Joshua Slocum · 1900 · global

Joshua Slocum's account of the first solo circumnavigation, 1895 to 1898. He rebuilt a derelict oyster sloop, sailed her forty-six thousand miles alone with no engine and no chronometer worth the name, and wrote it up in prose so dry it took a century for people to notice how good it is. He could not swim.

1. 1
   Boston

   Captain Slocum sets out alone from Boston in the sloop Spray, bound around the world.

2. 2
   Gibraltar

   Across the Atlantic to the Rock, where the Royal Navy feed him and warn him off the Mediterranean because of pirates in the Red Sea - so he turns round and recrosses the Atlantic the other way, which adds a year.

3. 3
   Recife

   Down the Brazilian coast, where the Spray runs aground at Curupu and he strips her, refloats her and carries on - and where he sews the mainsail back together after it splits, alone, on deck, at sea.

4. 4
   Strait of Magellan

   Blown back into the strait after being driven south to the Milky Way rocks off Cape Horn, he sprinkles carpet tacks on the deck each night to deter Fuegian boarders - and reports that it worked.

5. 5
   Juan Fernandez

   Robinson Crusoe's island, and the only genuinely happy stop in the book - he lands, is treated as a celebrity, teaches the islanders to make doughnuts, and reluctantly leaves after ten days.

6. 6
   Samoa

   He calls on Fanny Stevenson at Vailima, who gives him her late husband's sailing directions for the Mediterranean and four volumes of his work - and Slocum, who admired Stevenson enormously, is visibly moved.

7. 7
   Sydney

   Past Fiji to Australia, where crowds came to see the little Spray and her solitary skipper.

8. 8
   Cape of Good Hope

   Through the Torres Strait and across the Indian Ocean to the Cape of Good Hope.

9. 9
   Boston

   And home across the Atlantic, the first man ever to sail alone around the world.