Spray (sailing vessel)

Spray was the small sailing sloop in which the Canadian-American seaman Joshua Slocum made the first known solo circumnavigation of the Earth. In 1892 Captain Ebenezer Pierce offered Slocum what he called a ship that wanted some repairs, and at Fairhaven, Massachusetts Slocum found a rotting old oyster sloop, probably a Chesapeake Bay oysterman whose working days had ended by 1885, propped up in a field. He spent thirteen months repairing and refitting her, at a cost of 553.62 dollars in materials, and kept the name Spray. On 24 April 1895 he sailed from Boston Harbor in the 36-foot-9-inch (11.20 m) vessel and reached Newport, Rhode Island on 27 June 1898. On the way he shortened the boom after it broke, cut the mast and bowsprit down in Buenos Aires, and re-rigged her as a yawl in the Strait of Magellan. Designers later praised her balance and her ability to hold a course unattended for hours or days. In 1901 she was an attraction at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. Slocum and Spray disappeared after leaving Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts on 14 November 1909 bound for the Orinoco River, and were never found.