. Considering their hair-raising voyage, the letter was a rather bland account. Hettie wrote that Josh thanked her for the stockings and that the voyage was full of interest to them. She cited one pleasurable family moment: “Xmas day was spent in the Chesapeake bay. We ate our Xmas dinner on board the
Liberdade
. The weather was fine and wind fair. So we enjoyed our sail up the Chesapeake and Potomac very much.” She then shared an adventurous moment:
“We had a big storm off the coast of Cuba and some bad weather on this coast. We came through everything nicely. It surprises me more and more when I think of all we have come through.” Slocum seemed oblivious to the anxiety the perilous voyage had caused his young wife. He said she was “brave enough to face the worst storms,” then added that she was not the worse for wear. He even made it sound like a beneficial trip for her, claiming his wife had “enjoyed not only the best of health, but had gained a richer complexion.”

When they arrived back in Massachusetts, the family unit was again split apart. They had no home on land, so Hettie took lodgings with her sister in Boston — the same sister who had expressed her disapproval of the marriage and hadn’t the time of day for the captain. Hettie may have secretly been in agreement, for years later one of Slocum’s cousins recalled Hettie’s feelings on returning home from her wedding trip. As Grace Brown remembered it, “Hettie found she was not wholly for that life. It was bad all around taking Virginia’s place as a wife and trying to do right by the children.” Slocum stayed with his aunt on his father’s side, Naomi Slocombe Gates, at 69 Saratoga Street, East Boston. Victor and Ben Aymar found their own lodgings, while young Jessie and Garfield stayed with Hettie. Garfield confirmed that the family split involved more than a need to find lodgings when he wrote, “Father did not come to the house.” As Grace Brown saw it, Slocum sorely missed Virginia: “His love for Hettie was
not as vital but he seemed very kind and courtly. His children I am told came second to his great love for Virginia.”

Slocum, now forty-five years old, found himself staring down his shortcomings and failures at every turn. He was effectively penniless, but perhaps the most humiliating aspect of the whole miserable turn of events was that he had to accept the shameful end of his lengthy career — he would never again be hired by a shipping company. The undeniable fact was that he had stranded his last command. Author and sailor Joseph Conrad wrote of the powerful sense of loss a sailor experiences in such circumstances:
“More than any other event does stranding bring to the sailor a sense of utter and dismal failure … To keep ships afloat is his business; it is his trust; it is the effective formula at the bottom of all these vague impulses, dreams, and illusions that go to the making up of a boy’s vocation … but saved or not saved, there remains with her commander a distinct sense of loss, a flavour in the mouth of the real, abiding danger that lurks in all the forms of human existence. It is an acquisition, too, that feeling. A man may be the better for it, but he will not be the same.”

From East Boston, Slocum continued his letter-writing battle with the State Department to take on the Brazilian government for the
Aquidneck
’s loss. Perhaps he was displacing the blame for stranding his vessel, or at least trying to diffuse it. His arguments were lengthy and self-serving; he began to sound like a tedious crank. Ben
Aymar recalled his father searching for employment during this period and said that Slocum
“spent much of his time in contacting his former business associates, seeking a lead to something acceptable.” This was a tough mid-life transition for the captain: the job he was most qualified for simply no longer existed. His experiences in tramp freighting had given him some preparation for this change in status. His years wandering between ports hustling for jobs had helped him develop the driven yet flexible attitude he would need to survive as a freelancer. To make money or return to the water, he would have to rely entirely on his own wiliness. Anyone who knew Slocum was aware that he was not only inventive but also awesomely tenacious.

Slocum decided to cash in on the attention that had come his way with the
Liberdade
adventure. He wrote a chronicle of the trip, although he had his reservations about his abilities as an author. He claimed that he wrote with “a hand alas! that has grasped the sextant more often than the plane or pen.” His 175-page self-published book,
Voyage of the Liberdade
, was copyrighted in 1890. The Yarmouth
Herald
, out of his native Nova Scotia, gave the captain’s first book a fine review: “It is a very interesting narrative of thrilling adventure, pluck and endurance rarely to be met with. It is a story of chances, privations and hardships which are not generally encountered in voyages between South America and U.S. ports.” The same reviewer praised Slocum for his nautical skills,
adding that the story was “a record of skilful seamanship and perils encountered with ready resource.” As for his skills as an author, the reviewer remarked, “The book is written in a rollicking spirit, and shows considerable literary ability.” Slocum, although not entirely comfortable telling sea stories with his pen, was to go on to greater literary fame.
Voyage of the Liberdade
sowed the seeds for his future endeavors.

Aside from writing, Slocum picked up whatever work he could find on the Boston waterfront. He was offered a job on a steamer but told Garfield that accepting such employment would be his undoing: “I would have to get used to steamships and I do not like steamships.” There was no budging him on this point. He was immovable on other issues as well. When asked to pay the fifty-dollar union fee to work as a stevedore, he flatly refused. He was then asked which church he belonged to, and was indignant that the question was even raised: “It didn’t seem to suffice that I belonged to God’s great church that knew no bounds of creed or sect.”

One day in the winter of 1892, Slocum was pacing the waterfront weighing his options when he met up with a wealthy, retired whaling captain, Eben Pierce. Pierce’s offer to give him an antiquated sloop was the best opportunity he had had for almost two years. His hopes raised, he went off to Fairhaven the next day to meet the
Spray
, which lay beached on a pasture on Poverty Point. Once again he was facing a seemingly impossible venture —
just the kind that inspired him. He thrived on the challenge of defying unbeatable odds. Captain Pierce invited Slocum to live at his house while he rebuilt the boat. Ben Aymar often visited, and Hettie came for weekends when she could get away. Besides keeping up her duties as a stepmother, she helped make financial ends meet by working as a dressmaker and gown-fitter in Boston. Slocum’s arrangement with Pierce, who had made part of his fortune inventing whaling gear, gave Slocum the freedom to devote large amounts of time and his own passionate determination to reconstructing the
Spray
. But he did have to pick up work to cover his building costs, which in the end totaled $553.62.