"In June 1898, a little more than three years after departing Boston in his rebuilt oyster sloop Spray, Captain Joshua Slocum made landfall in New England and became the first person ever to sail alone around the world. The voyage capped a lifetime of adventure for the indomitable Slocum, who had advanced from seaman to captain and owner during the challenging final years of commercial sail, surviving hurricanes, mutinies, shipwreck, financial ruin, and the death at sea of his first wife and soulmate. Slocum's book about his circumnavigation, Sailing Alone Around the World, is a seafaring classic and has never been out of printing since its publication in 1900. But Slocum the man has remained unknowable, the shape of his life as elusive as a ship on a fogbound sea. Now, at last, A Man for All Oceans reveals the man in full. A sailor himself, Stan Grayson has plumbed previously untapped original source materials to follow one of history's greatest sailors from obscure beginnings across the watery globe and the dying years of the great Age of Sail."--Page [2] of cover.