Joshua Slocum was born on February 20, 1844,[1] in Mount Hanley, Annapolis County, Nova Scotia (officially recorded as Wilmot Station),[1] a community on the North Mountain within sight of the Bay of Fundy.

His father, a stern man and strict disciplinarian, took up making leather boots for the local fishermen, and Joshua helped in the shop.

In 1860, after the birth of the eleventh Slocombe child and the subsequent death of his kindly mother, Joshua, then sixteen, left home for good.

From Dublin, he crossed to Liverpool to become an ordinary seaman on the British merchant ship Tangier (also recorded as Tanjore), bound for China.

During two years as a seaman he rounded Cape Horn twice, landed at Batavia (now Jakarta) in the Dutch East Indies, and visited the Maluku Islands, Manila, Hong Kong, Saigon, Singapore, and San Francisco.

While at sea, he studied for the Board of Trade examination, and, at the age of eighteen, he received his certificate as a fully qualified Second Mate.

He sailed for thirteen years out of the port of San Francisco, transporting mixed cargo to China, Australia, the Spice Islands, and Japan.

[6][7] Miss Walker, quite coincidentally, was an American whose New York family had migrated west to California at the time of the 1849 gold rush and eventually continued on, by ship, to settle in Australia.

Slocum, however, at considerable risk to himself, managed to save his wife, the crew, and much of the cargo, bringing all back to port safely in the ship's open boats.

The owners of the shipping company that had employed Slocum were so impressed by this feat of ingenuity and leadership, they gave him the command of the Constitution which he sailed to Hawaii and the west coast of Mexico.

While in the Philippines, in 1874, under a commission from a British architect, Slocum organized native workers to build a 150-ton steamer in the shipyard at Subic Bay.

Thereafter, he used the Pato as a general freight carrier along the west coast of North America and in voyages back and forth between San Francisco and Hawaii.

After sailing to Massachusetts, Slocum left his three youngest children, Benjamin Aymar, Jessie, and Garfield in the care of his sisters; his oldest son Victor continued as his first mate.

Destroyer was a ship 130 feet (40 m) in length, conceived by the Swedish-American inventor and mechanical engineer John Ericsson, and intended for the defence of harbours and coastal waters.

Equipped in the early 1880s, with sloping armour plate and a bow-mounted submarine gun, it was an evolution of the Monitor warship type of the American Civil War.

During 1893, Brazil was faced with a political crisis in Rio Grande do Sul, and an attempt at civil war that was intensified by the revolt of the country's navy in September.

Despite all hands pumping and bailing, by midnight the seas were extinguishing the fires in the boilers which were kept alight only by throwing on rounds of pork fat and tables and chairs from the vessel.

Although the ship's best steam pump had been put out of action on 19 December, more favourable seas allowed the crew to reach Martinique, where repairs were made before again setting sail on 5 January 1894.

On 18 January, the Destroyer arrived at Fernando de Noronha, an island some 175 miles (280 km) from the coast of Brazil, before finally reaching Recife, Pernambuco, on the 20th.

At Pernambuco, the Destroyer joined up with the Brazilian navy and the crew was again engaged in repairs as the long tow in heavy seaways had severed rivets at the bow, resulting in leaks.

Slocum navigated without a chronometer, instead relying on the traditional method of dead reckoning to establish longitude, which required only a cheap tin clock for approximate time, and used noon-sun sights for latitude.

The Spanish–American War, which had begun two months earlier, dominated the headlines but, after the end of major hostilities, many American newspapers published articles describing Slocum's adventure.

His Sailing Alone won him widespread fame in the English-speaking world, and he was one of eight invited speakers at a dinner in honor of Mark Twain in December 1900.

Slocum hauled the Spray up the Erie Canal to Buffalo, New York, for the Pan-American Exposition in the summer of 1901, and he was well compensated for participating in the fair.

In 1901, Slocum's book revenues and income from public lectures provided him enough financial security to purchase a small farm in West Tisbury, on the island of Martha's Vineyard, in Massachusetts.

Slocum spent little time with his wife on Martha's Vineyard and preferred life aboard the Spray, usually wintering in the Caribbean.

[22] Slocum and the Spray visited Sagamore Hill, the estate of US President Theodore Roosevelt on the north shore of Long Island, New York.

The President's young son, Archie, along with a guardian, spent the next few days sailing with Slocum up to Newport aboard the Spray, which, by then, was a decrepit, weather-worn vessel.

[23] On November 14, 1909,[24] Slocum set sail in the Spray from Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, for the West Indies on one of his usual winter voyages.

[29] The RU27 traveled from Tuckerton, New Jersey, to Baiona, Pontevedra, Spain – the port where Christopher Columbus landed on his return from his first voyage to the New World.