Authors: Gavin Mortimer
Chasing Icarus (22 page)
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A tongue-in-cheek reference to the French philosopher whose work during the Age of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century brought him enduring fame.
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On September 17, 1908, Orville Wright and Thomas Selfridge crashed during a trial flight for the U.S. military as a result of a broken propeller blade. Wright spent seven weeks recovering in hospital, but Selfridge was killed—the powered airplane’s first fatality.
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The following day Katharine Wright sent a postcard to her father saying, “Yesterday was Wright Day all right. Johnstone holds the American record for height. Orv [Orville] took our big [or little] racer and made almost seventy miles an hour.”
Wednesday, October 26, 1910
On Wednesday morning it appeared that everyone who was anyone in America had something to say on the likely fate of Alan Hawley and Augustus Post. The
New York Times
reported that Professor R. W. Bock, director of the Geological Survey, thought that “the aeronauts will surely perish if they sailed into the far northern sections” of Canada, while in the
World
, Wilfrid Laurier, prime minister of Canada, believed the missing pair “would come out all right.” The
World
also carried an interview with Clifford Harmon, conducted from his hangar at Belmont Park, in which the former balloonist offered $1,000 “to any person who will discover them, living or dead.” Harmon, however, was gloomy as to the chances of the former. “I sailed with Post and found him an excellent balloonist. He is cool, clearheaded, and has wonderful endurance, but I believe it will be impossible for him to come out of the wilderness alive.”
In the
New York Herald
an old friend of Post’s, Mr. R. H. Johnston, was in no doubt that there would be a happy ending to the story that was gripping America. Post, he said, was capable of enduring any amount of fatigue and hardship and also had great ingenuity. Johnston regaled the newspaper with the time his friend had used a lady’s hairpin to replace the needle on his automobile’s speedometer. In Johnston’s view, Post “will come back all right, with new laurels for courage and endurance.” On the same page of the
Herald
, Captain John Berry, who had helped inflate the
America II
on the St. Louis aero grounds, made wild and inaccurate claims that the balloonists were splendidly well equipped to survive the Canadian wilderness because they had with them “rifles and ammunition, fur-lined coats and boots . . . fishing tackle, half a dozen cold chicken, a case of crackers, several gallons of water, whiskey, brandy, and a case of medicine.”
The
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
had sought the opinion of forecaster Devereux of the Weather Bureau, who, having pored over his charts from the previous week, asserted, “The balloonists were drowned in Lake Superior.”
Reporting sightings continued to be received by Lewis Spindler at his headquarters in Chapleau. A Dr. D. C. Meyers, who had been on a hunting trip in Ontario, said he’d seen a balloon descending in the distance. A Constable McCurdy, a Canadian policeman, had described a balloon falling into Georgian Bay on Thursday, October 20. A railroad clerk, Guerrard, swore he’d seen the lights of a balloon headed north near Fort William in Ontario. In Quebec, a Peter Brown was adamant he had glimpsed a balloon passing over Lake Kipawa, and rumors were that an empty balloon basket had been spotted drifting on Lake Superior.
The
New York Herald
was as baffled as the rest to the whereabouts of the missing pair, particularly as every lumber company in Ontario and Quebec had alerted its men by stage and canoe. Baffled, maybe, but the newspaper still held out a glimmer of hope: “The big yellow gas bag is down somewhere in the Canadian wilds, but as yet there is no proof and scarcely any collateral evidence that the valiant aeronauts, Mr. Alan Hawley and Mr. Augustus Post, are forever lost.”
It hadn’t been the most comfortable of nights for the four men squeezed into the two-man tent. They had piled their boots into one corner and hung their coats from the ridgepole. Post woke to find Joseph Simard playing with his new toy, the pistol, “pointing it at imaginary game and carefully counting the cartridges.” Simard blushed when he realized he’d been caught in the act and stashed the weapon in his haversack. He began to prepare Post’s trout for breakfast, and once they had eaten and washed, they continued on their journey with the wind at their backs and a weak sun rising in the east. A while later Simard and Pedneaud paddled the canoe toward a high bank at the summit of which was a rough track. “Now all you have to do is follow this trail,” Pedneaud told the two Americans, “and it will bring you to the nearest house.” Hawley proposed that the hunters accompany them, but Pedneaud said he was keen to start on his expedition. Don’t worry, he reassured Hawley, “You will have no further trouble.”
Pedneaud and Simard steadied the canoe as first Hawley and then Post eased himself onto the bank. The four men shook hands, and Post asked how much the two were owed. “It will be three days’ work for us,” said Pedneaud, “coming and going back. Would two dollars a day be too much?” Hawley and Post doubled it and threw in their blankets and most of what remained of their equipment. Post then took from his pocket his flask of cognac and proposed they drink “a health to cement a friendship timely and strong.” Pedneaud had the first swig—a long, deep mouthful, which Post thought might leave none for them—before handing the flask to Simard. There was enough for all, however, and having waved farewell, the two Americans scrambled up the bank. “With light hearts we hastened forward,” said Post, “thinking only of reaching Belmont Park before Saturday, which we knew would be the great day of the aviation meet.”
From where they had been dropped it was several miles to the village of St. Ambroise, but after half an hour the pair came across a frame house in a clearing. Post knocked on the door, and a voice said in French,
“Entrez.”
Inside was a young woman at a spinning wheel in a sparsely furnished room. A large crucifix was on one wall, and the room was bathed in sunlight. She didn’t flinch at the sight of two ragged figures before her, but when Post began to speak in English, the woman smiled and shook her head. Post dusted off his schoolboy French and asked if they were headed toward St. Ambroise. The woman nodded and suggested they try another house, just up the track, where she knew there to be a horse and cart.
They found the next house heaving with people; a man sat outside on a rocking chair with two children on his knee, while an older girl hung out the washing. Inside, the man’s wife was preparing lunch and more children darted from room to room. The two men were invited inside, and in between mouthfuls of a hot meal they told their story. Post was “sure we were thought to be visitors from the celestial regions,” and none of the children seemed able to comprehend that they had fallen from the sky. After lunch the man hitched up his cart to his horse and drove the pair along a dirt track toward the church spire of St. Ambroise, depositing them outside the telegraph office. Hawley banged on the door, which was opened by a tall man who spoke excellent English. He introduced himself as Abel Simaud, the village priest, and he wasted no time in ushering them into his untidy office. Books and papers were lying everywhere, and several plants in the window needed water. He offered them a glass of wine, but Hawley impatiently pointed at the instrument with its “reels of paper, clockwork and brass keys” and said it was imperative they send a message. They stood over the priest as he began to tap the keys of the telegraph, but several minutes later he gave a shrug of his shoulders and said, “The wire is broken, probably due to a fallen tree.”
The pair said they would have that glass of wine after all, and as they rued their misfortune, Post spotted a newspaper on a table. May I? he asked the priest. Of course. Post picked up the paper and his jaw dropped. There on the front page “was a big headline about Hawley and Post lost in the wilderness and all the powers of the Canadian government being rallied to their rescue.” Post showed it to Hawley, and the priest jumped to his feet, exclaiming, “This is you! Are you these gentlemen?” Before Post could answer, sounds came from the telegraph, followed by squeals of excitement from the priest. Communication had been reestablished. He took his seat in front of the telegraph as Hawley asked if he would send the first message to Charles H. Heitman in New York City, a good friend but also a member of the Aero Club of America: LANDED PERIBONKA RIVER. LAKE CHILAGOMA [this was Hawley’s best attempt to spell Tchitagama], NINETEENTH. ALL WELL. HAWLEY.
Hawley then instructed a telegram be sent to his brother, William, in New York, only this time he didn’t attempt to wrestle with the lake: LANDED IN WILDERNESS WEEK AGO. FIFTY MILES NORTH OF CHICOUTIMI. BOTH WELL. ALAN
My turn, said Post, stepping forward, and asking the priest to send a message . . . to whom? His estranged wife, Emma? No. He would prefer to let his sister, Mrs. Clapp-Ward, in Long Island, know he was okay: LANDED SAFELY NEAR LAKE ST. JOHN. JUST OUT OF WOODS. ALL WELL. RETURNING. AUGUSTUS.
That was it, no one else needed to be notified for the time being. But then they saw the French newspaper on the table, with news of their disappearance and the prediction that the
Düsseldorf II
had won the International Balloon Cup. Perhaps, too, there was also that quote from Sam Perkins, about his belief that Hawley and Post were “lost forever.” They asked Abel Simaud to send one final message, to Perkins: LANDED PERI-BONKA RIVER, NORTH LAKE CHILAGOMA. 19TH. ALL WELL, RETURNING. HAWLEY-POST.
They didn’t care that they’d butchered the name of the lake; they just wanted Perkins to know the trophy wasn’t his. The French newspaper had printed a map of the
Düsseldorf
’s position, and Hawley and Post knew they had landed farther north; not just farther north than the
Düsseldorf
, but farther north than every other balloon in the competition.
From St. Ambroise, Hawley and Post rode in a buckboard to Chicoutimi along the potholed dirt track. Several times they had to jump down and walk up the steep hills alongside the exhausted pony. They arrived at the town’s only hotel, the Château Saguenay, at ten o’clock in the evening after a five-hour journey and thanked the priest for all his help. Please accept this donation for the parish poor, they said, slipping several dollar bills into the priest’s hand.
No one was at the front desk when Hawley and Post entered the hotel. They rang the bell and waited. After a few seconds the manager, Mr. Joseph Guay, appeared from a back office. Used to welcoming city folk on hunting trips, he wasn’t perturbed by the sight of the disheveled pair. “Back from the bush?” he said with a smile. “Well, I hope you had the same good luck as the three gentlemen from Boston who were on my hunting ground last week.”
Post laughed. “We had good luck, but not the one you speak of.”
Guay listened to the account of the men’s trek and verified their landing place. He had hunted for years in that area and was familiar with the mountainside and the gorge in which they had come down. After supper, Guay took Hawley and Post into his office and they sent a couple more telegrams; then Guay explained that as a commissioner of the Superior Court of the District of Chicoutimi, he had the power to authenticate their point of descent. He signed a statement to that effect and handed it to them. It was nearly midnight now, and Hawley tucked the statement into his pocket and with a weary “Good night” climbed the stairs to his room. Post agreed to speak to the reporter from the Associated Press, if a cognac could first be produced. The reporter yelled for a bottle of the hotel’s finest, then sat down with his note pad and pencil. In his opinion the two Americans had arrived in Chicoutimi looking like “half wild men” with their clothes torn and muddy, and he was eager to hear all about it. Post narrated their trek without resorting to melodrama or mock heroics. He made no mention of his companion’s injured knee nor of the bitter temperatures, saying only that the terrain had been “extremely rough and our travel was necessarily slow and arduous in the extreme, as there were no trails we could follow. The bush was dense and we had a hard time fighting our way through.” Warmed by the hotel and relaxed by his drink, Post was incapable of summoning the words to adequately describe the nights they had spent in the open. It had been a strenuous trip, he told the reporter, “but we didn’t suffer any really severe handicaps.” Post drained his glass and got to his feet. But before he retired for the night, a thought struck him—what had happened to Walter Wellman. Did the reporter know? He told Post the outcome, and the balloonist “was disappointed but not surprised that the attempt had proven a failure.”
A gale was blowing on Wednesday morning at Belmont Park, and Allan Ryan scowled as he watched the flags above the hangars dancing in the wind. The prospects of a full day’s flying seemed slim. Perhaps it had been a mistake to stage America’s first international aviation competition at Belmont Park, he mused. Hadn’t the
New York Times
called the ground not so long ago the “breeziest race track now in use . . . a veritable cave of the winds”?
Look on the bright side, Ryan murmured: the sun was shining, his wife’s speeding fine had been small, and his appendix, which had been grumbling for the past week, was dormant. Then Ryan grimaced as he remembered that later in the morning he had to tour the course with Monsieur Pierre Gasnier, a representative of the Aero Club of France, so that the Frenchman could decide whether he would advise his compatriots to compete in Saturday’s big race. It was going to be another long day, Ryan told himself, treasuring the early-morning solitude of the clubhouse.
One of the first aviators to arrive at Belmont Park was Claude Grahame-White, who, along with his manager, Sydney McDonald, rode from New York City in a fancy carriage belonging to the Hotel Astor. A few reporters were already hanging around the entrance hoping for a few words from the competitors, but having read the morning papers, the Englishman was in no mood for conversation. The papers had lampooned his timidity and contrasted it with the nerve of Johnstone and Hoxsey, soaring to the heavens, and the dash of Moisant’s and de Lesseps’s cross-country flights. Grahame-White had done nothing more than go “for a daily promenade around the track.” Perhaps, sneered the
New York Sun
, it would be best if he “substituted an aerial taximeter for his barograph,” such was his penchant for charging people for a short flight. The paper then insulted Grahame-White by calling him an “air chauffeur,” on the very page in which it recounted Count de Lesseps’s reaction to the same description by Cortlandt Bishop.
Why had they turned against me? Grahame-White asked his manager. A fortnight earlier he’d been the darling of America, yet now he was being cruelly mocked. Some sections of the crowd had even started to sing a rhyme as he flew remorselessly round the track: