NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Heath Hezzanith question
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2007 Oct 23, 21:58 -0400
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2007 Oct 23, 21:58 -0400
Peter, regarding self-steering, you wrote: "Joshua Slocum had neither. His boat seems to have sailed itself very nicely." In maritime circles, this was considered the real miracle of his voyage. On November 20, 1896, the New York Times re-published a rather lengthy article from the San Francisco Bulletin reporting on the voyage up until then. He had already been in Australia for some time when these reports reached the US. The article described some of his adventures and also noted the amazing fact that the Spray could steer itself. Slocum finally returned to the USA at the end of June, 1898. The NY Times published a very short article mentioning his return. The timing could not have been worse. His arrival was just a few days before Teddy Roosevelt's famous charge up San Juan Hill in Cuba, and the newspapers were filled with stories from the war. But during the summer of 1899, Slocum wrote his book and it was published serially in The Century Magazine. In the months that followed, the editorial page of the New York Times carried not just one, but three short blurbs scoffing at Slocum's claims that the boat could steer itself. The first published on November 7, 1899 included this line: "the tale is painfully hard to believe, and the teller thereof deigns no slightest explanation of a marvel well within hailing distance of the impossible." Well, well! Sounds like flamebait to me. The paper published a reply from Slocum a few days later saying he was "unable to further elucidate at this time" but he invited anyone who didn't believe him to come out for a sail. The NY Times was a much less important newspaper in 1899 than in later decades, so gossipy, even catty comments, like in the editorial above, were more common. -FER --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to NavList@fer3.com To , send email to NavList-@fer3.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---