Spray (sailing vessel)
The Spray.
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| History | |
|---|---|
 United States
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| Name: | Spray |
| Fate: | Lost at sea sometime on or after November 14, 1909; cause unknown. |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | oyster fisherman |
| Tons burthen: | 12.71 (9 tons empty) |
| Length: | 39 feet 9 inches |
| Beam: | 14 feet 2 inches |
| Depth of hold: | 4 feet 2 inches |
| Propulsion: | sail only |
| Sail plan: | sloop; yawl after November, 1895 |
| Complement: | 1 |
| Notes: | |
The Spray was an 36-foot-9-inch (11.20 m) oyster sloop which Joshua Slocum rebuilt and single-handedly sailed around the world, the first voyage of its kind. The Spray was lost with Captain Slocum aboard sometime on or after November 14, 1909, after sailing from Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, bound for South America.
In 1892, a friend, Captain Eben Pierce, offered Slocum a ship that "wants some repairs". Slocum went to Fairhaven, Massachusetts to find that the "ship" was a rotting old oyster sloop named Spray, propped-up in a field. Despite the major overhaul of the ship, Slocum kept her name Spray, noting, "Now, it is a law in Lloyd's that the Jane repaired all out of the old until she is entirely new is still the Jane."
Its days as a fishing boat, probably as a Chesapeake Bay oysterman, had come to an end by 1885, and it was a derelict, a slowly deteriorating hulk sitting in a makeshift ship's-cradle in a seaside meadow on Poverty Point in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, when Captain Eben Pierce of that town offered it to Joshua Slocum as a gift. Slocum came to Fairhaven to look at the Spray (sorry sight that it was), and he undertook to repair and refit it over the next thirteen months. The materials used for the repairs cost $553.62 (about $16,100 in year 2015 dollars).
After setting off round the world in 1895 the boom was shortened after it broke and in 1896 Slocum reduced the height of the mast by 7 feet and the length of bowsprit by 5 feet while in Buenos Aires. In Port Angosto, Strait of Magellan, the Spray was re-rigged as a yawl by adding a jigger. In 1901 the Spray was an attraction at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.
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