Madman Ben Carlin: How to circumnavigate the globe in a rusty amphibious jeep

Imagine an iron box. Rusty, rattling, smelling of diesel fuel, machine oil, and stale sweat. You are sitting inside, bent over in three deaths, and behind a thin layer of metal, literally a couple of centimeters from your ear, a leaden stormy ocean roars. You are constantly nauseous. You are slowly being poisoned by carbon monoxide from the running engine. And, frankly, you have no idea if you will live to see the morning.

This is not torture in a secret prison. This is a honeymoon.

Ben Carlin didn't just survive in this box. He circled the globe in it. By land. And by water. In a jeep.

It all started in India, at the very end of World War II. Carlin, a stubborn Australian engineer with a square jaw and a burr under his saddle, was wandering around an army dump. There he saw a Ford GPA. American soldiers called these things "sea jeeps" or "ducklings," but in fact, they quietly hated them. The car was too heavy and clumsy for land, and on the water, it behaved like an iron. But Ben looked at this green angular vessel and saw destiny.

"You know," he said to his friends then, "you can travel the whole world on this thing." Of course, they laughed at him. And very much in vain.

Anatomy of Madness

Returning to civilian life, Carlin bought a decommissioned Ford GPA for a ridiculous amount of money at an auction in the USA. He called it "Half-Safe". An ironic name that would later prove frighteningly accurate. Ben took up a grinder and welding machine. He had to build up the sides, make a closed cabin with porthole windows, and attach a huge additional fuel tank that trailed behind the jeep on a tow, like a metal sausage.

During the same period, Ben married an American woman named Eleanor. Normal people take young wives to Paris or Hawaii. Ben took Eleanor to the garage, pointed to the rusty amphibian, and declared that they were going on a round-the-world trip. And most surprisingly, she agreed.

In 1948, they tried to cross the Atlantic. Three times. The first two attempts ended in a shameful return on a tow from the coast guard. The jeep was flooded with water, exhaust gases went into the cabin, and the radio failed. On the third time, in 1950, they finally broke away from the shores of Canada and went into the open ocean, heading for the Azores.

Thirty-two days in a tin can

The crossing of the Atlantic was not just difficult. It was pure, concentrated hell. The space inside "Half-Safe" was smaller than in a modern two-person tent. They had to sleep in turns, huddled on a hard shelf above the roaring engine. The temperature in the cabin reached fifty degrees. The air was thick with fuel fumes.

They couldn't stand up straight. For thirty-two days, they sat, lay, or half-hung in their seats while the ocean threw their three-ton jeep from wave to wave. Eleanor suffered from severe seasickness. Ben hardly slept, constantly repairing the engine on the go. One night, a storm tore off their towed fuel tank - Ben had to climb into the black icy water with a rope in his teeth to save their only chance to reach land.

But they made it. Landed in the Azores, then in Madeira, and then on the coast of Africa. The European part of the route seemed like an easy walk. They drove through all of Europe on wheels, gathering crowds of onlookers. A jeep that had just crossed the ocean was now driving on asphalt past Parisian cafes. It was blowing people's minds.

The price of obsession

The route ran through the Middle East, Pakistan, and India. And that's where not the car started to break. People started to break.

Eleanor was tired. Tired of the constant dirt, the smell of gasoline, the lack of a normal shower, and, most importantly, her husband's fanatical stubbornness. Ben became obsessed. For him, nothing existed but the schedule, the miles, and the condition of the bearings. In India, unable to withstand the psychological stress and endless quarrels, Eleanor packed her things and flew home to America. Their marriage ended in the same place where the idea of this insane trip was once born.

Ben was left alone with his iron monster. Perhaps, at that moment, any other person would have given up on everything, sold the jeep, and opened a bar somewhere on the coast. But Carlin was made of different stuff. He found a new volunteer partner, then another. He crossed Burma, fought his way through the jungle, and swam across the South China Sea.

Completing the circle

The scariest stage was the Pacific Ocean. The crossing from Japan to the Aleutian Islands. Icy water, typhoons, and absolute solitude. Ben had to stay awake for days, maintaining course. When "Half-Safe" finally touched the ground of Alaska with its wheels, the car was a piece of rust, held together by duct tape, wire, and the Australian's swear words.

In May 1958, ten years after the start, Ben Carlin returned to Montreal - the point of his departure. The circumnavigation was completed. 17,780 kilometers by water. 62,744 kilometers by land. Ten years of life, a broken marriage, and damaged health.

What did he get in return? Fleeting fame. A couple of written books that didn't sell very well. Ben Carlin died in 1981 from a heart attack when he was only 68 years old. He could never find his place in a normal, stable world where people don't sleep hugging a gasoline canister.

And his "Half-Safe" is still alive. This ridiculous, ugly, beautiful monument to human stubbornness stands in a glass pavilion of a school in Western Australia, where Carlin once studied. Children pass by it every day on their way to classes. And, probably, they don't even suspect that this rusty piece of iron has seen more of the world than most of us will see in our entire lives.