Around-the-world motorcycle touring pioneer Carl Stearns Clancy, and what he thought of Shanghai and Hong Kong in 1913
- Dressed in a three-piece suit and tie, Carl Stearns Clancy circumnavigated the globe on a single-gear motorbike
- He was impressed by the ‘quiet, respectful, courteous and neat’ Chinese he found in Hong Kong
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.
Clancy was also fortunate with his timing: in August 1914, a year after he completed his epic journey, Europe and much of the rest of the world was engulfed in a bitter and bloody war. Freewheeling travel became next to impossible.