They later resolved to continue traveling together. “When you appear on a ship of this type and have a single cabin, no one’s going to start questioning, ‘Where did you get the money for this?'”īy the time the journey to Bouvet ended in a circumnavigation of the island, the adventurers were wooed by the young man’s prowess and charm. Baekeland’s single cabin “made us believe his story,” he said during an interview on the podcast Counting Countries. Fellow traveler Harry Mitsidis had a similar impression onboard the ship. “Absolutely we had the impression… was never going to work again in his life,” says Ortelius passenger Bob Bonifas. The elder Baekeland’s invention, Bakelite – a chemical compound made of carbolic acid and formaldehyde – unwittingly paved the way for the birth of Twentieth-century consumerism and, in many ways, the modern world.Įverything about the young traveler betrayed an extreme wealth.
The Baekeland name was assumedly the source of that excess, as a cursory Google search revealed an association with great wealth stretching back generations.Īccording to people onboard the ship, he later said that his great-grandfather was Leo Hendrik Baekeland, a Belgian immigrant and chemist famous for inventing the precursor to modern plastic in 1907. The other explorers onboard the ship – seasoned members of the Travelers’ Century Club, the Most Traveled People, and other exclusive societies – perked up in the company of the curious stranger.īaekeland didn’t immediately reveal it, but later claimed to have grown up wealthy, sailing around the world and attending prestigious schools. Shockingly, though, his knowledge of world geography was immense – he’d claimed to have already visited most of the 193 countries recognized by the United Nations.
An inveterate travel expert at 22 years old, with a scrawny build and neatly combed hair, he looked more like a high-school student than an explorer. Among them was William Baekeland, a young and unassuming outsider, who cut an intriguing figure. The 29-day journey was long and arduous: Considered by some measurements the remotest landmass on the planet, the Norwegian territory lies in the middle of the south Atlantic Ocean, a forlorn speck between Antarctica and the bottom tip of South Africa.Īs they sailed through the miles of icy waters, the ship’s 60-plus passengers traded the monotony of sea for mingling. In March 2015, an elite group of adventurers boarded the Ortelius, an ice-strengthened cruise ship bound for Bouvet Island.
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