Background
Clancy was born in New Hampshire in 1890, the son of Alice Clancy from Massachusetts, and William Clancy, a 55-year-old Irishman.
Clancy was born in New Hampshire in 1890, the son of Alice Clancy from Massachusetts, and William Clancy, a 55-year-old Irishman.
He is credited with being the first person to circumnavigate the world on a motorcycle. He became an advertising copy writer His bike was a 934 cc 7-horsepower (52 kW) 1912 Henderson Four motorcycle.
The editor of The Irish Cyclist, Richard J. Mecredy (the inventor of bicycle polo) gave them road maps and helped them plot their route in Ireland.
After covering the northern part of the country, they both got the ferry to Glasgow. Storey returned home from Paris, while Clancy continued his circumnavigation of the globe until August 1913.
During the trip he rode 18,000 miles in Europe, Africa, Asia and North America. Clancy helped finance his trip by submitting details of his epic journey to Bicycling World and Motorcycle Review, a New York-based weekly magazine.
Clancy produced or directed a number of Will Rogers movies starting with The Headless Horseman in 1922.
In his later life, he moved to Virginia and made documentaries for the United States Forest Service. In 2013, Geoff Hill and Gary Walker recreated Clancy"s ride, joined by Gregory West. Frazier and Richard Livermore for the North American transcontinental portion. Their travels were serialized by Hill in The Irish Times, and blogged on an Australian sponsor"s website, and the American portion by Frazier in Motorcycle United States of America. Hill"s travelogue In Clancy"s Boots was published in 2013.