Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Nellie Bly
Born: 5 May 1864, USA
Died: 27 January 1922, USA
Nellie Bly was the pen name for Elizabeth Cochrane, a trailblazing journalist who rose through the ranks of the male-dominated American media to become a star reporter with the New York World. One Sunday evening in the winter of 1888, struck down with writer's block, Bly wished that she were: 'At the other end of the Earth!' This was the lightbulb moment that led her to attempt a record-breaking feat: to circumnavigate the globe faster than Jules Verne's hero from the novel Around the World in Eighty Days.
Nellie Bly had a fearsome reputation as a dogged investigative journalist; aged just twenty, she had spent ten days undercover in the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island, exposing the brutal treatment of patients, which led to widespread reforms in care for the mentally ill. So, when Bly explained her plan, to beat Phileas Fogg's fictional globetrotting record, she was a little shocked by her editor's response: 'You would need a protector, and ... you would need 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.' Bly's reply soon changed his mind: 'Very well. Start the man and I'll start the same day for some other newspaper and beat him.' Bly was a force of nature; he couldn't afford to lose her.
The newspaper sat on the idea for almost a year, and then gave Bly just two days' notice before she would board the Augusta Victoria bound for Southampton, England, and begin her round-the-world challenge.
Bly knew that the key to her success would be to take no more with her than she could squeeze into her brown leather gripsack, to avoid delays with lost luggage or bureaucratic customs officials; a strategy, no doubt, inspired by the light-travelling Phileas Fogg and his famous carpet bag.
Bly set off for the fashionable part of New York to visit one of the city's most prestigious dressmakers, William Ghormley of Fifth Avenue.
'I want a dress that will stand constant wear for three months,' she explained, adding that it needed to be ready by that very evening, rather than the usual seven-day turnaround. Ghormley, who was used to dealing with the country's wealthiest and most demanding clients, was unfazed.
They settled on a blue broadcloth and a patterned camel's-hair as the most suitable fabrics for a durable travelling gown. In other shops she bought dark gloves, a long black-and-white plaid Scotch Ulster (a heavy-duty woollen overcoat with a cape and sleeves) to keep out the cold and a lightweight summer dress for warmer climes – which she ultimately had to sacrifice in favour of 'last summer's silk bodice' due to space.
As she noted in her journal: 'One never knows the capacity of an ordinary hand-satchel until dire necessity compels the exercise ... in mine I was able to pack two travelling caps, three veils, a pair of slippers, a complete outfit of toilet articles, inkstand, pens, pencils, and copy paper.' These last few items were vitally important, since Bly would be posting letters from every port of call so that the New York World could serialise her exploits.
'Pins, needles and thread,' were also packed, to keep her limited wardrobe in one piece, along with: 'a dressing gown, a tennis blazer, a small flask and a drinking cup, several complete changes of underwear, a liberal supply of handkerchiefs and fresh ruchings.' The only luxury item she noted was: 'a jar of cold cream to keep my face from chapping in the varied climates I should encounter.' Barely able to close the bag's clasp, she resorted to carrying her silk waterproof wrap over her arm.
Just five hours before she was about to set sail, with a little help from the US Secretary of State, Special Passport No. 247 was delivered to the Hoboken docks, where staff from the World were busy making last-minute checks to Bly's travel plans.
Unbeknown to Bly and her colleagues, among the hustle and bustle of Hoboken harbour that morning, a man called John Brisben Walker, publisher of The Cosmopolitan magazine, was busy scanning over Bly's itinerary, which the New York World had proudly splashed over its front pages.
Walker, who never missed the opportunity to increase his readership, immediately decided to race one of his own reporters around the world to grab the glory for themselves.
As Bly set out for England, aboard the steamship Augusta Victoria, at 9.40 a.m. on Thursday, 14 November 1889, little did she know that just six hours later, Elizabeth Bisland, a twenty-eight-year-old literary editor with The Cosmopolitan, would board a Central Line train, heading west for San Francisco, beginning her race around the globe in the opposite direction.
Bly had never taken a sea voyage before, and she was stricken with violent seasickness, running to the rail to 'vent' for most of that first day. 'And she's going around the world!' joked one passenger, which even Bly found funny, when she considered that land was barely out of sight and 32,000km (22,000 miles) of mostly ocean lay ahead. By the time she found her sea legs they had docked in Southampton, arriving just in time to pick up the late-night mail train to London and her connections over the Channel and on towards Paris.
Despite her gruelling schedule, Bly took a short detour to Amiens to meet Jules Verne and his wife. This was the celebrated author who had inspired her whole adventure; how could she refuse? In his grand house Bly spent a pleasant evening comparing her intended route with the framed world map that hung in Verne's hallway, where a thin blue line marked out Fogg's travels from the best-selling novel. Bly found the Vernes to be a charming couple but secretly suspected that Verne doubted the trip could be done in less than eighty days. 'If you do it in seventy-nine days, I shall applaud with both hands,' he said.
The journey through France and over the Italian border was cold and uncomfortable. Just the previous week, in this remote part of northern Italy, the train had been attacked by bandits; Bly half-hoped they would strike again: 'If the passengers then felt the scarcity of blankets, they at least had some excitement to make their blood circulate.' For this reason some of her colleagues had urged her to pack a revolver as a 'companion piece' for the Special Passport. But Bly decided against it, declaring that: 'I had such a strong belief in the world's greeting me as I greeted it, that I refused to arm myself.'
Eleven days after leaving New York, Bly arrived in the port of Brindisi, on the heel of Italy, just in time to join a P&O steamer bound for Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).
Due to her lack of luggage a rumour had spread among the passengers that Miss Bly was an eccentric heiress, travelling with no more than a 'hairbrush and a bank book'. This led to quite a bit of unwanted attention from the eligible young bachelors on board, including one well-travelled chap who declared his admiration, adding that he: 'never expected to find a woman who could travel without a number of trunks and bundles innumerable.' When Bly asked him how many trunks the dapper young gentleman carried himself, 'nineteen' was the reply.
After leaving Port Said, Egypt, and passing through the Suez Canal, the Oriental anchored in the palm-fringed bay at Colombo, Ceylon, on 8 December 1889. Bly might not have been a millionaire heiress, as some had suspected, but she did carry £200 in British gold sovereigns and Bank of England notes, plus a smaller sum of American gold and currency; the notes she kept in a chamoisskin bag tied around her neck while the gold was buried deep in her pockets.
Aboard the steamship Oriental, Bly pressed onwards to Penang in British Malaya (now part of Malaysia) and into the Straits of Malacca. During an eleven-hour stop in Singapore, Bly visited the markets and fell in love with a little brown monkey, that she bought on the assurance of the seller that he was quite tame. Back on board the Oriental, on the long and rough voyage to Hong Kong, the monkey didn't enamour himself to his fellow passengers. McGinty, as he was christened, proved to be a bad-tempered little fellow, and a 'bit of a biter', especially when he was hungover. One day, after some men had been 'toasting its health', Bly found the monkey: 'holding its aching head ... and, evidently thinking I was the cause of the swelling, it sprang at me.'
Bly was able to send short telegraphs to keep the World informed of her progress from the port offices where she docked. It was in the Hong Kong offices of the Occidental & Oriental Steamship Company that Bly finally learned of her rival from The Cosmopolitan. To make matters worse, Bly heard rumours that its editor had given Bisland a blank chequebook to bribe ships' captains to set sail ahead of schedule. Refusing to be downhearted, Bly figured her fate was out of her hands; she would stick to her plans and press on regardless.
Aboard the Oceanic, Bly's last port of call was Yokohama, Japan, before the final 7,300km (4,525-mile) shlep across the Pacific back to California. The Oceanic's crew were determined to deliver her home ahead of schedule despite the poor weather; down in the engine room the chief engineer had even scrawled the couplet 'For Nellie Bly, we'll win or die' across the boilers to motivate the stokers.
Despite the crew's best efforts, storms at sea put them two days behind schedule. However, as Bly was being ferried ashore in California, she learnt that her rival, Bisland, had missed her fast German steamer back to New York and was still stuck at sea on the Bothnia, one of the slowest ships in the transatlantic fleet. It seemed that the race was still on.
In the port of San Francisco the customs and quarantine officials sat up all night to make their cursory checks and speed her on her way before a specially chartered train, laid on by the World's owner, Joseph Pulitzer, whisked Bly overland on her final leg back to New York.
The crowds erupted as the Miss Nellie Bly Special steamed away on its journey east. Despite slowing down occasionally, so Bly could wave her cap at various stations en route (and present bottles of Mumm champagne to the railways' superintendents who had fast-tracked her passage), the train made record time, pulling into New Jersey train station on 25 January 1890, at 3.51 p.m.
As she stepped onto the platform thousands of waving onlookers let out a deafening cheer, cannons were fired and vessels in the harbour sounded their hooters and whistles, in salute to Bly, the female adventurer who had 'girdled the world' in just seventy-two days and enraptured the nation.
CHAPTER 2
Captain Robert Falcon Scott
Born: 6 June 1868, UK
Died: 29 March 1912, Antarctica
Robert Falcon Scott first set to sea as a Royal Navy midshipman in 1883 aged just thirteen years old. Rising quickly through the ranks, he eventually attracted the attention of the Royal Geographical Society, which put him in command of the 1901 National Antarctic 'Discovery' Expedition. When Scott successfully returned to England in 1904, having travelled further south than anyone before, he was hailed as a national hero. Utterly captivated by this little-known continent, in 1910 he left on the Terra Nova: 'To reach the South Pole, and to secure for the British Empire the honour of this achievement.'
Robert Falcon Scott's expedition to the Antarctic began in Cardiff Bay, Wales, aboard the Terra Nova. He arrived in Melbourne, Australia, in October 1910, to collect crew and supplies. While here, Scott received a telegram from Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen: 'Beg leave to inform you Fram proceeding Antarctic'. Amundsen wasn't giving much away, but it seemed the expedition had become a race.
Despite Scott's bravado, the Terra Nova venture had never intended to be an all-out 'Pole-hunt'.
Eight thousand people had applied to join the sixty-five-man expedition, and from that number twelve eminent scientists had been selected to study Antarctica's unique biology, geology, glaciology and meteorology. On board the Terra Nova were boxes of high-tech apparatus including telescopes, deep-water sampling devices, hypsometers, thermometers and pendulum inclinometers for accurate cartographic surveying. Much of this scientific equipment had been adapted for polar exploration, including Scott's tripod-mounted theodolite, which he used to calculate longitude and latitude. This had been fitted with leather gaskets around its knobs and eyepiece to prevent frostbite on contact with skin.
The Terra Nova reached the Ross Ice Shelf in January 1911. To help with the heavy hauling from the ship, and the laying of supply depots ahead of the main expedition, Scott had acquired three caterpillar-tracked motor sledges. Custom-built for the expedition, each one of these experimental vehicles cost more than a Rolls-Royce, and many believed that they would give Scott's team the technological advantage over his Norwegian rivals.
Unfortunately, one crashed through the pack ice while being unloaded, sinking sixty fathoms into the icy depths. Scott (who was quietly sceptical about the motor sledges' reliability) also brought along thirty-three sledging dogs and nineteen Mongolian ponies – sadly, two ponies also fell through the pack ice during unloading and were eaten by killer wales.
Ponies had served Scott well on previous expeditions, and special snowshoes had been designed for this adventure made from wire and bamboo with leather fastening straps. However, only one Pony, Weary Willie, was fitted with them, a mistake that severely hindered their progress over soft ground.
The two remaining motor sledges had proved useful shuttling supplies from the Terra Nova to base camp, but in the drifting snow heading south they were pretty useless. They frequently overheated in the dry polar air, had a top speed of just three miles per hour and much of their payload was taken up with the fuel required to run them. When they finally broke down, just days into the Southern Party's trek towards the Pole, they were simply abandoned.
Scott's plan was to have just two ponies remaining when they reached the base of the Beardmore Glacier. The others would be shot along the way and their meat consumed by the men and dogs. The team hated killing their ponies, after they had served so well pulling 450lb (200kg) loads on sledges made of wood, leather and rope. In their diaries they recorded that the animals had 'died of old age precipitated by a bullet'.
The dog teams impressed Scott greatly. He noted that they: 'were doing well and pulling 800lb' (360kg). However, Scott had underestimated their food needs, and with dwindling supplies he reluctantly sent them back to base camp, while the remaining team set off to man-haul the sledges up the Beardmore Glacier.
The last of the ponies were shot when the team reached Shambles Camp, on 9 December 1911.
In his diaries Scott noted that five members of the Southern Party were now suffering from 'snow blindness due to incaution'. Most men wore goggles with smoked glass lenses, but these were prone to frosting over, and when the men removed them for any period the sunlight reflecting off the bright white snow would singe their corneas causing immense pain. 'The alternatives were to have a piece of leather with a slit in place of the glass or to have goggles cut from a piece of wood.'
While the Norwegian's favoured Inuit-style fur coats and long wolfskin boots, Scott felt that this would be too warm and bulky for a largely man-powered expedition on foot. His team wore Burberry gabardine jackets, which were lightweight, waterproof and windproof. However, the tightly woven fabric did not breathe well, which caused the underlying layers of clothing to become sodden with sweat as they laboured with their sledges. Unable to adjust these layers in their cumbersome wolfskin mittens, their wet clothing soon lost its insulating properties. The jacket's lack of integrated hood also left the neck exposed, chilling the men even further.
Many brands were keen to sell, or in many cases donate, their wares to these heroic polar explorers. In addition to Burberry, many other well-known brands supplied clothing to Scott's team, including Wolsey thermal baselayers and Jaeger woollen wear. Before the Terra Nova set sail the crew were also gifted 35,000 cigars, boxes of Fry's chocolate, Heinz baked beans, Huntley & Palmers' 'sledging biscuits' and an HMV gramophone. The Bass brewery even donated some crates of King's Ale, which they hoped Scott would drink to toast the King's health when he reached the South Pole.
Newman and Guardia in London custom-made lightweight cameras for the sledging parties to take with them. Although the explorers were novice photographers, they documented their adventures right until the end, taking photographs of unusual geological formations as part of their scientific research, and action shots of the men stumbling through the knee-high snowdrifts anchored to their single sledge.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Expeditions Unpacked"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Ed Stafford.
Excerpted by permission of The Quarto Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
