Canadian seaman and adventurer who was the first man in recorded history to sail around the world singlehandedly.

Slocum joined the crew of a merchant vessel at 16 and from that time on spent most of his life at sea.

Slocum spent most of his life at sea. When shipwrecked with his 140 foot 3 masted barque Aquidneck on his way to Montevideo in 1887, he sold the wreckage, paid off his crew and built the Liberdade, an unusual 35-foot junk-rigged boat which he described as a cross between a "Chinese sampan" and a "Cape Ann Dorie," in which he and his family sailed home to Washington, DC. In 1894 he published Voyage of the Liberdade[1] describing this adventure.

Slocum tells us that he navigated without a chronometer. Instead he navigated by the traditional method of dead reckoning for longitude, which required only a cheap tin clock for approximate time, and Noon Sun sights for latitude.

On one long passage in the Pacific, Slocum also famously shot a lunar distance observation, decades after these observations had ceased to be commonly employed, which allowed him to check his longitude independently. But Slocum's primary method for finding longitude was dead reckoning. He only took one lunar observation during the entire circum-navigation.

Slocum normally sailed Spray without touching the helm. Due to the length of the sail plan relative to the hull, and the long keel, Spray was inherently capable of self-steering (unlike faster modern craft), being able to be balanced stably on any course relative to the wind by adjusting or reefing the sails and by 'lashing' the helm.

He tells us that he only helmed Spray when manoeuvering or in an emergency, and was proud of the fact that he sailed 2000 miles west across the Pacific without once touching the helm.

Reference: Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Slocum)

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