“No one but a man can do this”– how one female explorer proved the world wrong
“It is impossible for you to do it,” was the terrible verdict. “In the first place 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. Besides you speak nothing but English, so there is no use talking about it; no one but a man can do this.”
“Very well,” I said angrily, “Start the man, and I’ll start the same day for some other newspaper and beat him.”
In 1873, French author Jules Verne published Around the World in 80 Days, which told the story of the fictional Phileas Fogg and his campaign to circumnavigate the globe. Sixteen years later, a bold 25-year-old woman from New York decided to take the challenge on — and beat it.
As a writer at the New York World, Nellie Bly had already earned a reputation of fearlessly getting to the heart of a good story — she had previously checked herself into a mental institution for 10 days, highlighted the poor conditions of female factory workers, and in 1888, she penned an article that asked the daring question “Should women propose?”. She was bold, bright and in many ways, ahead of her time.
The idea to take on Jules Verne’s globetrotting challenge, however, was due to her dreading a meeting with her editor on a Monday morning. Lamenting that she would rather be on the other side of the world than face up to her boss, it struck her — she needed a vacation anyway, and if it truly was possible to traverse the globe in 80 days, why couldn’t she do it and call it work?
Seeing her determination, her editor conceded, and shortly after she was on a ship heading for England, not with mountains of baggage as her editor had predicted, but instead just the dress on her back, a specially issued passport, and one sole suitcase, mostly containing changes of underwear, toiletries and as befits a writer, plenty of paper, pens and ink.
Someone suggested that a revolver would be a good companion piece for the passport, but I had such a strong belief in the world’s greeting me as I greeted it.
What followed for this solo traveller was 72 days of pure adventure — purchasing a monkey in Singapore, travelling down the Suez Canal, visiting geishas in Yokohama–all while meeting a menagerie of characters along the way.
There were some setbacks, including horrific seasickness and rough weather, that delayed her return to U.S. soil by 2 days. Upon arrival in San Francisco Nellie found her editor had commissioned a single-carriage train to speed her across the country to New Jersey. She received a hero’s welcome wherever she went, met with “happy greetings, happy wishes, congratulating telegrams, fruit, flowers, loud cheers, wild hurrahs, [and] rapid hand-shaking” in what she called “a ride worthy a queen”.
On January 25, 1890, Nellie Bly stepped onto the train platform at Jersey to cannon blasts and the cheers of thousands. She had made it around the world in 72 days, 3 days faster than she had planned. It was a record-breaking undertaking, and even more impressive considering the social restrictions of the time.
In a follow-up interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, a reporter suggested to Nellie that what she did was quite remarkable.
Oh, I don’t know. It’s not so very much for a woman to do who has the pluck, energy and independence which characterise many women in this day of push and get-there.
With this comment, Nellie was ushering in a new kind of thinking — a world where women were independent and had the means to travel to far-off lands, happily without a chaperone.
Interactive map of Nellie Bly’s route made with Alpaca Maps.
Nellie Bly’s book, Around the World in Seventy-Two Days, is available in the public domain.
