Editing Joshua Slocum (section)

==Nova Scotian childhood==
Joshua Slocum was born on February 20, 1844,<ref name=":0" /> in [[Mount Hanley]], [[Annapolis County, Nova Scotia]] (officially recorded as Wilmot Station),<ref name=":0" /> a community on the [[North Mountain (Nova Scotia)|North Mountain]] within sight of the [[Bay of Fundy]]. The fifth of eleven children of John Slocomb<ref name=":0" /><ref name=Wolff>Geoffrey Wolff, ''The Hard Way Around: The Passages of Joshua Slocum'', p. 8: spelling of family name given as "Slocombe".</ref> and Sarah Jane Slocombe ''née'' Southern,<ref name=":0" /> Joshua descended, on his father's side, from a [[Quaker]] known as "John the Exile", who left the United States shortly after 1780 because of his opposition to the [[American War for Independence]].<ref name=":0" /><ref>Geoffrey Wolff, ''The Hard Way Around: The Passages of Joshua Slocum'', p. 11</ref> As part of the [[Loyalist (American Revolution)|Loyalist]] migration to Nova Scotia, the Slocombes were granted {{convert|500|acre|km2}} of farmland in [[Annapolis County, Nova Scotia|Nova Scotia's Annapolis County]].
[[Image:Mt. Hanley Sch.JPG|thumb|left|Slocum's childhood school, now the [[Mount Hanley Schoolhouse Museum]]]]
Joshua Slocum was born in the family's farmhouse in [[Mount Hanley, Nova Scotia|Mount Hanley]] and learned to read and write at the nearby [[Mount Hanley Schoolhouse Museum|Mount Hanley School]]. His earliest ventures on the water were made on coastal schooners operating out of the small ports such as Port George and Cottage Cove near Mount Hanley along the [[Bay of Fundy]].

When Joshua was eight years old, the Slocomb family (Joshua changed the spelling of his last name later in his life)<ref name="GeoffreyWolff">Geoffrey Wolff, ''The Hard Way Around: The Passages of Joshua Slocum''</ref> moved from Mount Hanley to [[Brier Island]] in [[Digby County]], at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy. Slocum's maternal grandfather was the keeper of the [[lighthouse]] at Southwest Point there. His father, a stern man and strict disciplinarian, took up making leather boots for the local fishermen, and Joshua helped in the shop. However, the boy found the scent of salt air much more alluring than the smell of shoe leather. He yearned for a life of adventure at sea, away from his demanding father and his increasingly chaotic life at home among so many brothers and sisters.

He made several attempts to run away from home, finally succeeding, at age fourteen, by hiring on as a [[cabin boy]] and cook on a fishing [[schooner]], but he soon returned home. In 1860, after the birth of the eleventh Slocombe child and the subsequent death of his kindly mother, Joshua, then sixteen, left home for good. He and a friend signed on at [[City of Halifax|Halifax]] as ordinary seamen on a merchant ship bound for [[Dublin]], Ireland.