Free Alone at Sea : The Adventures of Joshua Slocum (9780385674072) by Ann Spencer

sailed through a gale that stripped the sails, leaving them with bare poles. Then came torrential rains, lightning and the realization that they were in the clutches of a hurricane. Almost everything was washed away but the virus; only three of the crew were unaffected — Slocum, Victor and the ship’s carpenter. When the weather calmed, Slocum recalled, “wet, and lame and weary, we fell down in our wet clothes, to rest as we might — to sleep, or to listen to groans of our dying shipmates.” They received medicalaid along the River Plate, but it came too late for many. Slocum offers a poignant picture of the afflicted sailors. When they buried the first to die, a man called José, Slocum reflected on the sailor’s honest smile, then cast him to the waves.“I listened to the solemn splash,” he wrote, “that told of one life ended.”
    With José’s death, Slocum’s crew became increasingly demoralized. The sick begged Slocum to call for a priest if medical help was not to be given. The captain set the flags, but knew that no one ashore wanted to answer their call for fear of contracting the deadly contagion. He watched the padre, as he put it, “pacing the beach.” Their plea was ignored.
    After burying another sailor, Slocum decided his “drifting pest house” had no choice but to move on for Montevideo. There the sick were taken from the ship and the
Aquidneck
was disinfected with demijohns of carbolic acid. This cleansing cost the captain over a thousand dollars. For Slocum one of the most anguishing moments occurred when he had to destroy the dead sailors’ property. The small gifts and trinkets they had purchased in Rio for their loved ones all met the fire or were ruined by carbolic acid. The captain later wrote that “what it cost me in health and mental anxiety cannot be estimated by such value.”
    Once again, he shipped with a new crew and headed for Antonina and reunion with his wife and son. Sailing past Santa Catarina, Slocum was transported to a happier time three and a half years earlier. “We came to a stand,as if it were impossible to go further … a spell seemed over us. I recognized the place as one I knew very well; a very dear friend had stood by me on deck, looking at that island, some years before. It was the last land that my friend ever saw.” Gripped with sadness mixed with renewed strength and hope, Slocum sailed on. With Hettie and Garfield back on board, the
Aquidneck
began another business venture, this time carrying a load of Brazilian wood. The final disaster for the ill-fated
Aquidneck
came soon after it headed out into Paranaguá Bay. Slocum recalled the final moments:“Currents and wind caught her foul, near a dangerous sandbar, she mis-stayed and went on the strand. The anchor was let go to club her. It wouldn’t hold in the treacherous sands; so she dragged and stranded broadside on, where open to the sea, a strong swell came in that raked her fore and aft, for three days, the waves dashing over her groaning hull the while till at last her back was broke and — why not add ‘heart’ as well!” The
Aquidneck
was lost. Slocum sold the wrecked ship on the spot and paid off the crew. She was uninsured, and as Garfield later wrote, “Father lost all of his money and our beautiful home.” Slocum struggled with the paradox of this loss: “This was no time to weep, for the lives of all the crew were saved; neither was it a time to laugh, for our loss was great.”
    To let go of his anger over the loss took years of letter writing to the President of the United States, the Department of State, the American consul at Rio and the consulat Pernambuco. Slocum cited the initial refusal of clearance at the quarantine harbor outside Rio as the decisive blow in his loss of fortune. In his view he had become enmeshed in the politics of a change of government in Brazil, and he blamed the competing factions for holding him stuck, which in turn caused him to be in the wrong place