Challenged by a specialist who stated it couldn’t be done, Joshua Slocum, a fearless Brand-new England sea captain, lay out in April 1895 to demonstrate that a man could sail alone around the world. A little over three years and forty-six thousand kilometers later, the evidence was complete. That is Slocum’s own account of his extraordinary adventures during the historic voyage of the Spray.

Whether Slocum was more accomplished like a article writer or sailor is hard to state. His writing design is overly busy, witty, and exhilarating, an absorbing match to his harrowing adventures-adventures that included being chased by Moorish pirates off Gibraltar; escaping a fleet of hostile canoes; becoming submerged by an excellent wave off the Patagonian coast; an encounter with Dark Pedro, “the worst murderer in Tierra del Fuego”; and foiling a nocturnal strike by savages by strewing floor covering tacks in the Spray’s deck.