While doing research for a previous post entitled Penny-Farthings: Transportational Death Traps, I stumbled upon a story that I’m now semi-obsessed with. I love learning new things and contemplating the different life choices which are afforded us all, but never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that a man once circumnavigated the globe on a penny-farthing.
Here I thought that I would simply write a post about those Victorian bicycles with the gigantic front wheels and the tiny back ones and be done with it. But as per usual, I got lost in a research labyrinth and wound up in a much more interesting place than I had anticipated. Suddenly I found myself face to face with Thomas Stevens. (People assume that muses simply inspire, but I suspect that they often orchestrate.)
Stevens led a very unusual life both before and after this epic journey. He was born in England, attended a charity school in Bourne and went on to be a grocer’s apprentice, so he must have come from very humble beginnings. When he was 16, he went to America with a half-brother, and was there for two years before the rest of his family joined him.
Eventually the family wound up in San Francisco, where Stevens learned to ride a bicycle. It makes me smile to think of anyone first riding a bicycle in that hilly town. Now add the fact that the bicycle in question was a penny-farthing, and amusing images spring to mind.
According to this fascinating article from 2011 in the publication Adventure Cyclist, which can be found in the Wayback Machine here, “A two-year stint in a Wyoming railroad mill ended when he was run out of town after it became known that he was importing British labourers in exchange for part of their salaries. He later found work in a Colorado mine where he came up with the idea of riding a bicycle across the country.”
That same article goes on to describe a lifetime of his adventures in great detail, including scaring off a mountain lion with a gun, and meeting and interviewing Leo Tolstoy in Russia. If you click no other link in this post, click that one. I does a deep dive into an unparalleled life.
After his lack of success as a grifter, I can see why Stevens would want to be on the move. I can also understand why he’d be the sort to crave adventure. You have to admire his ability to dream big.
In the Spring of 1884, when he was 29, he set off from San Francisco on his penny-farthing with its nickel-plated wheels. He traveled light. He carried with him only socks, an extra shirt, a raincoat that he also used as a tent and a bedroll, and a revolver. That’s it. No food. No water. No matches. No maps. No cooking implements. No first aid. I suspect he spent a lot of time asking directions and scrounging for food.
Less than 4 months and 3,700 miles later, he arrived in Boston. The vast majority of his trip had not been on paved roads. He used wagon trails, railways, canal towpaths and public roads of various types. Because of this, he had to walk more than 1,300 of those miles while pushing his penny-farthing.
He said that while he was on the California trail, he met Indians who were quite astonished at the sight of his strange mode of transportation. That was the common reaction when he took his voyage to other countries as well. He wanted to experience the different cultures of the world, and since most people found this man on his strange bicycle to be very interesting, he was usually not only tolerated, but also welcomed.
After wintering in New York, Stevens was in Liverpool by the Spring of 1885. He was now being sponsored by a cycling magazine, who began their sponsorship by paying his passage across the Atlantic Ocean. By now his reputation preceded him. 500 people showed up to see him off on the next leg of his adventure, including 25 cyclists who accompanied him for the first leg of his journey. It began to rain within minutes of their departure.
Upon reaching the east coast of England, he took a ferry to France. From there he passed through 5 other countries (and a region that was called Rumelia, which I had never heard of before) to arrive in Constantinople, Turkey. He stayed in that city for a while, because he was told about bandits on the trail ahead of him. He waited until they moved on.
He passed through Anatolia, Armenia, Kurdistan, and Iraq. He then wintered in Iran’s capital, Teheran, as a guest of the Shah. Not bad for a guy who had attended a charity school.
In the Spring of 1886, his trip got a little complicated. Serbia refused to let him in, so he entered Afghanistan even though its borders were technically closed. Because of this he was arrested. He was kept under house arrest in a fine villa, until his captors decided to eject him from the country. They escorted him back to Persia, but he kept speeding ahead of them on the penny-farthing, to the point where they became nervous and disassembled it.
That disassembly caused the worst damage the cycle was to experience on the entire circumnavigation. One of their pack horses stepped on the large wheel and broke many of the spokes. Some Afghan gunsmiths were able to make repairs. These repairs weren’t the best, but they allowed him to finish his journey.
Back in Persia, he took a steamer and then a train and then another steamer back to Constantinople. That had to have been frustrating. Remaining on that steamer, Stevens went on to India. He cycled across that country, having many adventures and declaring it the favorite part of his journey, and when he arrived in Calcutta he took yet another steamer to Hong Kong.
He then pedaled across southern China to eastern China. He found it all but impossible to ask directions in that country because he couldn’t pronounce the language. At one point he had to hide out in the home of a Chinese official because his presence sparked a riot among the citizens who were angry due to a war with the French. (Those white guys all look alike.)
He then took another steamer to Japan, which seemed like a very calm country to him in contrast to China. He arrived in Yokohama on December 17, 1886, one week before his 32nd birthday. He disembarked from his final steamer in San Francisco in January. He estimated that he had covered about 13,500 miles on the cycling portions of his grand adventure.
I would love to hear the thoughts of a Victorian man of humble origins, as he describes his adventures around the world, quite often in extremely rural areas. Fortunately, he saw fit to write a two volume book about it, entitled “Around the World on a Bicycle.” Original print editions are rather rare and expensive, but there have been several reprints, and you can get it on kindle for free. Brace yourself, though, as it is over 1,000 pages long. For a delightful and unvarnished description of this book, check out this article. It says the book is rather racist when viewed from a modern lens. He calls many people savages, for example. But the book allows us to peek through a window at a unique man who explored a world that we’ll never get to know firsthand.
You can also get a free recorded version of this book on LibriVox. Dear Husband and I plan to listen to it on our next lengthy road trip. Stevens went on to write several more books as well.
After such an exciting experience, the man could not be expected to just spend the rest of his life languishing, could he? As a matter of fact, in 1888 he went to East Africa to search for Henry Morton Stanley, the very explorer who had found David Livingstone (“Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”) in Tanzania in 1871.
Now Stanley seemed in need of finding himself. He had disappeared up the Congo in 1886 and hadn’t been heard from since. It had been 18 months since the world had last had news from him. After 6 months of searching, and being sidetracked hunting big game and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, Stevens caught up with Stanley’s expedition. They had never considered themselves lost, but they were as grateful for more current news of the outside world as the outside world was grateful for news of them.
Later, Stevens explored and reported from Russia, and sailed many of the rivers in Europe. He then tarnished his reputation somewhat by investigating the miracles of the ascetics in India, and pronouncing those miracles to be true. After that he seemed to lose his taste for grand adventures.
Around the age of 40, he returned to England, got married, and became the business manager of the Garrick Theatre in London. He had no children other than the ones his wife had brought to their marriage. He lived in London well beyond the life expectancy for the average Victorian. (According to Statistica, the average life expectancy in England was 40 years when he was born and 61 years when he died.) Perhaps all that bicycling did him good, because he lived to the ripe old age of 80. He died of bladder cancer.
While researching this post, I also came across an article about Joff Summerfield, a modern day individual who has actually put 38,000 miles on his penny-farthing while traveling through 31 countries. I’m sure he was inspired by Stevens. Unfortunately, the author of this article never mentions our trailblazer’s name. On the other hand, cyclist Eric Knight retraced Stevens route across Japan and gave him all the credit he deserves.
I was very saddened to hear that the Pope Manufacturing Company, which had produced Steven’s penny-farthing, had preserved his bicycle until World War II, and then they donated it to a scrap drive to help the war effort. That’s a rather heartbreaking end for such an historic cycle.
Thomas Stevens now takes his place as the most intriguing explorer that I’d never before heard of. To think that he came to my attention simply due to a random conversation about penny-farthings. What a gift.
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