After traveling through Europe on the “Grand Tour” (a sort of hippie trail for Victorian men), thirty-four year old James Holman decided he needed something a little more adventurous. In 1822, he set out to traverse the entire planet overland. He would eventually set foot on five continents and become the most accomplished traveler of all time*, covering 250,000 miles by his death in 1857.

Oh, except, he was completely blind and navigated by echolocation.

Holman was struck by a type of rheumatism in 1810, which quickly made movement extremely painful and left him blind in both eyes. Blindness in young men had a terrible social stigma attached to it (it was usually caused by gonorrhea, and everybody knows how you get that), which depressed Holman so much that his doctors suggested he move to the Mediterranean for a while. They probably meant, “Move to the Mediterranean with an entourage of nurses and amenities,” but Holman just got on a ferry and went by himself. He traveled throughout the south of Europe, and upon returning home to England in 1822 decided to circumnavigate the globe.

His first big trip wasn’t a success in the way he’d wanted – he made through Russia and almost to Mongolia, but the Czar suspected him of being a spy and threw him in a Polish prison. He eventually made his way back to England and published a book of his adventures, which was widely read and made him relatively famous. Three years later he got on a ship and completed his goal of circling the world..

Incidentally, Holman was also quite the ladies’ man. His books drew a wide range of admirers, and the charisma and big personality he’d used to overcome his blindness drew them in. He has several quotes about finding beauty where sighted men couldn’t, which is discussed in this NPR story.

Holman’s biggest barrier wasn’t his blindness, it was that everyone perceived him as helpless. This was especially a problem on ocean-bound boats, where everything could go wrong in an instant and a blind passenger was seen as a liability. To mitigate this, Holman would rip off his jacket and climb to the top of the tallest mast as soon as the ship set sail. Works every time.

He completed his round the world circuit, visiting five continents in an age when it took six weeks to get to the other side of Europe. The rest of his life was spent traveling through Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, but details of this period are sketchy – though James Holman finished his comprehensive autobiography in July of 1857, he died a week later and the book was never published.

“I met the blind traveler today, and he’s as moving a gentleman as I would imagine.”