David over at the always interesting Never Sea Land blog, home of the daily mermaid meme, brings our attention to a project taking Joshua Slocum’s landmark first solo circumnavigation of the globe and plotting it on Google Earth.
Hopefully most Sea-Fever readers are familiar with Slocum’s story and have read his classic, Sailing Alone Around the World. It’s such a great read that Arthur Ransome, the author of the classic Swallows and Amazons series, went so far as to declare, “Boys who do not like this book ought to be drowned at once.” If you haven’t read Sailing Around the World Alone yet, you’re in luck because you can read it online, download a copy to read anytime or even better get a free audio version through iTunes and let Slocum bring some adventure to your humdrum commute.
I grew up in Fairhaven, MA which is the place where Slocum rebuilt his vessel the Spray prior to embarking on his history making voyage in 1895 so he’s a bit of hometown hero to me.
The Google Earth project is by Jonathan Ahlbrand who is an educational consultant with a focus on technology and e-learning. Here’s his description of the project from the Google Earth Community page:
I have just completed a little project and would welcome some feedback/suggestions for improvement.
I have created a textually enabled map of the voyage of Joshua Slocum the first man to circumnavigate the world single-handed.
This interactive adventure is divided into 8 segments or “legs”. This is not just a path to follow, rather, it is an opportunity for the “adventurer” to explore the world through modern eyes from the perspective of Capt. Slocum.
There are over 100 waypoints. Each waypoint has excerpts from Capt. Slocum’s book Sailing Alone Around the World.
Follow the voyage of Captain Joshua Slocum on his historic quest to become the first man to circumnavigate the globe alone.
And let me know what you think!
This is a great demonstration of an effective educational mashup. Take a classic story with historical relevance and combine it other free internet resources using open source software/applications and you’ve got a great teaching/learning tool. The possibilities are limitless.
Please watch this short video for an explanation of the project.
[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVw8axe10QI]
YouTube – The Voyage of Joshua Slocum in Google Earth
Kudos to Mr. Ahlbrand!
via Never Sea Land
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Sea-Fever blog 
Thanks for the publicity for my project… I have another one in the works…
Jonathan
I look forward to learning about your next project. Maybe you could do a guest post here on Sea-Fever about it sometime.
What a great project. When my son read Sailing Alone Around the World he mentioned he had difficulty visualizing the voyage. The book is well worth a second read.