John (sometimes "Jack") Claus Voss (born Johannes Claus Vos; 1858-1922) was a Canadian sailor best known for sailing around the world in a modified dug-out canoe he named Tilikum (boat) ("Friend" in Chinook jargon). He started in 1901 with his friend Norman Luxton and ending alone in 1904. He chronicled this and other notable voyages in The Venturesome Voyages of Captain Voss.( wikipedia.org)

Anticipating fame and wealth, Captain John Voss set out from Victoria, BC, in 1901, seeking to claim the world record for the smallest vessel ever to circumnavigate the globe. For the journey, he procured an authentic dugout cedar canoe from an Indigenous village on the east coast of Vancouver Island. For three years Voss and the Tilikum, aided by a rotating cast of characters, visited Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Brazil and finally England, weathering heavy gales at sea and attracting large crowds of spectators on shore. The austere on-board conditions and simple navigational equipment Voss used throughout the voyage are a testimony to his skill and to the solid construction of the Nuu-Chah-Nulth vessel. Both Voss and his original mate, newspaperman N.K. Luxton, later wrote about their journey in accounts compromised by poor memories, brazen egos and outright lies. Stories of murder, cannibalism and high-seas terror have been repeated elsewhere without any regard to the truth. Now, over a century later, a full and fair account of the voyage—and the magnitude of Voss’s accomplishment—is at last fully detailed. In this groundbreaking work, marine historians John MacFarlane and Lynn Salmon sift fact from fiction, critically examining the claims of Voss’s and Luxton’s manuscripts against research from libraries, archives, museums and primary sources around the world. Including unpublished photographs, letters and ephemera from the voyage, Around the World in a Dugout Canoe tells the real story of a little-understood character and his cedar canoe. It is an enduring story of courage, adventure, sheer luck and at times tragedy.

In May 1901, just three years after Joshua Slocum's legendary solo voyage around the world, another professional seaman idled by the passing of the Age of Sail set off on an extraordinary ocean journey. Saying goodbye to his wife and children, he put to sea from Victoria, British Columbia, with one other man in a converted Native American war canoe. Voss's objective was to circle the world in a boat smaller than Slocum's Spray, and his canoe, which he named Tilikum, certainly qualified. Although 38 feet long, it was a mere 5 and a half feet wide and drew just 24 inches when fully loaded. When he first saw the canoe, he said, it struck me at once that I we could make our proposed voyage we would not alone make a world's record for the smallest vessel but also the only canoe that had ever circumnavigated the globe. To prepare the dugout red-cedar canoe for an ocean voyage, Voss had built up the sides seven inches, decked it over, and added a tiny 5 x 8 foot cabin, a cockpit for steering, a small keel and three small masts carrying four sails. He and a man named Luxton, left Victoria carrying 100 gallons of fresh water, three months' provisions, firearms and navigation instrumen

John (sometimes "Jack") Claus Voss (born Johannes Claus Vos; 1858-1922) was a Canadian sailor best known for sailing around the world in a modified dug-out canoe he named Tilikum (boat) ("Friend" in Chinook jargon). He started in 1901 with his friend Norman Luxton and ending alone in 1904. He chronicled this and other notable voyages in The Venturesome Voyages of Captain Voss.