Joshua Slocum (1844-1909) was a Canadian-born American seaman and adventurer, a noted writer, and the first man to sail single-handedly around the world. 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 (11 m) junk-rigged boat in which he and his family sailed home to Washington, DC. In 1894 he published Voyage of the Liberdade describing this adventure. In Fairhaven, Massachusetts, he rebuilt the 36' 9" (11.2 m) sloop-rigged fishing boat named Spray. In 1895, he set sail from Boston, Massachusetts. More than three years later, in 1898, he returned to Newport, Rhode Island, having circumnavigated the world, a distance of more than 46,000 miles (74,000 km). In 1900 he told the story of his adventure in Sailing Alone Around the World. He disappeared in November 1909 while aboard his boat, the Spray, originally sloop-rigged, but re-rigged as a yawl in the midst of his circumnavigation, while Slocum was traversing the Strait of Magellan.
