This is not entirely Old West, but it’s interesting, nonetheless. On November 14, 1889, New York Worldjournalist Nellie Bly began a round-the-world trip, attempting to beat the fictional time from Jules Verne’s novel Around the World in 80 Days.
Nellie Bly, the pen name of Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman, was an investigative journalist and social activist, known for her bold reporting (including a “groundbreaking exposé” on conditions in mental institutions). She evidently first became interested in journalism when she wrote an angry reply to an article in her local Pittsburgh Dispatch, entitled “What Girls Are Good For.” The paper hired her. She took her pen name from a character in a Stephen Foster song and was widely respected for her “innovative work in controversial areas.”
Nellie is best known, however, for her trip around the world. Her managing editor, John A. Cockerill, told her she could never do it. “You are a woman and would need a protector, and even if it were possible for you to travel alone you would need to carry so much baggage that it would detain you in making rapid changes… No one but a man can do this.”
Nellie’s response was characteristically blunt: “Very well. Start the man and I’ll start the same day for some other newspaper and beat him.” Cockerill relented, and, within the year, Nellie left Hoboken, New Jersey, headed east across the Atlantic to London, England.
She took a single piece of baggage, measuring 41 by 18 centimeters, containing bare essentials – underwear, toiletries, writing materials, dressing gown, tennis blazer, flask and cup, two caps, three veils, slippers, needle and thread, handkerchiefs. But no gun. “I had such a strong belief in the world’s greeting me as I greeted it that I refused to arm myself,” she wrote.
Six days later, the first-time traveler arrived in Southampton, where the World’s London correspondent had exciting news. Author Jules Verne had heard of her journey, and wanted to meet her in his hometown of Amiens, France.
This was both an honour and a gamble, necessitating a deviation from her meticulously planned route. Bly travelled non-stop for two days to make the appointment, by road, rail and boat via London to Boulogne, and then Amiens, where Verne and his wife were waiting at the station. Leaving Verne’s home in the middle of the night, Bly caught a 1.30am train across France and Italy to the port of Brindisi. Here she boarded the Victoria, a steamer that took her through the Mediterranean to Port Said in Egypt, at the new Suez Canal’s northern end.
When she had access to a telegraph office, Nellie sent in her updates to the World. In between, she mailed letters. Since these dispatches often took a long time to arrive in New York, the newspaper tried “inventive ways” to keep interest in her story alive. One such technique was a sweepstake where over half a million people sent in their guesses as to exactly how long Nellie’s trip would take. The grand prize was an expense-paid trip to Europe.
After “an agonizing five-day wait” in Colombo for a boat to take Nellie the 3,500 miles over the sea to Hong Kong, she finally set sail for China on the Oriental. On the way, the ship stopped at Singapore, where Nellie bought a companion: a small monkey she named McGinty.
Nelllie had another overnight delay in Singapore, and fretted about her connection in Hong Kong, but the Oriental made good progress once it set sail—unfortunately, through “a violent monsoon storm that created enormous seas.” The travelers arrived safely, and early, just before Christmas Day. However, Nellie “had an unwelcome surprise awaiting her.”
A rival publication, the Cosmopolitan, had hastily commissioned another female journalist to try and beat Nellie Bly’s time. 28-year-old Elizabeth Bisland was given only six hours’ notice before leaving New York on the same day Nellie had. However, she traveled west “while the World’s champion went east.” Nellie had been unaware of this now-real race until she arrived in Hong Kong, where she was informed that Bisland had passed through several days earlier.
Nellie was not impressed by the news. “I am not racing,” she claimed. “I promised to do the trip in 75 days, and I will do it.” However, comments made while she was trapped in a delay-causing storm during her trip from Hong Kong to Yokohama, Japan, suggested otherwise. “I’d rather go back to New York dead than not a winner,” she was heard to say.
Despite more heavy weather on the final boat ride from Japan to San Francisco on the White Str Line ship, Oceanic, Nellie arrived back in the United States on January 21, a day ahead of schedule. However, rail travel had been slowed due to snowstorms, and Nellie could feel Bisland on her trail.
Unbeknownst to Nellie, however, her rival’s luck had run out. In England, Bisland learned that the fast German steamer Ems, due to take her from Southampton to New York, had been cancelled. She was forced to divert via Ireland to catch the much slower ship, the Bothina. Meanwhile, the World’s owner, Joseph Pulitzer, had chartered a private train to bring Nelly Bly home in style. The “Miss Nellie Bly Special” set records of its own during that final leg, completing the 2,577-mile jouirney in only 69 hours to deliver Nellie to New Jersey on January 25, 1890, at 3:51 pm—72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes, and 14 seconds after leaving. Nellie Bly had bested Phineas Fogg’s fictional journey time by over seven days.
Elizabeth Bisland arrived five days later.
Nellie Bly’s trip was a unqualified success, but upon arriving, she was heard to profess, “I took off my cap and wanted to yell with the crowd, not because I had gone around the world in seventy-two days, but because I was home again.”
J.E.S. Hays
www.jeshays.com
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