This map begins in Lakehurst, New Jersey, after dusk on August 7th 1929. The Graf Zeppelin rose gracefully into the air to begin its attempt to become the first passenger-carrying aircraft to circumnavigate the globe.
It was the world’s largest flying machine at the time—a 776ft, gas-filled silver lozenge. In the glassy gondola fixed to its belly were 60 men and one woman, Lady [Grace] Hay Drummond-Hay, who had been hired by William Randolph Hearst, of “Citizen Kane” fame, to cover the trip for his newspapers. As she gushed: “We passed from a symphony of silver to golden glory as the lights of New York city scattered themselves beneath us like grains of golden stardust, tracing patterns strange and fantastic, set with the jewelled brilliancy of ruby, emerald and topaz electric signs...”
Hearst had underwritten half the costs of the endeavour in return for exclusive media rights. Every rise and bump of the journey were to be conveyed to the paper-reading world by Lady Hay and her former lover, Karl von Wiegand, who had broken off the affair six months earlier, out of respect for his wife.
His continued admiration, however, was evident. As Time reported, quoting him: “Lady Drummond-Hay, in knickers and leather flying coat, clambered squirrel-like along the girders of the ship’s hull. She carried a Boston Bull pup, who was cold and, she decided, lonesome...Her cloth cat mascot remained in her cabin.”
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