Chasing Icarus (29 page)
Authors: Gavin Mortimer
The wide-eyed incredulity was just as great on board the battleships
Connecticut
and
North Dakota
, both of which were in the Navy Yard preparing to sail for Europe. Sailors clattered into one another as they ran across the deck looking up in frenzied excitement. Lieutenant Commander Jones, the flag secretary of the fleet, admitted to being “simply fascinated” as he and his fellow officers trailed the two airplanes with their field glasses, telescopes, and even their range finders.
Inside the Statue of Liberty the reporter from the
New York Herald
observed the progress of the machine that had materialized from the south, having soared along the coastline over Coney Island, Benson-hurst, and Bath Beach. As it got closer, the journalist made out a 10 on the underside of the left wing—Grahame-White’s number—then the airplane vanished from sight, circling around the statue before heading back the way it had come, “like an eagle to its nest.”
De Lesseps followed a couple of minutes later, and everyone within the statue—from the boy with the smoked glass to the girls with the opera glasses—tracked the airplane as it returned “over the housetops of Columbia Heights in Brooklyn, passing a towering church spire here and there, and from a speck in the sky faded into nothingness in the distance.”
The moment that the two machines had circled the balloon, the wireless operator on Bedloe’s Island telegraphed the news to the
New York
Herald
’s offices in Manhattan, which relayed the message by telephone to the newspaper’s aviation correspondent sitting in the judges’ box at Belmont Park, who opened the door and passed it on to Peter Prunty, the final link in the chain. He picked up the megaphone and announced that de Lesseps and Grahame-White had both successfully completed the first leg of the race. A mighty cheer went up, said the
Boston Globe
reporter, but still “nobody was quite prepared for it when a man looked up over the edge of the grandstand and shouted, ‘There he is! Somebody’s coming back!’ ” It was Grahame-White, buzzing homeward at a terrific rate. He touched down in a total time of thirty-five minutes and twenty-one seconds, and de Lesseps followed in a time six minutes slower. Belmont Park became a maelstrom of hats, newspapers, programs, and champagne corks as the crowd celebrated the historic achievement. For the first time in aviation a race had been held over a city; what’s more, without mishap, and once again Grahame-White had demonstrated the superiority of the airplane over all other forms of aeronautics in covering the distance in more than a mile a minute. Grahame-White and de Lesseps shook hands, the latter’s blue overalls soaked black with oil.
They were collected by a tournament automobile and driven toward the grandstand as Peter Prunty bawled into the megaphone, “He might be an Englishman, but you’ve got to hand it to him!” The band of the Seventh Regiment began to play “God Save the King,” and Grahame-White was called upon to make a speech. He looked almost bashful as he stood on the steps of the judges’ box “in his brown aviation suit, grasping in his hand the famous to-be-worn-backward cap that has gone through all his flights in this country.” Grahame-White declined to make a speech, but motioned for de Lesseps to join him, and as the two stood side by side, the band struck up the “Marseillaise,” and soon the feet of the great crowd banged to the beat of the anthem. The acclaim of the spectators was still ringing in Grahame-White’s ears a couple of minutes later, at six minutes past four, when he heard another noise, the sound of a Blériot motor. He watched the plane take off and turn west, toward the Statue of Liberty. Its number wasn’t clear—it looked as if it had been painted over another— but it appeared to be 21, John Moisant’s.
Not long after Moisant had crashed into the parked biplane of Clifford Harmon, his brother Alfred appeared. He was a little taller, a little older, and a little darker than John, and around his neck he liked to wear “a gold nugget as big as an egg and a long string of gold nuggets as big as filberts for a watch chain.” First he checked his brother was all right, then he told him he would get him another plane. Alfred ran down hangar row to No. 8, Le Blanc’s shed. Inside were the twisted remnants of his machine, and another Blériot monoplane, a fifty-horsepower model that was about to be disassembled, crated, and shipped back to France. “I am now the own-er of that machine,” Alfred advised Le Blanc’s mechanics in perfect French. “Put it together as fast as you can and there’ll be extra dollars in it for you.”
Then he demanded to see Le Blanc. The mechanics shook their heads and told him their boss was back at the Knickerbocker Hotel, sulking. The two Moisants drove to the club house, and from there they put through a call to the Frenchman at his hotel. “I want to buy your craft,” Alfred barked down the receiver. Le Blanc might have taken a nasty bang on his head twenty-four hours earlier, but he’d lost none of his faculties. “It will cost you ten thousand dollars,” he said of a machine whose true worth was about $2,000. Moisant could feel a “but” coming. “But you know,” added the Frenchman, “it was admitted without duty [into America] merely for exhibition purposes. If you want to keep it in this country, you’ll have to pay the duty. That’s five thousand dollars more.”
You’ve got yourself a deal, Moisant told him. Now it was his turn to pull the strings. “Be so good as to come to Belmont Park and assist in fixing up the machine,” he said to Le Blanc, “and I’ll have a check waiting you—and a bonus, too, if we win.”
Le Blanc arrived at three thirty P.M., his head still swathed in band-ages. First he inspected, then pocketed, his check for $15,000, then he gave Moisant a crash course in flying his Blériot. Moisant didn’t require much tuition; after all, he’d flown across the Channel in a similar model, and all he had to do was “adjust the levers to his own size and height or learn the peculiarities which are a part of every machine.”
He was still going through his final preparations as Grahame-White and de Lesseps returned. Making a note of the time he had to beat, Moisant set his compass at his feet and shouted out to the mechanics, “Roll her out, boys!” The
New York Herald
’s reporter watched as Moisant signaled he was ready. He turned and shouted good-bye to his brother and his two sisters, both of whom ran alongside the airplane for a few yards. Then they stopped, linked arms, and watched as their brother’s Blériot “rolled only twenty yards and then almost stood on its tail as it swept straight into the air.”
The
New York Herald
reporter was still on the grass when Moisant was spotted “high in the air and coming like a shooting star” out of the red sun. The newsman glanced at his watch—four thirty-five P.M. The American aviator had been out for twenty-nine minutes. Near the reporter a group of men, more used to cheering on race horses, began to work their hands like whips, growling, “Come on, you, Moisant, oh, come on now, boy!” A woman was crying in excitement and her “lace handkerchief was being ripped into strips by her nervous fingers.” Outside the Moisant hangar, his mechanics were pumping their fists, screaming, “Go on, John!” and the aviators’ two sisters “were running around in circles, looking over the shoulders of those who held stop watches.” One of the timers yelled, “He’s got two minutes to beat Grahame-White!” and the sisters implored their brother, “Hurry up.”
A lavender mist was beginning to roll across the course as the Blériot got closer and closer. Two men tipped a barrel of gasoline onto the grass and set it aflame. In the judges’ box the reporter from the
World
noticed that the “hands of the men holding stopwatches began to shake. They were reading the signs from the little gold encased dials of the possibility of an American victory.”
Grahame-White was with Eleonora Sears outside his hangar, his face impassive under his back-to-front cap, as he drew on a cigarette. He said nothing as he watched Moisant descend in a spectacular swoop. The American crossed the line, and then, for what seemed like an eternity, the scoreboard remained a mute witness to all the drama. Then the numbers flashed up, beacons in the gloom: ELAPSED TIME: 34 MINUTES, 38 SECONDS. A barely coherent Peter Prunty roared out the result: “John Moisant wins by forty-three seconds,” and suddenly the grandstand “seemed filled with mad people, who tossed their arms about each other and shouted the name of Moisant again and again.”
“It isn’t true,” stammered Eleonora Sears, “it can’t be true! The figures are not official.” In the Wright hangar the brothers were showing a couple of reporters the wreck of the Baby Grand when they heard the announcement. The correspondent from the
New York Telegram
got the fright of his life as Wilbur “gave a yell like a Comanche Indian, jumping at least three feet from the ground and waving his hands in the air. Then he recovered his composure somewhat and, smiling at the reporters, said, ‘That’s my opinion, boys!’ ”
A couple of hundred yards away Alfred Moisant was equally euphoric, dancing a jig with a mechanic, while his two sisters hugged anyone and everyone. Then the three of them started to run across the grass toward their brother, who had been hoisted out of his machine, stiff with cold, red and raw, but beaming from ear to ear. As the triumphant aviator was brought back in an automobile, “the crowd made a rush toward him that nearly swept the official timing house from its moorings.”
For many minutes Moisant stood in front of the multitude “with his brown eyes dancing and his white teeth flashing in happiness . . . [and] he bowed and bowed and kindly showed his own great plea sure in his triumph.” Pinkerton security men battled with spectators as a great chant of “Moisant, Moisant” resounded around Belmont Park. Only a concerted counterattack by the guards cleared a path from the judges’ box to the club house, so that Moisant could be carried inside on the shoulders of two race officials, an American flag draped over his shoulders and the band playing yet another rendition of “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” After a hot drink to thaw the frozen marrow of his bones, Moisant was reunited with his family and eventually driven back to his hangar.
The
New York Herald
reporter was getting the story of the flight when a knock came on the hangar door and Grahame-White appeared. He entered with a smile and a handshake. “Really very well done, old chap,” he said without a trace of malice. “Accept congratulations.” The two men shook hands, but before Moisant could say anything, Grahame-White looked down at his adversary and added, “But I’m going out after the statue prize again tomorrow, and I’ll surely beat you.” The English-man turned on his heel and left, leaving Moisant a “rankled soul.” “How can he beat me when I have already won the prize?” he spluttered to the
Herald
reporter. The newsman chased after Grahame-White to find out. “Are you going to attempt the flight again tomorrow?” the reporter demanded. The Englishman laughed. “You bet! I’ll not lay down under a beating like that. If I did, I’d be a Dutchman.” Then he reminded the reporter of the rules, or at least the new rules, as promulgated in the bulletin issued by the committee three days earlier: the race was open to any flier for the duration of the tournament, and because of last Sunday’s inclement weather, the tournament had been extended for a day, which meant he had until Monday evening. Oh, and another thing, added Grahame-White, nothing in the rules allowed only one attempt. A flier could try for the prize as many times as he liked, and that’s what he intended to do.
Monday, October 31, 1910
The staff of the plaza hotel at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Central Park South had been busy all day, decorating the gold-trimmed ballroom so that the evening’s guests would feel at home. It hadn’t been easy—with one or two tumbles from chairs and the odd wobbling ladder—but it was done, and the magnificence of the setting now took one’s breath away. Hanging from the ceiling among the chandeliers was a replica of the
America II
, with Alan Hawley and Augustus Post visible in the basket, as well as a model of Walter Wellman’s airship,
America
, almost as inert as the real thing had been. Around the two cumbersome shapes swarmed a flock of model monoplanes and biplanes, suspended by invisible strands, diving and climbing and swooping.
The flags of America, Britain, France, Switzerland, and Germany festooned the walls and the balcony; the International Aviation Cup and the International Balloon Cup were on prominent display, along with two or three other aeronautic cups; and on the menu cards—written in French, and including such delights as
foiegras, filet de boeuf,
and
mousse aux
marrons glacés
—were caricatures of every aviator who had taken part in the Belmont Park tournament.
The guests began to arrive a few minutes before seven thirty P.M., each in evening wear with the heels of their polished leather shoes clicking as they walked across the Plaza’s marble-floored lobby toward the ballroom. They were welcomed by a member of the Aero Club of America and offered a glass of Moët & Chandon champagne—Imperial Crown Brut.
Walter Wellman came from the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, looking none the worse after his recent adventure on the high seas. He shook hands with the Belmont Park committee and recognized one or two faces among those already present. Walther de Mumm was in animated conversation with Alfred Le Blanc and Jacques Faure, perhaps discussing the quality of the champagne, while Samuel Perkins and Arch Hoxsey were admiring the decorations. A trio of German balloonists—Hugo Von Abercron, August Blanckertz, and Leopold Vogt—were comparing notes on their experiences. Wellman knew James Radley and Alec Ogilvie only from their photographs in the newspapers, and the same for René Simon and Roland Garros, the French aviators. Wellman spotted Alan Hawley and Augustus Post, and went over to offer his congratulations; the pair thanked him and inquired after his health. At eight P.M. Cortlandt Bishop, president of the Aero Club of America, asked the guests to take their seats for dinner.
As guests of honor, the winning balloonists were steered toward the top table. Post sat on the flank but Hawley was in the center, between Bishop and General Nelson Miles.
Also present were August Belmont, Colonel Theodore Schaeck—the Swiss balloonist—and John Moisant. Between Schaeck and Augustus Post, however, there was a gap, a hole, what appeared to be a vacant seat. Post could see the name on the place setting: CLAUDE GRAHAME-WHITE. He looked around the ballroom and saw other empty chairs among the three hundred guests. How many? One, two, three . . . at least a dozen. He began to search for faces. Where for instance was his good friend Clifford Harmon? And Armstrong Drexel? And what about Count de Lesseps and Hubert Latham? No Charles Hamilton, no Glenn Curtiss, no Charles Willard. What was going on?
August Belmont rose and thanked everyone for their attendance. He gave a small cough, said the reporter from the
New York Times
, and drew the guests’ attention to the number of empty seats. Unfortunately, Belmont told his audience, “there had been so many accidents to the airplanes at the meet that many of the aviators who had to get away before tomorrow had been compelled to stay late at the field, but would come as soon as they possibly could.”
By eight P.M. the party at Louis Sherry’s restaurant on Fifth Avenue and Forty-fourth Street was in full swing. It was an intimate affair, thirteen in total, but the guests felt a kinship with one another that produced a conversation rich in laughter. Armstrong Drexel was the host, sitting between his brother, Anthony, and Claude Grahame-White. Farther down the table the de Lesseps brothers, Jacques and Bertrand, had a joke translated into French by Hubert Latham, while Charles Hamilton was wreathed in cigarette smoke. Sydney McDonald waved his empty crystal glass and called for more wine, and Charles Willard tried to suppress a giggle as Clifford Harmon retold the story of how John Moisant had come to grief outside his hangar.
As they ate and drank and smoked against a backdrop of tapestries and oil paintings, the men talked over the day’s events. Grahame-White had his leg pulled for his crash, though he cared not a jot. He’d still won the Grand Speed Contest, pocketing another $3,000, and he’d come out on top in the Hourly Distance event, his aggregate total of 106 laps over the tournament being six more than . . . whose? He winked and raised his glass in the direction of a laughing Hubert Latham. But the highlight of the day, they all agreed, had been Ralph Johnstone’s new record in the Grand Altitude event. What was it again? 9,714 feet. Incredible. He’d smashed the world’s record by over five hundred feet; if only he’d managed another 286 feet, he would have won the Aero Club’s special prize of $5,000 for the first aviator to break the ten-thousand-feet barrier.
But perhaps that had been Johnstone’s greatest achievement, the triumph of his self-preservation over his pride. Who knew, if he’d pushed for those extra 286 feet, might not he have gone the way of Icarus? And don’t forget, they told one another, Johnstone had been in a “hysterical” state when he’d landed after his record-breaking ordeal.
As the men refilled their glasses and selected Cuban cigars from the box brought out by the waiter, they kept their eye on the time. At nine thirty P.M. Armstrong Drexel called for the bill. Time to go, gentlemen, he said, the Plaza Hotel awaits.
In between mouthfuls of
filet de boeuf
, John Moisant described to General Miles and Walter Wellman his thirty-six-mile flight round the Statue of Liberty. They had read his account in Monday’s edition of the
World
, in which he’d told of how, time and again, he was caught in air currents as he flew over Manhattan, and how, yes, it was true, as he’d rounded the Statue of Liberty, it had occurred to him how appropriate it was that he should be doing so as an American in a French machine, seeing as how the statue had been a gift from France. Of the row with Grahame-White, there was no mention.
Minutes after the
New York Herald
reporter had run back to Moisant’s hangar on Sunday evening to confirm that Grahame-White intended to make a second attempt to round the statue, the American began drafting a frantic letter to the Belmont Park committee. He started by saying that the race “called for the fastest flight from Belmont Park to and around the Statue of Liberty and return to aviation field, during the present international meet, dates for which are from October 22 to 30, and officially the meet closed tonight.” He then wrote that he had received no official confirmation that the meet would be open on Monday, and in his opinion “if the prize is put up again tomorrow on the ground that the meet has been continued, it might as well be put up for six months more or a year or continued indefinitely.”
Moisant took a fresh sheet of paper and began a second letter, this one an official protest against Clifford Harmon and Claude Grahame-White. He accused them of negligence in having left the Farman biplane on the grass, pointing out that “under all the rules of international meets sanctioned by the International Aeronautic Federation, a damaged or crippled machine or one which is being repaired, must be removed to its hangar.” This rule had been broken, he concluded, and he trusted the committee would concur.
Moisant hand-delivered the letters to the clubhouse, and the committee sat long into Sunday night discussing the matter. Outside, meanwhile, a handful of reporters waited to hear their decision, among them the
New York Times
correspondent. While he and his colleagues agreed with Moisant that it would be “manifestly unfair for a competitor to receive a second chance,” nonetheless they—unlike Moisant—were fully aware that “it had been announced on Saturday that attempts to fly around the Statue might be made on Sunday or Monday.”
Eventually J. C. McCoy emerged from the clubhouse and, in the light of the winking lanterns hanging on either side of the door, addressed the newsmen: “The committee announces that the meeting officially ended at the close of flying hours on Sunday, October 30, 1910, as provided in the entry blanks of the program and that the events of this day [Monday, October 31, 1910] are special competitions, distinct from the events of the meeting.”
Grahame-White had first heard of the committee’s decision early on Monday morning when he arrived at Belmont Park to prepare for his second attempt. Count de Lesseps was also planning another crack at the “Goddess,” and James Radley and Emile Aubrun were considering their options. As was his habit, Grahame-White checked the bulletin board and saw the communiqué issued just a few hours earlier. By the time he had finished reading it, his suave sangfroid had melted in a furnace of rage, and Sydney McDonald was doing his best to calm him. A reporter from the
New York Evening Sun
appeared and bore the brunt of the Englishman’s fury. “It’s a bally injustice, sir,” he cried, “that the committee declared the flight at an end after Moisant, an American, had won it last night.” It’s funny, isn’t it, he sneered, that the “committee in excusing its actions in closing the Statue competition said that today’s events are not regular on the program. Yet I notice that the grand speed and grand altitude contests will be decided.” What will you do, asked the reporter, lodge an appeal? Grahame-White shook his head. Beating Le Blanc was one thing, trying to defeat the Belmont Park committee was as futile as trying to cross the Atlantic in an airship. “What’s the use of making protests?” he replied. “They ignore them . . . It’s been a succession of injustices and downright unfair treatment for me at Belmont Park, and, you know, I’m dreadful sick of it. Really, they’re almost a bunch of bally bandits.”
Later on Monday morning Grahame-White had issued a challenge to Moisant to race him around the Statue of Liberty, but the American laughed at the proposal. He knew that second time around Grahame-White would fly the direct route, over Manhattan, and in his hundred-horse power Blériot he would win with ease. Moisant retaliated by telling reporters he would race Grahame-White “anywhere, at any time, under any circumstance, on equal terms,” but in the meantime the Englishman should quit being such “a poor loser.”
Shortly before ten P.M. toastmaster Cortlandt Bishop rose to his feet and invited August Belmont to say a few words. The host of the tournament praised the aviators—those present—and reminded them that they were much more than mere entertainers, “for their flights were being watched with much interest by officers of the army and navy, and one day they might be asked to risk their lives for their country, which would be a greater honor than the one they had already attained.” After Belmont finished, Bishop introduced to the company Messrs. Hawley and Post, “the men who only a few days ago, after leaving St. Louis, were wandering in the bleak Canadian wilds while two nations were anxiously trying every means for clues of their fate.” Bishop presented each man with the gold medal of the Aero Club of America and then, “to ringing applause” he handed over the International Balloon Cup.
Glasses were raised as Bishop presented a gold loving cup to Alfred Le Blanc (whose bandages had been removed save for a square Band-Aid plaster above his right eye) in recognition of his splendid performance in Saturday’s international race, then John Moisant was asked to take a bow. “He got the most enthusiastic reception of the whole evening,” said the correspondent from the
New York Times
, who listened rapt as Moisant described his trip across the English Channel in August. “He refused, however, to talk about his victory around the Statue of Liberty.”
Bishop then called upon Nelson Miles “to say something about the uses that might be made of aviation in war.” The general got to his feet and began to talk of the airplane’s importance, not just in times of conflict but also perhaps “as a harbinger of peace.” As he spoke, a slight commotion came from the back of the ballroom, and in walked Armstrong Drexel, Grahame-White, Hamilton, de Lesseps . . . the whole merry gang of malcontents.
Not long after the three hundred guests had sat down to dinner in the Plaza’s splendid ballroom, word began to spread that the real reason for the empty seats was a rival dinner being hosted by Armstrong Drexel at Sherry’s restaurant, “which was something of a protest meeting.” The aviators present knew all about Drexel’s revolt, having been invited to join it themselves, and over the starter of
pommecaprice
, they enlightened their fellow guests as to the reasons behind the uprising.
Earlier in the afternoon Drexel had stormed into the club house at Belmont Park and told Cortlandt Bishop that he no longer wished to be a member of the Aero Club of America. His letter of resignation followed, and he then wired the editors of several leading newspapers in America, Britain, and France to explain his decision. While Bishop wrung his hands in fury at the contents of the letter, the editors rubbed their hands in glee as they read the telegrams. No need to worry how to fill the next day’s front page.
Dear Sir
I wish through your columns to protest against the action of the Belmont Park Aviation Committee in refusing to allow Grahame-White, the Englishman, to fly a second time for the Statue of Liberty Prize. Their doing so is contrary to all the traditions of sport and honor, and as an American myself, familiar with the conditions of sport in Europe, I cannot allow an act of such startling unfairness to pass without protest.
Furthermore, by their decision they have barred such fliers as Radley, the Englishman, and Aubrun, the Frenchman, from competing. As a general result it will be freely said in Europe that the Liberty prize was juggled into an American’s hands. This will only be the plain truth, according to the conditions of the contest, as understood by the aviators.