Voyage of the Liberdade (Illustrated) - Softcover

Slocum, Captain Joshua

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1540500578 ISBN 13: 9781540500571

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016

Synopsis

Captain Joshua Slocum, an experienced mariner, tells the thrilling tale of the Liberdade and the great journey it made from South America, through the Caribbean, and onto the United States.

When this book first appeared in 1890, it received wide praise for authentically capturing the spirit of naval adventure and human resourcefulness. At a time when ordinary sailing boats were fast being obsoleted by faster vessels powered by steam engines, Captain Slocum's recollections are testament that sea voyages were as exciting as they ever were.

The Liberdade was constructed from materials salvaged from the locality of Brazil, where Slocum was stranded at the time. The ship received its name as one day after its launch, on May 14th 1888, slavery was abolished by the Brazilian government. The fifty-five day voyage of Joshua Slocum and his family back to the United States is chronicled in this book, with the high and low points of their epic adventure mentioned.

Following the publication and success of his book, Captain Slocum's maritime ambitions grew still further. In 1895, he became the first man to sail around the entire world single-handedly in a ship named The Spray. His account of the circumnavigation, which took over three years, was published in 1900. Captain Slocum would eventually be lost at sea during a 1909 voyage back to South America.

This edition of Voyage of the Liberdade is complete with the original illustrations of the ship, and a map of the epic voyage.

About this title

About the Author:

Born in Nova Scotia, Canada, Joshua Slocum was the first man to sail single-handedly around the world. An international bestseller, Sailing Alone Around the World was a critical success upon its publication in 1900. Slocum enjoyed widespread fame in the English-speaking world, including an invitation to speak at a dinner in honor of Mark Twain, until his disappearance while aboard his boat the Spray in 1909. At the time, it was believed his boat had been run down by a steamer or struck by a whale, however it was later determined that the Spray could also have easily capsized. Despite a lifetime at sea, Slocum never learned to swim. He was declared legally dead in 1924.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Joshua Slocum is widely known for his Sailing Around the World Alone, the story of his solo circumnavigation. The Voyage of the Liberdade, his first book, is equally compelling. In it he recounts his journey to Brazil and back - he sailed down on the Aquidneck, his own ship, and returned on the Liberdade, which he built there. What happened?

Slocum describes sailing from port to port in Brazil, trying to take in and deliver enough cargo on the Aquidneck to make her voyage profitable. Through a series of mishaps he is saddled with a crew which turns out to be composed of brigands, not sailors:

"My pirates thought their opportunity had surely come to capture the Aquidneck, and this they undertook to do. The ringleader of the gang was a burly scoundrel, whose boast was that he had "licked both the mate and second mate of the last vessel he had sailed in, and had "busted the captain in the jaw"...Near midnight, my wife, who had heard the first footstep on deck, quietly wakened me, saying, "We must get up, and look out for ourselves! Something is going wrong on deck; the boat tackle has been let go with a great deal of noise..." My first impulse was to step on deck in the usual way, but the earnest entreaties of my wife awoke me, like, to a danger that should be investigated with caution. Arming myself therefore, with a stout carbine repeater, and eight ball cartridges in the magazine, I stepped on deck abaft instead of forward, where evidently I had been expected..."

Slocum, who landed in jail for shooting a one of the mutineers, eventually lost the Aquidneck on the reefs. Not wanting to remain a castaway in Brazil, he and his family build the Liberdade, the ship that would bring them home:

"Her dimensions being - 35 feet in length over all, 7-1/2 feet breadth of beam, and 3 feet depth of hold, who shall say that she was not large enough? Her model I got from my recollections of Cape Ann dories and from a photo of a very elegant Japanese sampan which I had before me on the spot, so, as it might be expected, when finished, she resembled both types of vessel in some degree. Her rig was the Chinese sampan style, which is, I consider, the most convenient boat rig in the whole world. This was the boat, or canoe I prefer to call it, in which we purposed to sail for North America and home. Each one had been busy during the construction and past misfortunes had all been forgotten. Madam had made the sails - and very good sails they were, too!"

Join the self-reliant and intrepid Slocum on his voyage and gain a glimpse into the romantic era that vanished when steam took over. And perhaps his book will inspire you to follow in his footsteps in your own Liberdade!

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1540500578
• ISBN 13: 9781540500571
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 108