The name of Joshua Slocum (1844-1909) barely registers now, but a century ago, he approached what we would call celebrity today. Descendant of a loyalist family that fled to Nova Scotia after the Revolution, he led a life that would be impossible in our time: running away to sea in his youth, rising up the ladder as a merchant seaman, hauling cargo across the oceans in his own commercial vessel, sailing alone around the world.

It was that last distinction that made him famous. Chronically incapable of settling down ashore—he was married twice, and four children survived to adulthood—he set sail from Boston in 1895 in a 36-foot oyster boat called the Spray and, three years later, put in quietly at Newport having circumnavigated the globe, by himself, using only the anachronistic methods of dead reckoning for longitude and noonday sun-sights for latitude. The burghers of Newport were initially skeptical of the tale told by the lean, leathery, bearded man in late middle age, but he successfully explained his achievement. Slocum’s account of the adventure, Sailing Alone Around the World (1899), was a huge bestseller, ensured his notoriety, and remains a classic account of its kind.