Remembering Joshua Slocum, sailor par excellence

TUESDAY, February 20, was the 180th birth anniversary of Joshua Slocum, the first man ever to sail alone around the world after completing a 46,000-mile voyage.

Joshua Slocum’s ancestors were from Massachusetts. When he was 8, his family moved to Nova Scotia. He had very little formal education. With seamen on both sides of his family, it was almost pre-ordained that Slocum would become one too. He began as a cook on a local fishing boat for a while. In 1860, shortly after his mother died, he went to sea, where he would spend most of his life for 23 years. He became an accomplished sailor and navigator and became an American citizen in 1869.