Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
fair with the sea. Sailors seek, and maybe occasionally find, in this re-
lationship something which never seems accessible to them on land. It
is hard to say precisely what it is they seek or experience out at sea,
but clearly it is an attraction powerful enough to draw them time and
again back to the apparently lonely expanses of the ocean. This fascin-
ation can make them restless on land, and many sailors lead unfulfilled
lives ashore because they put little energy into anything not directed
towards the next journey over the horizon. It is almost as though there
were an irresistibly alluring woman beckoning to them from some-
where beyond the reach of land.
36
She beckoned Slocum again one day in 1909, when he and
Spray
once more slipped anchor. They headed south from Bristol, Rhode
Island and disappeared from the world of the living.
It was a fitting end, a poetic end, for one who had overcome
everything the sea could throw at him and won a unique place in the
annals of maritime adventure.
*
Author italics.
*
Although the islands were brought under British protection in 1857, the
Ross family received a grant of them in perpetuity from Queen Victoria in 1886.
