Richard Halliburton

Richard Halliburton grew up comfortable in Memphis, the son of a civil engineer, and was expected to follow a conventional path after Princeton, where he graduated in 1921. He did not want it. Weeks later he worked his way across the Atlantic as a deckhand, then spent months roaming Europe on almost no money, once talking his way onto the Matterhorn in weather bad enough that a licensed guide had already refused the climb. He wrote his parents long, vivid letters about all of it, and that correspondence, published decades later, supplied both the raw material and the breathless first-person voice for the travel books that made him one of the country's best-selling authors before he turned thirty.

His signature stunt, in August 1928, was swimming the length of the Panama Canal over ten days, paying a toll of 36 cents based on his registered weight — the lowest toll in the canal's history, and still a matter of public record. He also swam the Hellespont, climbed Mount Fuji in winter, descended twice into the sacred cenote at Chichen Itza, and in 1930 and 1931 circled the globe in a biplane he called the Flying Carpet, logging roughly 33,660 miles over eighteen months. Each trip became a bestselling book — The Royal Road to Romance, New Worlds to Conquer, The Flying Carpet — narrated in a breathless first person that biographers now read as part theater: real travels, but dramatized for an audience rather than documented plainly as they happened.

Halliburton built a public image of pure derring-do while living, in an era that criminalized it, a private life he could not publish: French police recorded his relationships with men in Paris in 1935, and his closest companion in his final years was his secretary and collaborator Paul Mooney, who died alongside him. The stunt that killed them both was his own idea, pursued against expert advice. He commissioned a seventy-five-foot Chinese junk, the Sea Dragon, to sail from Hong Kong to San Francisco for a 1939 exposition; a January trial run showed it dangerously top-heavy, and a February departure turned back after a week. He sailed anyway on March 4, 1939, and the last message anyone received, on March 24 as a typhoon closed in, read: "Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here instead of me."

He was declared legally dead on October 5, 1939, six months after that last radio call, and his family kept an empty plot for him at Forest Hill Cemetery in Memphis. His father built a bell tower in his memory at what is now Rhodes College, and a wartime Liberty ship carried his name. Walter Cronkite credited a Halliburton lecture with pointing him toward journalism, and later writers from Paul Theroux to Susan Sontag cited his influence. But the reputation since has split along the same line his life did: read either as an inspiration for the between-the-wars generation of American travelers, or as an early case study in the gap between a bestselling adventurer's printed persona and the more carefully embellished record underneath it.

Richard Halliburton's life against the full span of the corpus.

• The Royal Road to Romance book
  His first book and immediate bestseller 1925
• New Worlds to Conquer book
  Includes his account of swimming the Panama Canal 1929
• The Flying Carpet book
  Chronicles his eighteen-month around-the-world flight 1932
• Seven League Boots book
  Covers Ethiopia, Russia, Arabia, and the Alps 1935
• Richard Halliburton's Book of Marvels: The Occident book
  Aimed at a younger readership 1937

• January 9, 1900 aged 0 Born in Brownsville, Tennessee
• 1921 aged ~21 Graduates from Princeton and sails for Europe as a deckhand
• 1925 aged ~25 Publishes The Royal Road to Romance, an immediate bestseller
• August 1928 aged 28 Swims the length of the Panama Canal over ten days Paid a toll of 36 cents based on his registered weight.
• 1930-1931 aged ~31 Circles the globe in the biplane Flying Carpet Roughly 33,660 miles over eighteen months.
• 1935 aged ~35 French police document his relationships with men in Paris
• March 4, 1939 aged 39 Sails from Hong Kong aboard the junk Sea Dragon, bound for San Francisco
• March 24, 1939 aged 39 Sends his last radio message as a typhoon closes in near Midway
• October 5, 1939 aged 39 Legally declared dead

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