Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
known that they are the hardest of fighters, and as generous to the
fallen as they are brave before the foe. Real stubborn bigotry with
them is only found among old fogies, and will die a natural death.
33
Which suggests that Joshua Slocum was a better mariner than a
prophet.
On 26 March 1898,
Spray
put out from Cape Town on the last
leg of her odyssey. As she whipped along under set sails her captain
read books acquired in South Africa or watched the porpoises, dol-
phins and flying fish which cavorted all around his vessel. All seemed
now, quite literally, plain sailing. But the sea kept one of its master
strokes till last.
Having crossed the Atlantic by way of St Helena and Ascension,
then put in at Grenada and Dominica, Slocum sailed from his last
port of call on 5 June 1898 and set course for New York. On the tenth
he was becalmed in the Sargasso Sea for eight days. Then, with a
suddenness typical of this unpredictable quarter, windlessness gave
way to a south-westerly gale. Suddenly, the tough little
Spray
, which
had withstood so much, began to succumb to the battering of wind
and waves: 'Under a sudden shock and strain her rigging began to
give out. First the main-sheet strap was carried away, and then the
peak halyard-block broke from the gaff.' Slocum did makeshift re-
pairs but, two days later: 'Just as I was thinking about taking in sail
the jibstay broke at the masthead, and fell, jib and all, into the sea.'
Without its stay the mast wiggled about like a reed but Slocum man-
aged to hold it with a block and tackle. For days and nights together
he battled to hold his boat on course through intermittent storms,
till he was 'tired, tired, tired of baffling squalls and fretful cobble-
ran into cannonades of hail and a lurid electrical storm. Although he
did not realise it until later, he was running into a celebrated hur-
ricane that had just torn across New York, doing immense damage.
