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| A Henderson poster promoting Carl Clancy’s round-the-world journey |
What a wonderful adventure! Now 108 years ago: Carl Clancy motorbikes around the world starting in New Hampshire, United States.
He predicts, from Shanghai in 1913:
“Give China a little time, and she’ll not only have plenty of trunk roads, but will be one of the richest countries on the globe. Nothing can stop her”.
Turns out two world wars, several revolutions and political upheavals nearly did stop her, but in the end Clancy proved right. And those “trunk roads”? Clancy could not have imagined the network of modern eight-lane freeways they now are.
From today’s South China Morning Post Magazine, the thrilling and inspiring story of the first motorcycle ride around the world:
It was going to be the “longest, most difficult, and most perilous motorcycle journey ever attempted”. At least, that was the opinion published by The Bicycling World and Motorcycle Review when it hit American news stands in the autumn of 1912.
The trailblazing odyssey was to take a 20-something advertising copywriter from Epping, New Hampshire, around the planet on a 934cc Henderson Four, which boasted a single gear and no front brake and retailed for US$325. The machine’s devil-may-care pilot was Carl Stearns Clancy, and rain or shine, sweltering tropical heat or nigh Arctic blizzard, he was to be found mounted on his two-wheeled steed wearing a three-piece suit with a collar and tie. Truly, this was the 24-carat golden age of the amateur gentleman adventurer.
In some ways, travel was simpler then. Rather than being straitjacketed by a daily blog and festooned with corporate logos, Clancy was able to fund his trip with occasional journalism. If roads were fewer and patchier, traffic was certainly lighter, although it was rare that the Henderson could hit its top speed of 105km/h.
No prurient documentary camera or local television news station poked its lens into Clancy’s innermost feelings along the way. And if he had forgotten to pack the relevant map – as he did in Ireland, on the first leg of the trip – or there was no map at all, there was usually an admiring soul who was more than willing to help out with directions.
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| Clancy repairs a tyre, Pyrenees, 1913 |
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| Clancy at Fork R. Montana, on his way back east from California at the end of the trip. The other bike is a Henderson 1913 of friend Bob Allen who accompanied him back to New Hampshire |
Clancy made a formal start in Dublin as a tribute to his Irish father, and rode through Britain and much of Europe before crossing to North Africa and then sailing to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) via the Suez Canal. Read on…
