From The Cosmopolitan, John Brisben Walker, conceding defeat, had sent a basket of rare roses.
JANUARY 30, 1890
New York
The Bothnia sighted New York on the morning of Thursday, January 30. It had been a dreadful passage from Queenstown. Across most of the North Atlantic the sea churned and heaved, the waves tossing the ship back and forth like a football. For days Elizabeth Bisland lay wretched and miserable in her berth, too seasick to move. Again and again the ship would climb a green mountain of sea, pause for a moment at the crest of the wave, and then slide back down again on the other side, the back of the ship coming up out of the water, like a bucking bronco kicking its hind legs. After days of this constant pounding all of her joints felt dislocated, and even her teeth had begun to ache in her head. The cot beneath her felt as thin and hard as a coffin. The crew had left the doors to the decks open to prevent them from freezing shut, and a bitterly cold wind blew through the passageways and into the cabins. On the third day of the storm—or perhaps it was the fourth—Bisland was just resolving to get up from her berth when a sudden lurch of the ship sent a water jug flying out of its basin onto her chest, where it broke into pieces and drenched her and the sheets with icy water; afterward she discovered that the key to her steamer trunk, where she had all her dry changes of clothing, had somehow been mislaid. She stood helpless in the cabin, the cold breeze piercing her through her wet and clinging nightdress. Each night she fell asleep telling herself that the morning would be better, but when she awoke everything was just as before. The wind, it began to seem, had always been howling, the waves always raging. The captain of the Bothnia, the forty-seven-year-old Scotsman James B. Watt, was a deeply respected veteran commander (so respected, in fact, that at the age of sixty-five, two years past Cunard’s normal retirement age, he would be given command of a new steamship—the Lusitania), but not even the most skilled seaman could make any speed amid such storms. With each passing day the prospect of catching Nellie Bly became ever more remote; at the end of a trip ruled by the calendar and the clock, time seemed now to slow, and even to run backward, carrying her ever farther from her goal.
On the morning of the eleventh day, when the seas had calmed and the sky began to clear, a thin rim of film appeared on the horizon. On the forward deck, the passengers stood wrapped in their furs, red-nosed and shivering but excited at the prospect of land at last. As the ship moved closer the film thickened and darkened, eventually resolving itself into Coney Island; before long those on deck were seeing a most extraordinary sight. It was the Elephantine Colossus: an immense wooden elephant, twelve stories high, with tusks forty feet long and a hide made from blue tin. Built only a few years before, it was already one of Coney Island’s premier attractions. “The work is really an architectural wonder,” a writer of the time declared. “It bursts upon the astonished gaze of passengers on the in-coming European steamers, giving them their first idea of the bigness of some things in this country.” The forelegs—each of them sixty feet in circumference—contained a cigar store and a diorama, and circular staircases hidden in the hind legs led visitors up to the concert hall, museum, and numerous novelty shops contained inside its immense body. Now, as the Bothnia steamed slowly past, the glass eyes of the great elephant seemed to gaze on the ship in reproach, Elizabeth Bisland would later observe, “as if to deprecate our late coming.”
The ship sailed through the Narrows into the Upper Bay. On the right the Statue of Liberty held her torch uplifted; to the left was Staten Island, the tidy little villages tucked into the hills, the grand yacht houses down along the water. A young Englishwoman, following her new husband to a foreign country, remarked in surprise that it all looked much like England; apparently, Bisland thought, she had been expecting log cabins in a frontier settlement. In the distance she could see the skyline of lower Manhattan, the new skyscrapers with their domes and spires rising above the mass of older buildings like peaks in a mountain chain; it still inspired a kind of reverence in her, seemed to her just as astonishing as when she first saw it, on a ship coming north from New Orleans. As the city came into view, a wash of familiarity came over her, blotting out all sense of elapsed time; she felt she knew how everything looked at that moment—the streets, the houses, the passersby—as if she had only turned her head away for an instant, when something unexpected caught her attention.
The Bothnia entered New York Harbor and began steaming up the West Side of Manhattan. At exactly one-thirty in the afternoon the ship slid into the Cunard pier No. 40, at the foot of Clarkson Street: her journey was over. No official timekeepers were on hand to record the arrival, and indeed Elizabeth Bisland’s final time was by no means as definite as Nellie Bly’s. The Bothnia had crossed the bar at 10:10 that morning, making for a trip of 76 days, 16 hours, and 10 minutes; John Bisland Walker himself put the time at 76 days, 16 hours, and 48 minutes, though he never explained the reasoning behind that calculation. Using one-thirty P.M. as the end point, the trip would have been completed in 76 days, 19 hours, and 30 minutes. In any case, no one cared to dispute Walker’s own pronouncement; the runner-up’s final time was something of an afterthought. Still, using any of those times, Elizabeth Bisland’s trip around the world would have been the fastest one ever recorded—but for the fact that Nellie Bly had arrived four and a half days earlier.
Those days, however, made all the difference. The crowd awaiting Elizabeth Bisland numbered in the hundreds rather than the thousands and was far quieter and less boisterous than the ones that had greeted Nellie Bly both in Jersey City and at the Cortlandt Street pier. Bisland emerged on deck with the rest of the ship’s passengers; she was wearing a neatly fitted black traveling suit beneath the same dark Newmarket coat and glazed black sailor’s hat that she had been wearing when she first set out from New York. A small pair of binoculars was slung over her shoulder, and her face was deeply sunburned. “She looked,” wrote a reporter from the St. Louis Republic, “like a veteran yachtswoman.” Her sister Molly was waiting at the end of the gangway, and as Bisland stepped onto the dock she fell into her sister’s arms; immediately Molly burst into tears, saying, “She has beaten you, but you did well.” John Brisben Walker and several colleagues from The Cosmopolitan were also on hand with a number of friends to offer their consolation and congratulations.
A handful of newspaper reporters gathered around to ask her about her trip. Bisland told them that she was delighted with her journey and with the courtesy and kindness that had greeted her in all the countries she visited; her only regret, she said, was not having been able to beat the time of Nellie Bly. With that, her sister spirited her off into a carriage waiting on the dock, and the two hurried uptown to their little apartment on Fourth Avenue, which was filled with flowers sent by friends in honor of her safe arrival.
That night, in an article that served as a kind of postmortem of the trip, John Brisben Walker told a reporter from The World that “the young woman he sent around the world from west to east was by no means an expert traveller” and had “made several blunders.” The only blunder he specifically cited was this: “Instead of taking the steamer Prussian at Hong Kong for Brindisi, she took another boat which left three days earlier but reached its destination four days later than the Prussian. Then she missed the French steamer La Champagne, which had been held for her at Havre, and was forced to take passage on the Bothnia from Queenstown.”
Elizabeth Bisland, though, had not wanted to abandon the Prussian in Hong Kong; the Prussian’s screw had broken in the harbor, and Bisland had no choice but to take the slower Peninsular and Oriental steamer in its place. Moreover, even if Bisland had boarded La Champagne at Havre, the storms on the North Atlantic added several days to the steamship’s time, enough to have ensured Bisland’s defeat regardless. The day after Elizabeth Bisland’s arrival in New York, La Champagne’s commander, Captain Boyer, told a reporter that if Bisland had been on board he thought he could have landed her in New York on the afternoon of Sund
ay, January 26—a far better showing, but still several hours behind Nellie Bly’s time. Though John Brisben Walker preferred to lay the blame with Elizabeth Bisland, he might have looked instead to his initial decision to have her travel west rather than east. Going in this direction, Walker believed, Bisland would avoid the headwinds that Nellie Bly would likely encounter on the South China Sea; but that decision in turn brought Bisland onto the North Atlantic in January rather than November, when she was far more likely to encounter weather rough enough to slow a steamship.
Indeed, the outcome would have been little different even if the Prussian had not broken its screw in Hong Kong harbor. The Cosmopolitan’s original itinerary had the Prussian delivering Elizabeth Bisland into Genoa on January 12, four days earlier than the P&O steamer Britannia brought her to Brindisi. The earlier arrival would have allowed Bisland enough time to take an express train to Calais, then ferry across the English channel and board a train for Liverpool, where the White Star steamship Adriatic departed on January 15. The Adriatic was a fast ship; in 1872 it held the Blue Ribbon for a westbound North Atlantic passage, having crossed from Queenstown to New York in 7 days, 23 hours, and 17 minutes. That crossing, however, had taken place in the month of May. In January 1890, like all of the other steamships on the North Atlantic, the Adriatic had a very rough passage—which included ice fields and a hurricane that lasted for eight hours—and reached the bar in New York at 2:06 A.M. on January 26 after an eleven-day crossing. If Elizabeth Bisland had been aboard the Adriatic, her final travel time would have been 72 days, 8 hours, and 6 minutes—still nearly two hours behind Nellie Bly.
In the face of hurricanes and ice fields, seven-day steamers turned into eleven-day steamers, and a seventy-two-day trip instead took seventy-six. No matter what route Elizabeth Bisland took across the Continent, and despite her harrowing three-day trip to catch the Bothnia, there was not a ship in Europe that would have landed her in New York in time to beat Nellie Bly. It was not the December storms on the South China Sea that ultimately determined the winner, as John Brisben Walker had anticipated, but the January storms on the North Atlantic.
Nellie Bly’s triumphant return was announced in newspapers across the United States and Europe; Elizabeth Bisland’s later arrival in New York earned scarcely a mention. In New York, the Times ran a brief item on page 8; the Herald’s story, on page 12, was somewhat longer, but somehow managed to refer to her as “Miss Mary Bisland.”
“Miss Bisland’s late arrival takes all the glory out of her really meritorious achievement,” editorialized the Philadelphia Inquirer shortly after her return, before going on to suggest: “The only thing she can do now to recover prestige is to try it again. With the experience of her last trip she should be able to break the record made by her successful rival. It might not pay; but neither did the first trip.”
Asked the Washington Critic, “Wasn’t there a Miss Bisland who started out to do something a long time ago?”
The Daily Messenger of St. Albans, Vermont, observed that no crowds were on hand to receive Elizabeth Bisland and noted simply, “It is the winner who wins.”
FATHER TIME OUTDONE! PROCLAIMED THE WORLD’S HEADLINE FOR SUNDAY, January 26, in the largest type the setters in the composition room could find. Below it, seven more headline decks summarized the entire story of Nellie Bly’s record-breaking trip, including how “Even Imagination’s Record Pales Before the Performance of ‘The World’s’ Globe-Circler,” and “The History of Journalism Cannot Parallel This Popular Achievement.” Under the masthead a large cartoon drawn by The World’s Walt McDougall showed Nellie Bly in her distinctive checked ulster and cap, gripsack in hand, greeting an unhappy-looking group of historical circumnavigators, among them Sir Francis Drake and Captain Cook, and, at the end of the row, a monocled man in full evening dress—Phileas Fogg. The caption below it read: “A Little Pardonable Consternation Among the Globe-Circlers at the Remarkable Achievement of ‘The World’s’ Traveller.”
“All Europe Enthusiastic,” the paper reported, above commendatory remarks given to World correspondents by geographers, scientists, journalists, and even Vicomte de Lesseps, the developer of the Suez Canal, who congratulated Bly on her courage and laughingly added, “I think I should have some share in the ovations, seeing that—thanks to my canal—I have rendered the journey so much shorter.” In London, The World’s Tracey Greaves paid a visit to the president of the Royal Geographical Society. “While I can’t see that her trip will benefit the cause of science,” observed the Right Honorable Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff, “it shows what a plucky young woman with a powerful newspaper at her back can do. For my part I think it best in travelling to see foreign countries slowly, but if any more enterprising Americans desire to emulate Miss Bly’s example it is much better to travel rapidly than not to travel at all. Miss Bly has proved herself a remarkable young woman, and I hope she will get a good husband.”
Upon Bly’s arrival in Jersey City, The World’s Paris correspondent, Robert H. Sherard, set off at once to Amiens to deliver the good news to Jules Verne in person. “Bravo!” Verne cried three times on hearing the news, and then said delightedly, “This is a most excellent result. I consider the performance wonderful. This great journalistic feat will interest the whole world.” Verne told Sherard that every week he received numerous letters asking him about Bly’s trip, and that in Amiens he never met anyone who didn’t immediately ask, “Well, how is Miss Bly getting on?” (Indeed, in Paris interest in Bly’s trip was so widespread that no fewer than ten new editions of Around the World in Eighty Days had been issued, and in response to “very general demand,” the theatrical version, which had closed eleven years earlier, was now being revived. There was even talk of altering the script to add some lines about Nellie Bly’s own race around the world. “We certainly owe her some recognition,” explained the stage manager.)
Honorine Verne, too, was delighted with the news. “I always said that Miss Bly was certain to succeed. She looked like one who would not get beaten at anything she might undertake. I am very glad if only for the reason that now my husband will have a little peace of mind. You can’t imagine the interest M. Verne has taken in this trip.” Often in the evening, she said, he would bring out his globe and point out where Nellie Bly probably was at that moment; on the wall map upstairs he would mark her daily progress with little flags. “Now tell me,” Honorine Verne asked Sherard lightly, “did Miss Bly come back alone? Did she not find a husband en route? Remember, we teased her about that.”
Sherard assured her that Nellie Bly was still single.
Jules Verne said, “I have thought all the time about Miss Bly, as my wife says. My principal thought was, ‘Dieu! How I wish I were free and young again!’ I would have been enchanted to do the same journey, even under the same conditions—rush round the globe without seeing much. I would have set off at once and perhaps offered to escort Miss Bly.”
“That wouldn’t have suited me,” said Honorine. “Besides, one condition of Miss Bly’s tour was: do it alone, risking the dangers of the unprotected.” With that, she sent down to the cellar for a vintage bottle of Pontet-Canet, and together the three raised glasses in honor of Nellie Bly’s success.
Later, Robert Sherard would claim that he “repeatedly” asked The World to send Jules Verne a letter thanking him for his kindness in hosting Nellie Bly, but no letter was ever sent; Sherard said he was told that “the old man had got good advertising out of it and had no reason to complain.”
THE PRINT RUN for the January 26 issue of The World was 280,340 copies, the largest ever for one of the paper’s Sunday editions. Even so, newsdealers throughout the city ran short of The World that day. In New York’s hotels newsboys were offering patrons fifteen cents for a copy of the paper that normally sold for only four, which they then resold for anywhere from twenty-five to fifty cents apiece; and even at those prices, it was reported, there were no copies to be had. To meet the demand, The World’s presses ran all throu
gh the night printing extra copies, and the following day the city’s residents were given the highly unusual sight of newsboys selling the Sunday paper on Monday morning.
On January 26, The World received a letter sent by a Mr. and Mrs. G. S. Harding of No. 188 Eldridge Street, on the Lower East Side, giving news of their baby. She had been born the afternoon before, just as the cannonade was going off at the Battery, and they had named her Nellie Bly Harding—“hoping,” they wrote, “she may prove a bright light same as her namesake.”
Indeed, The World reported, “Several ladies who have become mothers since Nellie Bly started on her trip have notified the European Trip Editor that they intend to name their offspring after the young circumnavigator.”
The following day The World received another letter, from John J. Timmins of New York, who wrote, “I have taken the liberty of naming my four-year-old colt, which promises to trot very fast, Nellie Bly, after your world-renowned globe-trotter. Hoping she will prove as successful, I remain very respectfully yours.”
In Burlington, Wisconsin, William W. Storms named one of his prizewinning Buff Leghorn chickens after her, and several show dogs were so named as well, including a pug, an English setter, and a toy spaniel, the latter owned by Mrs. Ferdinand Senn, a champion spaniel breeder in New York. In 1890, at the fourteenth annual dog show of the Westminster Kennel Club, in the category of Japanese spaniels, the red ribbon for second place was awarded to Nellie Bly.
Later on, in recognition of her record-breaking ride on its line from Chicago to Jersey City, the Pennsylvania Railroad named its fastest train after her, and for many years, until 1961, the Nellie Bly ran nonstop between New York and Atlantic City.
AT THE AMPHION THEATRE in Brooklyn, the popular music hall team of Hallen and Hart were starring in their musical comedy Later On! Now they announced that they would be adding a new song to the show, which they called “Globe Trotting Nellie Bly.” To a lively allegro tempo the song’s first verse ran:
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