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George H
"I'm not sure what Frank's aim is here: it reads like a denigration of
Slocum's navigational ability. Is that really in question?"

No, of course not. I was agreeing, in part, with something that you said. Let's go over it again.
1) As Geoffrey said, one can view Slocum's circumnavigation as a celebration 
of the art of dead reckoning (for longitude, that is). I agree.
2) As you said, navigators who sailed this way were taking risks. Slocum 
easily could have carried a chronometer, but he chose not to for his own 
pleasure, his own delight in navigating by "traditional" means.
3) As you said, risk-takers are often weeded out by natural selection. I agree.
4) And then I noted that, sure enough, Slocum the risk-taker WAS weeded out by 
natural selection. He was lost at sea where a better mariner might have 
lived. 

Does that make sense now?

Moving on... You wrote:
" Anyway, we know of Slocum's ability to handle lunars, not only from that one 
instance in his circumnavigation, but from earlier experience as captain of a 
passenger vessel, when his chronometers would be regularly checked by 
lunars."

He may have done this. Or maybe not. As far as I have been able to determine, 
ONLY Victor Slocum claimed that this occurred and if it did, it happened 
before Victor was born. After childhood, Victor barely knew his father. 
Unfortunately, Victor Slocum, like many others, apparently believed that his 
father had navigated the Spray during its circum-navigation using lunars as a 
regular component of the navigation, and that seems to explain this section 
in Victor's book. He's trying very hard to justify the use of lunars --and 
that was a serious flaw in his analysis of the circum-navigation.

And you wrote:
"Indeed, it's so tricky to observe useful lunars from the unstable deck of a
small craft, that it calls for sea conditions that are so infrequent as to
make the method impractical, most of the time. "

Says WHO?? Several years ago, I posted logbook evidence from a couple of small 
schooners where lunars were used successfully in the early 19th century.. It 
took no great searchng to find such examples. It's  a little amusing that 
you're now able to cite a "perfectly logical" reason why Slocum would NOT 
have shot lunars on the Spray while a few years back you had several 
"perfectly logical" reasons why Slocum MUST have shot lunars! Why didn't 
Slocum shoot more lunars on his circum-navigation? My guess would be that 
fundamentally, he was enjoying sailing by "traditional" means. He left 
science back home. In addition, he had no schedule to keep. He could afford 
to be a little inefficient in his navigation.

Of Joshua Slocum being lost at sea, you wrote:
"I would concur with his son Victor's assessment of the likely cause, as 
follows- For several years, Slocum had been setting off from his farm on 
Martha's Vineyard on a Winter cruise to Grand Cayman in the Bahamas "to avoid 
having to buy a Winter overcoat", returning each spring."

Just bear in mind that Victor barely knew his father. After the end of the 
voyage of the Liberdade in 1888, he saw his father only a few brief times. 
That was when Victor Slocum was 16 and his father was 45, twenty years before 
his death. He did not know how his father spent his time. He learned about 
him from letters from relatives and from newspaper articles, and there are 
big gaps in his account of the last decade of his father's life. In fact, 
Joshua Slocum had become an entertainer, and this had begun during his 
circum-navigation. He was a bit like "Buffalo Bill" Cody --a man of the late 
19th/early 20th centuries living by selling stories of the past. Slocum 
lectured and displayed artifacts in his presentations and used an early slide 
projector for visual aid. He delighted his audiences with stories of his solo 
circum-navigation. Joshua Slocum travelled to the West Indies every winter, 
for the fine weather of course, but also because he could still sell tickets 
to his lectures and shows there. He was popular, and he made money in the 
islands. The longest obituary I have seen for Joshua Slocum was published in 
Jamaica, rather than New England or New York. Slocum had left New England, 
and his family, behind in a very literal sense. The "Spray" was his home.

As for the "Spray", those who say they saw it in 1909 before Slocum left on 
his last voyage universally described it as unseaworthy (Teller gives 
numerous specific examples of this and directly contradicts Victor's 
account). And years later, Howard I. Chapelle commented that it was an 
unstable design that merely by chance had not killed Slocum sooner. It's 
still possible that the more romantic family legend, about Slocum being cut 
down by a steamer, is the plain truth. There would be a certain poetry in a 
great sailor being killed by "progress incarnate". Even Victor acknowledges 
that one can only speculate on his father's fate. It's guesswork and no more.

And again, there's much more to Slocum's later life that you won't find in 
Victor's book. If you want to read a more considered biography of Joshua 
Slocum, I highly recommend "Joshua Slocum" by Walter Teller. Teller also 
wrote several other books related to Slocum's life and his writings.

-FER




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