Captain Joshua Slocum: The Adventures of America's Best Known Sailor, by Victor Slocum (TPB, 1993, $2.50)
Slocum led a boring life. He fished from Alaska, and from Honolulu. He traded with China. He was also the captain of the Northern Light, "which had two attempted mutinies on one voyage, and narrowly missed the Krakatoa eruption in the Sunda Strait." Then it was off to Brazil on a gun vessel to help put down a rebellion.
Of more minor note, he also sailed home from Brazil with his family in a homemade 35 by 8 foot canoe. (If my husband told me we were going 5000 miles in a homemade canoe, words would have been spoken, and they would not have been polite ones!)
Still bored, Slocum built "with his own hands a nine-ton yawl and sailed it single-handed around the world." This is the story of that voyage, told by his historian son.
By now you have figured out I was kidding about that "boring life" stuff.
Look for this in the sailing section.
