I recently read a book made up of 300 pages about the great achievements of male explorers, with a two-page afterword briefly mentioning the minor feats that female explorers have accomplished over the years. I was pretty shocked, because female explorers have contributed an incredible amount to the history of exploration – and as such, I read as much as I could about influential female travellers, so that I could bring you their incredible stories. Here’s the coolest female explorers from the past couple centuries.
LOUISE ARNER BOYD
Louise Arner Boyd was born in 1887 in San Rafael, California. When she was a young girl, her mother, father, and her brothers died, jostling her to decide that rather than staying inside and settling down with a husband, she embarked on an expedition to Greenland.
She documented the explorations extensively, and used photography to showcase these areas that had rarely been seen before. She became the first woman to fly over the North Pole privately, topping this all off with sailing through the Arctic, crossing the Pole and circling it, before dying at an old age in 1972.
HELEN THAYER
Helen Thayer has to be one of the coolest explorers ever – with her extensive exploration history beginning in 1944 (aged nine) where she scaled her first 8,000 foot peak with her parents. She spent three decades as an award-winning discus thrower, before moving onto becoming the first woman to solo the North Pole, both walking and skiing. She took a black husky called Charlie on this big expedition, who officially joined her family when she arrived home from this expedition from hell. Even when things were tough, she was never unhappy – not even in the snow storm that nearly ruined her, blinding her for weeks and destroying her body and food and water rations. She went back with her husband Bill in 1992 and they became the first married couple to make the trek.
The couple walked 600 miles across the Yukon in 1994, and 1400 miles of the Sahara desert just two years later. On her 60th birthday, she went on a solo expedition to the Antarctic. She is still thriving today, although the expeditions are less frequent than they were before.
FANNY BULLOCK WORKMAN
Possibly one of the most famous Victorian era female explorers, Fanny Workman was born in 1859, and went on to do some incredible things. She held a ‘votes for women’ flag on the bright surface of a remote Asian glacier, having climbed the 20,000 feet to the top. She then broke the record for climbing higher than any other woman at 22,815 feet, and she held the record for an incredible 28 years.
She identified a new route across uncharted snowfields to the ice mass of the Kalberg Glacier, and wrote books about these trips and her expeditions from the Atlas to the Sahara, which she cycled.
CATHERINE DESTIUELLE
Catherine is now 59 years old, and is still out here doing epic things. In 1992 she became the first woman to complete a solo ascent of the Eiger’s north face – all 20,470 feet – in a record-breaking 17 hours. Despite facing horrendous injuries and ailments, she never stopped going. She carried on climbing after breaking her back and leg and fracturing her pelvis, and is not the sort of person to back down when things get tough. She is quoted as once saying, ‘in mountain climbing, there’s the real adventure.’
FLORENCE BAKER
Florence was born in 1841, and when she was a young girl underwent the severe trauma of her whole family being massacred. A man called Samuel Baker rescued her when she was later put up at a slave auction, and the two fell in love. Sam bought her with a whole pound of ostrich feathers, and once they became official, the two lovers travelled to Africa to pinpoint the source of the Nile. On this trip, they ran into the John Speke (no joke) – after Sam had been rejected from David Livingston’s famous expedition.
The pair often found themselves in incredibly dangerous scenarios, but Florence was quick-witted and was able to talk them out of them. For example, when they found themselves in a tricky situation with King Kamrasi, she stood up ‘with the countenance of Medusa’ and made a grand speech in flawless Arabic – and Kamrasi was so impressed with her character that he let her go. Together with Samuel, she then found the shore of Luta N’Zige, which they called Albert Lake, after the royal lovers Victoria and Albert.
MIRABAI
Mirabai was a 16th century poet and wanderer who had been married against her will to a prince of Chittor, near Udaipur. She was famed for her talents in singing, writing, and spiritual studies, but her family still felt as though she brought dishonour to the family by not behaving in the way that a lady should. They tried to poison and drown her but she survived both, escaping to travel widely across northern India to Vrindavan, and eventually to Dwarka in Gujarat, where she disappeared under mysterious circumstances at age 50. Nowadays, she is a celebrated Bhakti saint, and is well-known in Indian culture for the incomparable beauty of the poems and bhajans she composed and sang in devotion to her beloved god, Krishna.
ARLENE BURNS
‘I wanted to go somewhere where I didn’t know anything or anybody in order to learn who I was. I wanted to put myself in the unknown to see if I would sink or swim… And what I found was how little I knew, and how curious I was to learn more.’
Arlene was born in 1960, and has done some incredible things during her time on earth. She has scaled remote Russian volcanoes, navigated forbidden Tibetan rivers, galloped across Mongolia astride a half-wild horse, and even trained Meryl Streep for a role in the River Wild. Her stories are amazing and I highly suggest that you research her further, as I couldn’t possibly begin to go into depth about even a third of the cool things she’s experienced. Oh, and she was the first woman to work as a white water guide in New Zealand.
IDA PFEIFFER
Ida Pfeiffer became an explorer merely out of spite, marrying a lone widower in order to escape the confines of her home. She became the breadwinner before travelling through Asia, the holy land, Egypt, and Italy, staying with tribes in Borneo and Brazil – after being told numerous times that as a female she simply would not be able to do it.
She became an icon for women of the era as steamships and railways began to offer her free travel, and the Austrian government granted her 150 florins to continue her travels. In some ways, she was the first ever travel writer to truly finesse the system.
Ida survived headhunters and cannibals, along with endless ailments, but died after contracting tropical fever – which never would have happened had the Queen of Madagascar not been threatened by her and subsequently thrown her in prison, but alas.
YVA MOMATIUK
Growing up in war-torn Warsaw, Yva would escape each summer to be foothills of the Tatra Mountains. When she was old enough, she moved to NYC and became an architect, before tiring of that and becoming a ranch-hand in Wyoming (goals). She met John Eastcott at the Grand Tetons and said later, ‘We had felt a growing conviction that, had we continued our city-bound lives, the proverbial four walls of apartments, schools and offices would surely kill in us what we cherish the most: the sense of discovery.’
They spent five years together in the Canadian Arctic on assignment for National Geographic, and documented their time living with the Inuits. Yva is still alive and doing cool things, and has earned her title as one of the most interesting female explorers.
DIAN FOSSEY
Who doesn’t know Dian Fossey? She was born in 1932, and when her parents divorced, her dad disappeared from her life forever. Like Yva, she also worked as a ranch-hand, but this time in Montana. She studied pre-veterinary studies against her stepdad‘s wishes, but switched to occupational therapy when she didn’t get the grades. She had always wanted to go to Africa, and when the lust became too strong, she decided to up and leave.
Dian met the one and only Dr Louis Leaky, who furthered her interest in gorillas. His attention had been drawn to her articles and photographs of gorillas from her Africa trip, and suggested that she went back to study with him. He told her to have her appendix removed so she could join, to prove her loyalty – which she did. When she found out it was just a test she merely shrugged it off and got her plane tickets.
She mirrored the gorillas’ behaviour so well that a very shy gorilla called Peanuts overcame its anxiety and touched her hand – possibly the first encounter ever between a wild gorilla and a human. Because of her work saving gorillas in areas that depended on their deaths, orders were issued to shoot this problematic Westerner on site. She was hauled off by soldiers to a detention centre for ‘her own safety,’ but used stealth, her smarts, and a bribe to escape.
She was a fierce threat to poachers, black marketers, and exploiter-despoilers, and received many threats along with this order. She died by an unknown assailant splitting her skull, and the mystery has never been solved.
My favourite movie about Dian has to be Gorillas in the Mist – go on, watch it. Tell me it isn’t wonderful.
ISABELLA BIRD BISHOP
Isabella is probably one of the most well-known female explorers, whose journey began as a child when she accompanied her reverend father on rough country lanes as he made his parish rounds. Her health problems (namely regarding her feet and spine) should have kept her sedentary – but at the age 22 she single-handedly stopped an assassination attempt against a Cabinet member. Things only spiralled from there.
The family doctor suggested a long trip to the sea when medication couldn’t stop her depression and listlessness, and from that, she managed to worm her way into a seven-month voyage. This started her career as an author as she told tales of her trip in the novel, the Englishwoman in America.
She explored the Sandwich Islands on horseback (after her ship nearly capsized on the way there) after the majority of her family members died. She escaped an unwieldy admirer by going off to Japan, but on the journey back was told her much-loved sister Hennie was ill. When she died, Isabella decided to marry her admirer, who also died. She ceased travel – at least until she left for Asia where she travelled China upon a Sedan chair.
In North America she rode, climbed, and camped with ‘Mountain Jim’ Nugent. He was a legendary figure of the raw-mannered and violent West, and her time sharing his ‘breezy mountain recklessness’ helped form her most popular book, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains.
She was the first woman to address the Royal Geographical Society at one of the London meetings, and met with endless members of royalty. Nicknamed the ‘Stormy Petrel,’ it is said that Isabella ‘would have probably have accounted her journey a failure’ had she not faced any difficulties or issues along the way.
Her last words were, ‘Oh, what a shouting there will be!’
DERVLA MURPHY
Not to brag, but I have been emailing Dervla for a couple weeks and interviewing her about her adventures, and she is such an effortlessly cool woman. When she undertook her greatest cycling journey, she said, ‘If someone enjoys cycling and wishes to go to India, the obvious thing is to cycle there.’ She’s a very straight-forward woman with a solid head on her shoulders, and I can only admire her more for it.
‘I presented myself to the Afghan embassy… Only to be told that under no circumstances would they grant a visa to a woman who intended cycling alone through Afghanistan. Apparently, six years ago, a lone Swedish woman was carved up into small pieces, and since [then] solitary female travellers have been banned… It looks as though I’m beaten… However, I have a few schemes to be tried tomorrow.’
Dervla spent her womanhood trapped, taking care of her dying parents, and when she was suddenly freed from her duty, she left. She carried only the essentials with her, such as a .25 automatic pistol which she used to fight off wolves and rapists. She’s known for her genial stoicism, ironic intelligence, and temperamental inclination to always wonder ‘what’s all the fuss about?’ And there’s a movie out about her, titled Who is Dervla Murphy?
FREYA STARK
Dame Freya Madeline Stark worked in Italy as a nurse during WW1, and despite having zero education, had a deep interest in Arabian culture (which she put down to 1001 Arabian Nights). After the war, she travelled to London to study Oriental History, before leaving to travel extensively across Baghdad, Iran, and the Arabian deserts – visiting things that no Westerner had ever visited before.
When the second world war hit, she was already stationed in the Middle East, and since she was there amidst it all decided to work in Cairo for the British Ministry of Information. She continued to travel across Europe and Asia after the war and wrote several world-altering travel books such as Baghdad Sketches, The Valleys of the Assassins and several volumes of memoirs. In 1972, she was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
AMELIA EARHART
Everyone knows Amelia Earhart, but I can’t help but mention her here, too. Her story began when she was working as a nurses’ aid in Toronto in World War I, where she met a group of young militarily pilots. She fell in love with the glamour of the job, and decided then that that was what she wanted to do with her life.
On her expeditions across the planet, she never let inconveniences get in the way of a good old adventure. Even when her wings were iced and there was flames erupting from her engine and the gas reserves were leaking – which all occurred on her first transatlantic flight – she didn’t stop.
Amelia was the first woman to solo the continental US roundtrip, the first person to solo the Pacific, the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, and she broke the women’s nonstop transcontinental speed limit not once, but twice. Her plane disappeared near Howland Island on her most daring voyage, and she was never seen again.
There’s a super cool movie about Amelia called The Final Flight, which offers an insight to her final journey.
SHANNON LUCID
Shannon had a really tough start to life, spending six months of her life in an internment camp before she’d even reached the age of one. She had always dreamed of going to space and was furious that the first seven Apollo astronauts were all men, so decided to go out and get her PhD and a Pilot’s License – and yet after all of this, she still couldn’t get any kind of flying job. She once said in an interview, ‘they weren’t hiring females, period.’
After years upon years of hard work, she was finally accepted into the space program. She decided to learn Russian in order to be able to converse with her fellow astronauts, and spent everyday living ‘every scientist’s dream.’ She has spent more hours in space than any other American to date.
President Clinton referred to her as a ‘determined visionary’ and presented her with the Congressional Space Medal of Honour. Nowadays, she’s still out here, breaking records and doing incredible things.
HARRIET CHALMERS ADAMS
Harriet even dressed like an explorer should, with the hard hat and the khaki-coloured jackets and the stoic expressions. At the age of two, she went on her first expedition, accompanying her father to the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Six years later, she explored the Pacific coast on horseback, all the way from California to Yosemite to the Canadian Rockies. And then, when she was just 14 years old, she again accompanied her father on a year-long ramble from Oregon to Mexico. She went on to say that ‘the adventure and romance of exploration are full compensation to some of us for discomfort, hardship, and stranger.’
As she grew older and began to undertake her own adventures, she experienced incredible hardship. She survived a Bolivian earthquake, sheltered amongst a pack of llamas during a blizzard, survived a close encounter with a vampire bats, boa constrictors, and alligators, and was the first woman to travel from Amazon river to Cayenne. Even when she broke her back, she didn’t stop travelling. Harriet traded rum for a baby grison in Paraguay, and she travelled with her until she ate poisoned toucan stew.
Harriet wrote articles on her adventures for National Geographic, and became fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, and French. The NYT wrote that she ‘reached 20 frontiers previously unknown to white women.’
SYLVIA A. EARLE
I haven’t mentioned any deep-sea explorers yet, but hold your horses because Sylvia is one of the coolest ocean adventurers of all time. After years of studying, she became a marine biologist, and on a project sponsored by the US Navy, lived underwater for two weeks. She was incredibly dedicated to protecting the ocean and its wildlife, she was named by Time Magazine as the first Hero for the Planet in 1998.
Sylvia set the woman’s record for a World Solo Dive Depth, and became the first female chief scientist of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Even today, she’s still out and about, doing her bit for the ocean that she loves so much.
GERTRUDE BELL
Once described as the ‘most powerful woman in the British Empire,’ Gertrude is considered to be even more influential than the Welsh explorer T. E. Lawrence. Not only did Gertrude help to form the modern state of Iraq, but she was also an archaeologist, spy, and diplomat all across the Middle East. She travelled extensively through Greater Syria, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and Arabia, and helped to support the Hashemite dynasties in what is today Jordan.
T. Lawrence was said to have been ‘intimidated’ by meeting a woman who was ‘his intellectual equal’ and who ‘spoke better Arabic than him.’ Due to her extensive knowledge and contacts, Gertrude served as a mediator between the Arab government in Iraq and the British officials, and explored, mapped, and became highly influential to British imperial policy-making.
Rightfully so, there are a bunch of movies about Gertrude, such as Queen of the Desert and Letters from Baghdad. Both movies are epic, and things that you should definitely watch.
NELLIE BLY
There’s actually a bunch of movies that have been released that were inspired by Nellie’s story, such as 10 Days in a Madhouse and Escaping the Madhouse. In case you can’t tell from these names, one of her most popular writings include when she pretended to be ill to sneak into an asylum so that she could document the horrors that went on inside, so that she could ultimately expose them. Not only that, but she was the first woman to travel the world in 72 days, inspired by Jules Verne’s book (let’s just ignore Aloha Wanderwell). Legend.
AIMÉE CROCKER
Aimée was born in 1864 and was known for her collection of husbands, lovers, adopted children, buddhas, pearls tattoos, and snakes. She travelled extensively and survived headhunters in Borneo, a poisoning in Hong Kong, a murder attempt by knife-throwing servants in Shanghai, and lived for a whole 10 years in ‘the Orient.’ She published several memoirs about her journeys, and her talent for writing is no surprise when you consider her friendship with the one, the only, Oscar Wilde. My favourite fact about Aimée, however, has to be that King Kalakaua of Hawaii was so enchanted with her that he gave her a whole mother-freaking island and the title Princess Palal-Kalani, which translates to ‘bliss of heaven’. Such a legend.
ISABEL EBERHARDT
Isabel was high-key kinda hot, and despite the fact that she is slightly too old for me (she was born in 1877), I admire her an incredible amount. She was born to a Prussian aristocrat and an ex-priest turned anarchist, and at the ripe old age of 20 decided to convert to Islam and dress as a man. She adopted the name Si Mahmoud Saadi, and is said to have ‘drank more than a Légionnaire, smoked more kif than a hashish addict, and made love for the act of making love.’ She was super cool.
She travelled across North Africa alone and survived an assassination attempt by the French administration after witnessing the execution of an Arab prisoner, and is quoted as once saying, ‘now more than ever do I realise that I will never be content with a sedentary life, that I will always be haunted with thoughts of a sun-drenched elsewhere.’ There’s even a movie about her called Isabel Eberhardt, and is the best movie you will see this year.
JEANNE BARET
I’m going to go ahead and assume that you’ve probably heard of Jeanne Baret, the female explorer who dressed as a man so that the French Navy would allow her onboard a ship. Along with being the first woman to circumnavigate the globe, she is also recognised as being the first person to discover a strange new flowering vine adorned with bright pink and purple flower – which she called Bougainvillea after her commander. After sailing across the Strait of Magellan at the tip of South America, the Étoile reached Tahiti in 1767. She was discovered by her crew-mates and subjected to horrendous abuse – and yet despite that, lived until the impressive age of 67.
All of these women have shaped the world in one way or another – even if their roles do get severely glossed over in the history books. I think that they’re all super cool, and the fact that they completely went against the ideas and conventions of their time is truly inspirational.
It might be a little obvious which ones are my favourite – but tell me, which ones are yours? Do you know of any other influential female explorers that, low and behold, I have missed out, in this nearly 4,000 word post? Let me know in the comments below!
BUT BEFORE YOU DO – WHY NOT SHARE THE LOVE AND PIN THIS POST?
Female explorers NEVER get the credit or exposure that they truly desever so this post is GREAT. I love that you have coverd women globally and from all eras!
Love love love this post! I’m always excited to learn more about female explorers from around the world and throughout history.
Um, YES! Found my new source of heroes. Love these bios of women that more people should know about – thank you for putting it together!
This is such an amazing idea for a post! Thank you so much for sharing these amazing women’s stories. What an inspiration to us all!
This is a great post and so much fun to read! It’s truly amazing to see what women have had to work against to be able to travel freely.
omg this article is so good!!! How strong and inspirational are these beautiful women. Thank you so much for putting their stories together
Wow, after reading all of this I’m truly asking myself what am I doing with my life? This is so impressive and I appreciate the effort chronicle women’s achievements. Florence Baker and Arlene Burns are both women of my heart and will have to write that Arlene Burns quote down in my travel journal.
Imagine. What an amazing group of women. I’m pleased to see you included Freya Stark. She was referenced many times in Lois Pryce’s book, Revolutionary Ride; In search of the Real Iran and I couldn’t help but admire her exploits then… and now, all the other revolutionaries included in your compilation. Thank you.
This blog definitely serves as an inspiration and appeals to my sense of adventure. Thanks for highlighting these female explorers. They deserve the credit.
I love this post so much. So many great female explorers and there are definitely lots I hadn’t heard about but now really want to know more. I feel like being an explorer or adventurer now is one thing but when these ladies did it they didn’t have a fraction of the technology or help to fall back on that we would today. Very impressive
I love that you wrote this post! It’s crazy that the book you read didn’t include all these awesome women. I haven’t heard about many of them. Fanny Workman’s story about holding a “votes for women” flag on a glacier is really inspiring. They are all such cool stories though!
This is just so awesome! I only recently learned about the kick-ass female explorers here in Canada, so I love reading more about awesome historical ladies from around the world. All of these women are incredibly inspiring. I am sad that this is the first I have heard of so many of them!
So many inspiring women! I hadn’t heard of a lot of these women, thanks for sharing their inspiring stories and achievements!
This post is amazing! The stories of some of these women’s origin’s kinda sound like super heroes!! lol which I guess they are in their fields. Loved reading. Thanks for sharing.
These are fantastic. I can see so many young, wonderstruck teens coming across this article in high school and getting inspiration for a school project. 🙂 Great article.
I love this list! Sylvia Earle is one of my favorite humans, and I am so excited to dive deeper into some of these other remarkable women 🙂
This is such a great guide! If you had asked me to name female explorers the best I would have been able to come up with would have been Amelia Earhart and maybe Nellie Bly at a push. I’m so sad that we’re not taught about these women and their stories aren’t told! What an inspirational group of explorers! Thanks for sharing their stories!
This is THE most insprational article I have read in a long, long, time. I love love LOVE to read about the fearless and adventurous spirit of these women. Helen Thayer is my new hero. A solo expedition to the Antartic at age 60?!?! I need to get my little pet sitting butt in motion!! Thanks SO much for this inspiration – it is truly appreciated!
Thank you for putting this together! I haven’t heard of most of these inspiring women!
This was such an interesting read for me, as I never hear too much about historic female explorers. I actually didn’t know the names of many of these women so thank you for sharing!