In March, 1896, during the autumn of the southern hemisphere, the yacht Spray sailed from the Atlantic around Cape Horn, and its “grim sentinel”, Cape Pillar. Her solitary skipper fervently hoped the wind would hold. There was no such luck.
“It soon began to rain and thicken in the north-west, boding no good. The Spray neared Cape Pillar rapidly and, nothing loath, plunged into the Pacific Ocean at once, taking her first bath of it in the gathering storm,” wrote Captain Joshua Slocum, in his 1900 classic, Sailing Alone Around The World. “There was no turning back even had I wished to do so, for the land was now shut out by the darkness of night.”
He continued: “The wind freshened, and I took in a third reef. The sea was confused and treacherous. In such a time as this the fisherman prayed ‘remember, Lord, my ship is so small and thy sea is so wide!’ I saw now only the gleaming crests of the waves. They showed white teeth while the sloop balanced over them. ‘Everything for an offing’, I cried, and to this end I carried on all the sail she could bear. She ran all night with a free sheet but on the morning of 4 March the wind shifted to south-west, and then suddenly to north-west, and blew with terrific force. No ship in the world could have stood up against so violent a gale.”
The Nova Scotian sailor – the first man recorded as sailing singlehanded around the world – survived, rewarding his own steadfastness with a wood fire, pot of coffee and good Irish stew. With the sea high, his appetite was slim. “For a time I postponed cooking (confidentially, I was seasick!)”
