| Pioneers | The original circumnavigators are fairly well known. |
|---|---|
| Magellan | Magellan was the first, although he personally didn't quite make it himself. He set out from Spain with five ships, and died in the Phillipine Islands after having traversed the enormous, unknown Pacific Ocean. One of his ships somehow managed to make it all the way around, its remaining crew having just barely survived starvation several time. Magellan brought Roman Catholicism to the Phillipines. |
| Drake | Francis Drake was a "corsair", or professional pirate. He did his circumnavigation almost by accident, after hijacking a Spanish cargo ship off the west coast of South America. He absconded with a huge cargo of silver, gold, and lots of other loot. The Pacific was for him just a convenient escape route that made it easier to get back home without being caught. Drake was an accomplished sailor, and made the trip look easy. He was later knighted Sir Francis, and married a rich, gorgeous blonde twenty years his junior. |
| Cook | Captain James Cook did several circumnavigations in attempts to find the fabled Southern Continent? and Northwest Passage. After centuries of suffering in the sailing industry, Cook finally conquered scurvy, the deadly disease that had taken so many thousands of sailors' lives. |
| Solo | One man (or woman, or even boy or girl!), one boat. |
| Slocum | Captain Joshua Slocum was a pioneer of a different sort. In the late 1890s, Slocum became the first man to circumnavigate the globe singlehanded. Alone in his 37' wooden sloop, he made his way around the Earth in about three and half years between 1896 and 1899. Slocum's book "Sailing Alone Around the World" is a hilarious recounting of his voyage. Slocum was as good a writer as he was a sailor. |
| Chichester | Francis Chichester was a world-class yachtsman. He won transatlantic races and was acknowledged as one of the world's best sailors. In 1966, at the age of 65, Chichester set out on Gypsy Moth, a 54-foot ketch custom-designed and built for him, in order to beat the circumnavigation speed record by making only one stop, in Australia. Not only did Chichester beat the record, he cut the time in half, from 16 months to less than eight. Chichester became the second man to circumnavigate the globe and be knighted Sir Francis, and it was done with the same sword! Chichester's book is Gipsy Moth Circles the World. |
| The Golden Globe |
Once Chichester finished his one-stop, the next step was obvious:
Somone had to sail all the way around the entire planet nonstop.
No stopping on land, no help from any outside source.
Once this idea got started, the Sunday Times of Britain decided to make it race.
There were two prizes offered: The Golden Globe, to be awarded to the first man in history to circumnavigate solo and nonstop, and a £5,000 purse for the fastest elapsed time from start to finish. Contestants were allowed to launch at any time within a window of several months in 1968. |
| Knox-Johnson | Robin Knox-Johnson was a young guy in the British Royal Navy. He persuaded his superiors to allow him leave to enter the race, and started preparing his old 32-ft cruiser Suhaili. |
| Moitessier | Bernard Moitessier was an experienced racer with a fast, sturdy boat. With Moitessier at the helm of his 39-ft steel ketch Joshua, named after Joshua Slocum, the younger sailors with smaller boats would need a head start on Moitessier to win the Golden Globe, and stood little chance of challenging him for the £5,000 prize. Moitessier's entertaining book The Long Way (La Longue Route) recounts his adventure. |
| Crowhurst | Donald Crowhurst was an amateur sailor and professional electrical engineer who had a high-tech trimaran custom designed and built for him. |
| The finish | Going into the last stretch of the Golden Globe, the young upstart Robin Knox-Johnson was in first place, trying to limp home in his damaged, jury-rigged old tub. The weathered old Frenchman was bearing down hard on Knox-Johnson in his time-tested 39-foot steel ketch. The race looked to be a photo finish. Except for that unknown newcomer in the high-tech trimaran. The race took more than one surprising turn before it was over. The Golden Globe race is described in Peter Nichols' book A Voyage for Madmen. |
| Dove |
All the while experienced racers were dashing around the planet as fast as they could,
there was another boat making its way around in a very different way.
Robin Lee Graham set out a year earlier, in 1967, from Long Beach California
in his small 27-ft sloop Dove.
He took his time, didn't get back home until 1972, and on the way,
he met the girl who became his wife.
If you're looking for love and romance in a sailing book, you will not be disappointed by Graham's book, "Dove". |
| Maiden Voyage | In the early 1980s, an 18-year-old girl named Tania Aebi was having trouble surviving in the rough world of New York City. Tania's father suggested that she use her writing skills to produce magazine articles about her own journey around the world, which her father would finance. Unbelievably, with the experience of only one or two family sailing trips, Tania survived her voyage and returned home with a new boyfriend. She wrote her story in her book Maiden Voyage. |
| Lionheart | As a young Australian teenager, Jesse Martin did several sailing vacations with his Dad and his brother, and the brothers did one trip by themselves professionally for a nature magazine. In the 1990s, at the age of 17, Jesse set out on his 34-ft sloop Lionheart to become the youngest circumnavigator in the world. He tells his story in his book Lionheart. |
| It's not easy! | Just to demonstrate that sailing all the way around the world is not easy, there was a failed attempt by a woman in 2004. Apparently, she forget to bring along a frying pan, didn't have the right size winch handles, and didn't check her jib sheets, which turned out to be too small. She was subsequently ridiculed and taunted by cruel internet hooligans. |