Richard Halliburton (January 9, 1900presumed dead after March 24, 1939) was an American travel writer and adventurer who, among numerous journeys, swam the length of the Panama Canal and paid the lowest toll in its history, 36 cents, in 1928. He disappeared at sea while attempting to sail the Chinese junk Sea Dragon across the Pacific Ocean from Hong Kong to the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco, California.
Early life and education Richard Halliburton was born in Brownsville, Tennessee, to Wesley Halliburton, a civil engineer and real estate speculator, and Nelle Nance Halliburton. A brother, Wesley Jr., was born in 1903. The family moved to Memphis, where the brothers, who were not close, spent their childhood. Richard attended Memphis University School, where his favorite subjects were geography and history; he also showed promise as a violinist, and was a fair golfer and tennis player. In 1915, he developed a rapid heartbeat and spent some four months in bed before its symptoms were relieved. This included some time at the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, run by the eccentric and innovative John Harvey Kellogg, whose philosophy of care featured regular exercise, sound nutrition, and frequent enemas.Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and the Religion of Biologic Living- By Brian C. Wilson, September 18, 2014 - Indiana University Press In 1917, following an apparent bout of rheumatic fever, Wesley Jr., thought strong and in fine health, suddenly died.
At and about , Halliburton was never robust but would seldom complain of sickness or poor stamina.Jonathan Root, Richard Halliburton – The Magnificent Myth, p. 39 et seq. He graduated from the Lawrenceville School in 1917, where he was chief editor of The Lawrence. In 1921, he graduated from Princeton University, where he was on the editorial board of The Daily Princetonian and chief editor of The Princetonian Pictorial Magazine. He also attended courses in public speaking and considered a career as a lecturer.Jonathan Root, Richard Halliburton – The Magnificent Myth, p. 44 et seq. The first in a series of syndicated columns Richard Halliburton wrote for newspapers across the country carried an editorial biography of the travel writer. See, for instance, The Sunday Magazine, Milwaukee Journal, September 2, 1934
Career
"An even tenor"
Leaving college temporarily during 1919, Halliburton became an ordinary seaman and boarded the freighter Octorara that July, bound from New Orleans to England. He toured historic places in London and Paris, but soon returned to Princeton in early 1920 to finish his schooling. His trip inspired in him a lust for even more travel; seizing the day became his credo. The words of Oscar Wilde, who in works like The Picture of Dorian Gray enjoined experiencing the moment before it vanished, inspired Halliburton to reject marriage, family, a regular job, and conventional respectability as the obvious steps after graduation. He liked bachelorhood, youthful adventure, and the thrill of the unknown. To earn a living he intended to write about his adventures. He dedicated his first book to his Princeton roommates, "...whose sanity, consistency and respectability... drove [him] to this book".
Halliburton's father advised him to get the wanderlust out of his system, return to Memphis and adjust his life to "an even tenor" which for son Richard meant the humdrum, prosaic and dreary encased in a set routine:
"I hate that expression", Richard responded, expressing the view that distinguished his life-style, "and as far as I am able I intend to avoid that condition. When impulse and spontaneity fail to make my way uneven then I shall sit up nights inventing means of making my life as conglomerate and vivid as possible.... And when my time comes to die, I'll be able to die happy, for I will have done and seen and heard and experienced all the joy, pain and thrills—any emotion that any human ever had—and I'll be especially happy if I am spared a stupid, common death in bed.Reprinted Memphis Magazine, April 2001 He believed that his fortunes lay abroad, not at home: One's youth should not be wasted in idle domestic pursuits—nor in fulfilling expectations enjoined by others or by societal norms. Becoming a keynote of his philosophy was that young adults see the world beyond the horizon before they settle down into a set routine unbeknownst to the many choices in life a greater knowledge of that wider world offers.
Witness to the wedding of the emperor of China In 1922, Halliburton witnessed the last ceremonial marriage of a Chinese Emperor, the wedding of Emperor Puyi to Empress Wanrong in Beijing. The Royal Family would be permanently expelled less than two years later. Halliburton wrote of the event in his memoir:
Lecturer and pioneer of adventure journalism While Halliburton was attending Princeton, Field and Stream magazine paid him $150 for an article (). This initial success encouraged him to choose travel writing as a career. His fortunes changed when a representative of the Feakins Agency heard him deliver a talk, and soon Halliburton was given bookings for lectures. Despite a high-pitched voice and occasional discomfort on the details, Halliburton displayed such enthusiasm and recounted such vivid recreations of his often bizarre foreign encounters that he became popular with audiences. On the strength of his lecturing and increasing celebrity appeal, publisher Bobbs-Merrill, whose editor-in-chief David Laurance Chambers was also a Princeton graduate, accepted Halliburton's first book, The Royal Road to Romance (1925),Cf. Jonathan Root, Halliburton – The Magnificent Myth, op. cit., pp. 100–105 which became a bestseller.
Two years later, Halliburton published The Glorious Adventure, which retraced Ulysses' adventures throughout the Classical Greek world as recounted in Homer's Odyssey, and included his visiting the grave of English poet Rupert Brooke on the island of Skyros. In 1929, Halliburton published New Worlds To Conquer, which recounted his swimming of the Panama Canal—in August 1928 he spent 10 days swimming approximately over a period of 50 hours in the water, during which he was protected from alligators and other dangers by an Army sharpshooter in a nearby rowboat, and paid a toll of just 36 cents , which was based on his tonnage of . The book also covered other journeys, including retracing the track of Hernán Cortés' conquest of Mexico, and his enactment of the role of Robinson Crusoe as a "cast away" on the island of Tobago in the Caribbean, donning a full goat-skin costume as had been worn by Alexander Selkirk when he was marooned in the South Pacific Ocean in the early 18th century. Animals figure prominently in this and many other of Halliburton's adventures.
Ascent to fame Halliburton's friends during this time included movie stars, writers, musicians, painters, and politicians, including writers Gertrude Atherton and Kathleen Norris, Senator James Phelan, philanthropist Noël Sullivan, and actors Ramón Novarro and Rod La Rocque. Casual acquaintances were many, as lectures, personal appearances (notably to promote India Speaks), syndicated columns, and radio broadcasts made him a household name associated with romantic travel.For Mallory and other names mentioned see Index in Gerry Max, Horizon Chasers – The Lives and Adventures of Richard Halliburton and Paul Mooney. McFarland and Company, 2007
Halliburton was acquainted with swashbuckling cinema star Douglas Fairbanks Sr., who was also a world traveler. Halliburton himself, though several times approached about film versions of his adventures (notably by Fox Film Corporation in 1933 for The Royal Road to Romance), only appeared in one movie, the Walter Futter-produced semi-documentary India Speaks (1932, a sequel to the Futter-produced Africa Speaks!; re-released in 1947, it was given the lurid title of Bride of Buddha or Bride of the East). Weak in plot, romantic interest, special effects and dramatic incident, the film could hardly compete with 1932's outdoor blockbuster adventure Tarzan, the Ape Man with Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan or 1933's smashing box office success King Kong with Robert Armstrong and Fay Wray, and its poor reception encouraged Halliburton to forgo a secondary career in cinema.
Flying Carpet expedition "Halliburton Plans World Flight", January 15, 1931, New York Times, retrieved June 21, 2026Gilliam, Ron: Richard Halliburton and Moye Stephens: Traveling Around the World in the ‘Flying Carpet’ May 2004, Aviation History (as republished June 12, 2006 on HistoryNet.com), retrieved June 21, 2026Halliburton, Richard" The Flying Carpet, (1932, Garden City Publishing, Garden City, NY)"STEARMAN C-3B NR882N," on the "Grand Central Air Terminal" history website, retrieved June 21, 2026
In 1930, Halliburton hired pioneer aviator Moye Stephens on the strength of a handshake for no pay, but unlimited expenses"Moye W. Stephens, Richard Halliburton and the Flying Carpet". Reprinted in part from Tarpa Topics (The Retired Trans World Airlines Pilot's Magazine), April 1996. Accessed online January 2, 2008—to fly him around the world in an open cockpit biplane. The modified Stearman C-3B was named the Flying Carpet after the magic carpet of fairy tales, subsequently the title of his 1932 best-seller. They embarked on "one of the most fantastic, extended air journeys ever recorded" taking 18 months to circumnavigate the globe, covering and visiting 34 countries.
The pair started on Christmas Day 1930, making stops along the way, from Los Angeles to New York City, where they crated the airplane and boarded it on the oceanliner RMS Majestic. They sailed to England, where their extended mission began. They flew to France, then Spain, the British possession of Gibraltar, and on to Africa at Fez, Morocco (where Stephens performed aerobatics for the first air meet held in that country). They crossed the Atlas Mountains and set out across the Sahara to Timbuktu, using the fuel caches of the Shell Oil Company. While in Timbuktu, they were guests of Pere Yakouba, a French Augustinian friar who had fled years before from the distractions of modern society and become a patriarch and a noted scholar of the community. They flew to their destination without mishap, then continued northward and eastward, spending several weeks in Algeria with the French Foreign Legion, and continuing via Cairo and Damascus, with a side trip to Petra.
In Persia (now Iran) they met German aviator Elly Beinhorn, who was grounded by mechanical problems. They assisted her and then worked out shared itineraries. Later, Halliburton wrote a foreword to her book Flying Girl about the adventures she had in the air. In spite of being exhausted, and their plane becoming less safe, Stephens and Halliburton continued their eastward journey. In Persia, they took Crown Princess Mahin Banu for a ride in the airplane; in neighbouring Iraq, they gave the young Crown Prince Ghazi a ride, flying him over his school yard.