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The Monument Plaque to Joshua Slocum
by John M. MacFarlane 2017
The plaque commemorating Joshua Slocum on the seawall at the Inner Harbour in Victoria BC. (Photo from the John MacFarlane collection. )
Few people realize that the most famous sailor Joshua Slocum of Spray circumnavigation fame has a direct link to British Columbia and Victoria. He is somewhat overshadowed here by the memory of Captain John Voss and the Tilikum. But that is because Slocum had very little contact with Victoria and Vancouver.
While in the Philippines, in 1874, Slocum organized native workers to build a 45–ton steamer in a shipyard on Subic Bay. In partial payment for the work, he was given the ninety–ton schooner, Pato (Spanish for "Duck"). He made a few inter–island trips before starting out on a major voyage.
With his wife and three children on board they crossed the South China Sea to Hong Kong. In 1877 she hired a crew of hunters and sailed to Yokohama and on to Kamchatka to fish for cod. After two weeks of fishing he was fully loaded and shaped a course for the American West Coast. Hiring a crew, he contracted to deliver a cargo to Vancouver and Victoria in British Columbia. Thereafter, he used the Pato as a freighter along the west coast of North America and in voyages back and forth between San Francisco and Hawaii. During this time he was also a correspondent for the San Francisco Bee. The Slocums sold the Pato in Honolulu in the spring of 1878.
Joshua Slocum (Photo source unknown. )
The monument was placed by the The Joshua Slocum Society International. Since that time the Society was unfortunately disbanded in July 2011. The Society’s mission was to honour all solo long distance sailors that accomplish epic voyages. Captain Sven Johansson piloted the Belvedere (commemorated also at this location) through the Northwest Passage.
To quote from this article please cite:
MacFarlane, John M. (2017) The Monument Plaque to Joshua Slocum. Nauticapedia.ca 2017. http://nauticapedia.ca/Gallery/Monument_Slocum.php
Site News: April 19, 2024
The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 92,229 vessel histories (with 15,629 images and 13,195 records of ship wrecks and marine disasters). The mariner and naval biography database has also been updated and now contains 58,616 entries (with 4,013 images).
In 2023 the Nauticapedia celebrated the 50th Anniversary of it’s original inception in 1973 (initially it was on 3" x 5" file cards). It has developed, expanded, digitized and enlarged in those ensuing years to what it is now online. If it was printed out it would fill more than 300,000 pages!
My special thanks to our volunteer IT adviser, John Eyre, who (since 2021) has modernized, simplified and improved the update process for the databases into a semi–automated processes. His participation has been vital to keeping the Nauticapedia available to our netizens.
Also my special thanks to my volunteer content accuracy checker, John Spivey of Irvine CA USA, who has proofread thousands of Nauticapedia vessel histories and provided input to improve more than 11,000 entries. His attention to detail has been a huge unexpected bonus in improving and updating the vessel detail content.