Special Crosspost: Compass Dispatches
Thoughts and notes from around the world of historical travel (and travel history)
Editor’s note: Sarah Keenlyside and I are developing a podcast for fellow devotees of travel and history. As we polish episodes for our fall debut, I'm chronicling humanity's finest moments of wanderlust and questionable decision-making in weekly dispatches. Intrigued by stories of people who answered 'where to next?' with spectacular results? Follow By Their Own Compass on Substack
Welcome to this edition of Compass Dispatches, where we celebrate our relentless determination to go places famously devoid of humanity, such as the surface of the Moon and the RyanAir customer service desk.
On July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong made one of history’s most famous disembarkations by stepping down from the lunar module Eagle in “one giant leap for mankind.” And yes, no matter what your uncle, who is tellingly still unmarried, living with your gran at age 42, and thinks Elon Musk is an “Alpha Boss,” posts on Reddit, we continue to believe Neil and the boys when they say they made the trip.
To put this in some historical perspective, the medieval uber-traveler Ibn Battuta journeyed 75,000 miles over 30 years. The crew of Apollo 11 flew 240,000 miles in 76 hours.
Yes, the Apollo missions were all a bit of a Cold War dick-off with the Soviets, and, sure, 50 years later, Jeff Bezos would be flogging "tickets to space" like a carnival barker. Still, we remain damned impressed by what Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin, and the team at NASA accomplished in 1969.
Consider this: Less than a century before Buzz and Neil walked on the moon, at a little past 2:30 pm on July 22, 1894, a three-horsepower petrol-powered machine driven by Albert Lemaître crossed the finish line in the Paris-Rouen Horseless Carriage Contest. The 78-mile race wasn't about speed; it was proof of concept that mechanical carriages could reliably transport humans without, among other things, bursting into flames.*
The race convinced investors and early-adopter types that vehicles that emit exhaust are somehow superior to those pulled by horses, which emit a substance now given away in lavish quantities for free by the White House Press Secretary. In 1894, automobiles were the future, albeit one that now looks a bit grim to anyone gridlocked on the I-405, M25, or the Gotthard Tunnel on a summer weekend.
It took just over 4000 years for humans to go from convincing a large, hoofed mammal to let us ride it across the steppe to inventing the internal combustion engine. It would be only another five decades before the De Havilland Comet became the world’s first jet-propelled airliner, making its maiden voyage on July 27, 1949. And then, just twenty years after that, human beings were standing on the moon. In less than 2% of recorded human history, we went from the dawn of the automobile age to the jet age to the space age.
Yeah, we can be a bit jaded about travel (like anyone who has been to Phuket recently without first asking Duolingo to teach them basic Russian), but sometimes people's desire to answer the question "Right. Where to next and how we getting there?" beggars belief.
If you’re sitting on the moon, in Phuket, or getting ready to brave the M25 for a weekend getaway, why not take a moment to subscribe to By Their Own Compass?
Finally, July 27 is the birthday of Jeanne Baret, born in 1740 in La Comelle in the Burgundy region of France, and somebody who deserves her own episode. Baret solved the problem of 18th-century travel restrictions on women through the time-honored technique of simply pretending to be a man.
Disguised as a male botanist to join Bougainville's 1766-1769 circumnavigation, Baret became the first woman to sail around the world, proving that sometimes the best way to break barriers is to dress convincingly enough that nobody realizes you're breaking them.
Baret's three-year journey advanced botanical science while demonstrating a remarkable commitment to her disguise, though we imagine the close quarters of an 18th-century ship made maintaining her secret rather challenging.
That's all from our terrestrial headquarters, where we remain your correspondents who like to go places and then tell everyone about the folks who were there before us. Yes, we are those people.
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*Hey…just like Elon!