JOSHUA SLOCUM 's Sailing Alone Around the World has deservedly
become a classic, not only for its extraordinary adventures, but also for the Captain's forthright comments and style. His next most remarkable achieve- ment, an earlier one, he recounted in Voyage of the Liberdade, so that his biographer faces the possible disadvantage of the reader knowing the best parts of the story before- hand. This would have mattered less had there been new light to throw upon them, but Mr. Slocum has merely quoted or sum- marised his father's original accounts. He too sailed in the Liberdade and might at least have given his own version of that hazardous ocean passage by a family of four in a 35-foot home-made boat, instead of reprinting his father's at length. However, the Captain tried many other strange under- takings in out-of-the-way corners of the sea before he disappeared without trace on one of his lone voyages, and his son has done his best to fill in the details of the whole 65 years of his life from what was evidently
scanty material. A sketchy 'biography results ; yet it is full of interest, excitements and curiosities, and those who count Joshua Slocum among their heroes and seek eagerly for fresh crumbs of knowledge about his famous deeds will be grateful for the half a loaf that is offered to them. G. P. G.
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