History Book: Nellie Bly’s race against the clock

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Monday, November 11th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next, the WORLD History Book. One hundred thirty-five years ago this week, an intrepid female reporter from New York attempts to circumnavigate the globe—trying to do it in less than 80 days. Here’s WORLD’s Paul Butler.

PAUL BUTLER: One Sunday in 1888, journalist Elizabeth Cochrane can’t sleep. She’s supposed to pitch a story to her editor in the morning, but her mind is completely blank.

COCHRANE: It is sometimes difficult to tell exactly what gives birth to an idea. 

By three in the morning Cochrane is desperate. She tosses fitfully in her bed!!!wishing she was at the “other end of the earth.” That’s it! What if she tried traveling around the globe!!!and faster than Phileas Fogg in Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days?

The next morning, the 24-year old makes a beeline for the steamship company’s office to quickly look over the time tables before heading to work.

COCHRANE: Anxiously I sat down and went over them and if I had found the elixir of life I should not have felt better than I did when I conceived a hope that a tour of the world might be made in even less than eighty days.

Elizabeth Cochrane had made a name for herself a year earlier when she convinced doctors she was insane. She spent 10 days in the New York’s Women’s Lunatic Asylum and chronicled her experiences in the New York World newspaper under the alias “Nellie Bly.” Her reporting led to immediate asylum reforms and solidified her position with the paper, but convincing her editor of this latest idea seems like a long shot.

Cochrane approaches her editor timidly. He asks if she has any ideas.

COCHRANE: I think I can beat Phileas Fogg's record. 

To her dismay she learns the paper has already thought of the same idea and is looking for the right reporter to send on the trip a man.

Her editor says he’ll see what he can do but it’s unlikely. Cochrane doesn’t speak any language other than English, she’s a young, single woman, and—he adds—women require too much baggage to travel lightly, making a sprint to catch trains and ships challenging.

Cochrane sets aside the idea and works on other stories, then nearly a year later, her editor calls her into his office and asks if she can start on a round the world trip in two days. She agrees, and decides to travel with just one bag.

COCHRANE: Packing that bag was the most difficult undertaking of my life!!!

Cochrane squeezes a lot into it: two hats, three veils, a pair of slippers, an ink-stand, pens, pencils, and copy-paper, pins, needles and thread, a dressing gown, a blazer, a small flask and a drinking cup, several undergarments, and a liberal supply of handkerchiefs. And a bulky jar of face cream that Cochranes says was the hardest thing to fit into the bag. The only dress she brings is the one she’s wearing as she leaves.

Once packed, she says goodbye to a couple friends and then rushes out the door.

COCHRANE: It's only a matter of 28,000 miles, and seventy-five days and four hours, until I shall be back again.

Her adventure begins in New York on November 14th, 1889 as she boards the Augusta Victoria headed for England. From there she heads to France where she risks making her next connection to meet author Jules Verne and his wife at their home.

In the hall hangs a world map with a blue pencil line tracing Phileas Fogg’s route. Another line marks where Cochrane’s journey differs.

COCHRANE: Jules Verne said: “If you do it in seventy-nine days, I shall applaud with both hands," and then I knew he doubted the possibility of my doing it in seventy-five, as I had promised. His glass tipped mine as he said: "Good luck, Nellie Bly."

Readers all across the country follow her progress in the New York World newspaper, reading of the kindness of strangers

COCHRANE: Shortly before noon I became acquainted with an Englishman who belongs to the Civil Service in Calcutta!!!Learning that I was traveling alone, he devoted most of his time looking out for my comfort and pleasure.

Cochrane’s reports also feature frustrating delays, one stoppage lasts five days in modern day Sri Lanka as she awaits the next ship to arrive. She’s convinced it will throw everything else off schedule. But the next leg of the trip raises a much more life-threatening concern.

COCHRANE: One night during the monsoon the sea washed over the ship in a frightful manner!!!I thought it very possible that I had spoken my last word to any mortal, that the ship would doubtless sink...

The storm lasts for days, hurricane force winds drive the ship before it. When they arrive in Hong Kong, they are two days ahead of the original schedule.

Relieved, Elizabeth Cochrane is also surprised to discover something else. On Christmas day, 1889, she sees an American flag for the first time since leaving New York.

COCHRANE: It is a strange fact that the further one goes from home the more loyal one becomes. The moment I saw it floating there in the soft, lazy breeze I took off my cap and said: "That is the most beautiful flag in the world, and I am ready to whip anyone who says it isn't."

The rest of her journey includes record breaking speeds both on sea and land. She boards a train in San Francisco on January 22nd and the steam engine screams across the country. Cochrane makes a handful of special appearances in cities along the route, but never for very long.

She arrives in New York on January 25th, 1890 at 3:51 p.m. 72 days, six hours and 11 minutes after leaving. She’d done it. Thousands welcome her home.

COCHRANE: 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.

Cochrane later publishes the complete account of her adventure in book form: Around The World In Seventy-Two Days. She ends with this heartfelt note:

COCHRANE: To so many people this wide world over am I indebted for kindnesses that I cannot, in a little book like this, thank them all individually. They form a chain around the earth. To each and all of you, men, women and children, in my land and in the lands I visited, I am most truly grateful.

Jules Verne sends Cochrane a telegram congratulating her for her record setting achievement, a record that stands for only a few months when a businessman completes the journey five days faster, though he didn’t have to make the trip in a dress, with an editor breathing down his neck, nor a large jar of face cream.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Paul Butler. My thanks to my colleague Emma Perley for reading Elizabeth Cochrane’s writings about her trip.

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