There's an elemental quality to the pioneering single-handed global circumnavigation in 1895-1898 by Canadian/American skipper Joshua Slocum (1844-1909), which continues to resonate down the ages. His 38ft ultra-beamy vessel Spray was his own rebuild of a sailing oysterboat that was already a hundred years old when he started the job, yet had originally been built a century earlier to an ancient design.
Thus it could be argued that when she took her departure, Spray was the re-creation of a 200-year-old design. Yet she was a superb seaboat, and could self-steer for hours on end. And though Slocum's voyage did not take in a rounding of Cape Horn, he achieved much else that was a complete "first". And his well-tested vessel continues to be replicated – former ICC Commodore David Beattie's much-cruised Reespray is a modern steel version.
Slocum's Spray lives on. Former ICC Commodore David Beattie's steel-built Spray hull replica Reespray at the Fastnet Rock
ONE-MAN MARINE HISTORY INSTITUTE
Dublin's own one-man Marine History Institute, Cormac Lowth, has immersed himself in the Slocum story, and his profusely illustrated lecture for the DBOGA on this very special topic at Poolbeg Y&BC on Thursday, April 17th at 8.0pm will provide a fitting conclusion to the 2024-2025 Winter Talks Programme.
