Birdmen
Page 24
Peter Young, Hamilton’s manager, must have had that very thought because he rushed to the hangars to entreat Moisant to fly, telling him he was America’s only chance. Moisant, eating a piece of pie, protested that his airplane had been damaged in an earlier crash and was not yet fully repaired. The controlling mechanism would not allow him to maneuver properly and might even cause a crash. Young told Moisant that he should fly anyway and that he must do so immediately or the deadline to begin would have passed. Moisant, “between mouthfuls of pie,” hurried into his aviation clothes and ordered his damaged Blériot out of the hangar.
With literally seconds to spare before the race was closed, Moisant took off. He completed only six laps and with his shoulders and arms quivering from the exertion of controlling the damaged machine, was forced to land so the mechanics could try to make the airplane handle more effectively. Once again just beating the clock, Moisant took off and completed the final fourteen laps. While Grahame-White’s time was never in danger—he won by almost an hour—Moisant astounded spectators and his fellow flyers alike by finishing second.
When Moisant taxied to a halt, Allan Ryan, Thomas F. Ryan’s son and chairman of the Aero Corporation, all but dragged Moisant into the clubhouse, where he was toasted with champagne and cheered by Aero Club members. In the newspapers the next day, Moisant’s second-place finish was treated almost as a piece of battlefield heroism.
Grahame-White was gracious in victory but his equanimity would not last.
Thomas F. Ryan’s Statue of Liberty race began the following afternoon, Sunday, October 30. The event had been conceived in controversy and would be run in controversy, but the true storm would not break until after the flying was done.
To get to the Statue of Liberty from Belmont Park meant flying across Brooklyn, where a direct route would take a flyer immediately over the rooftops of one of the most densely populated areas in the entire United States. There would be no place to land in an emergency; no way to recover if a downdraft pulled the airplane to earth. Engine trouble meant almost certain death for the aviator and likely the same result for some hapless Brooklynites on the ground. The Wrights denounced the flight but even if they had not, no Wright airplane would be flown on a Sunday. Very few remaining flyers were sufficiently brave or sufficiently foolhardy to enter. Grahame-White was one, of course. With the run he had been on, he likely felt a flight to the moon would not present a hazard. Another was Count de Lesseps. Charles Hamilton entered but his 110-horsepower Hamiltonian once again would not start. (“I’m going out and getting myself a Blériot,” he said afterward.) The final contestant was John Moisant.
Seventy-five thousand spectators cheered when de Lesseps took to the air just after 3 P.M. and Grahame-White followed three minutes later. Moisant wheeled his Blériot out, climbed aboard, and signaled Albert Fileux to start the motor. When the engine turned over, instead of taxiing, the aircraft spun on the ground and crashed into another airplane. Moisant’s rudder had jammed and his Blériot was left with a wing damaged beyond repair.
Disconsolate, Moisant simply sat in his doomed monoplane. His brother Alfred hurried over to find out whether his brother was hurt. When he learned that John was fine, he told him to get out of the wreck. They would buy another craft. They jumped into Alfred’s automobile, raced through the staging area, and eventually found a new 50-horsepower Blériot belonging to another French aviator, Alfred Leblanc. Leblanc had crashed a 100-horsepower Blériot during the Gordon Bennett race and was at his hotel in Manhattan recuperating. Alfred called and offered him $10,000 for his airplane. Leblanc accepted.
As the airplane was being prepared, two tiny dots appeared in the west. The first was Grahame-White, who had taken a northern route that would avoid some of the more densely populated areas, and behind him was de Lesseps, who swung to the south where some emergency landing spots were located. Grahame-White completed the 36-mile race in 35:21, got out of the cockpit with great ceremony, and then bowed and waved to the crowd as the band played “God Save the King.” De Lesseps landed five minutes later to the strains of “La Marseillaise.” Moisant had yet to take off.
The crowd, rather than cheer the winner, began to chant Moisant’s name as an airplane he had never so much as set foot in was wheeled out to the starting area. Leaving a glowering Grahame-White to stand and watch, Moisant’s newly purchased Blériot left the ground at 4:06.
As many as one million people were along the route: on roads, on rooftops, in boats, or lined along the edge of the harbor. One of the reporters for the Times, watching the race at Battery Park, commented on the strange lack of noise from the huge crowd “as each minute speck in the sky ‘grew’ into a clearly visible man in a flying machine.” It was one of the most trenchant descriptions of the public’s reaction to early air travel ever put to paper. “The sight, at first uncanny, held them speechless. Cold chills ran down the back. In spite of the fact that they all knew about aeroplanes and that they really do fly, seeing one do it was something like meeting a ghost.”14
Grahame-White’s machine was more powerful, but Moisant simply refused to be denied the prize. He eschewed all caution and headed directly for Bedloe’s Island, barely clearing treetops and buildings in the most populated section of the route. As he approached the statue, he ascended to almost three thousand feet, made his turn for home, and then combined a downward glide, a light tailwind, and the same direct route back to the finish. Moisant beat Grahame-White’s time by forty-two seconds. Later, when his sister Matilde was asked about John’s having chosen a flight path without any chance of an emergency landing, she replied, “My brother doesn’t fly to land. He flies to win.”15
Seconds after Moisant’s winning time was announced, Grahame-White was at the judge’s table. Not only had they cheated by allowing Moisant his late start, but they had done so for the crassest jingoistic motives. The only fair solution, according to the Englishman, was to allow him to repeat his run, where presumably he too would fly directly at the statue and, with an engine of twice the power, would thereby have no difficulty recording a winning time. The judges deliberated only moments before turning Grahame-White down. The Englishman appealed to the full aviation committee, asking for a rerun the following day. The committee met “long into the night” before upholding the original ruling and denying Grahame-White a second chance.
When asked about the Englishman’s refrain that he had been cheated by the colonials, Moisant said simply, “I will race him anywhere at any time under any circumstances on equal terms.”16 Moisant meant, of course, that if he had a 100-horsepower machine, Grahame-White would have no chance. The Aero Club jumped on board with an offer to back Moisant to the tune of $100,000.
The Liberty flight made John Moisant not just the story of the meet, but the American story. “Moisant, his face red from the fanning of the cold air, shouted too, demanding cheers not for himself, but for America. The band struck into ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ and the crowd cheered. It switched to ‘Yankee Doodle’ and yells greeted it. Then it swung into ‘Dixie’ and its reception was hysterical. There were tears in the cheers and there were sobs in the shouts of every man, woman, and child who had seen Moisant’s return, for something was welling up that made them want to cry for sheer happiness.”17 Quite a turnabout for a man who had been declared a fugitive by this very same country not six months before.
Wilbur Wright joined in the general sentiment. He was so overjoyed to see Grahame-White defeated that he forgot the winner had flown an infringing aircraft. Wilbur reportedly tore off his hat and “gave a yell like a Comanche Indian.” He then jumped in the air and told reporters, “That’s my opinion, boys.”18 On October 31, the meet’s final day, Wilbur got another treat when Ralph Johnstone upped his altitude record to an ethereal 9,714 feet.
Wilbur’s effervescence soon diminished, however. On November 3, Orville reported to his partners that in addition to $20,000 they had received for their share of the gate, they had won $15,000 in prize m
oney. The partners voted Wilbur and Orville $10,000 bonuses and declared a dividend of $80,000. But despite the windfall, Wilbur and Orville decided they been shortchanged, that the Aero Corporation owed them an additional $15,000.
“I am going to have the money or have a lawsuit and expose the swindle publicly,” Wilbur wrote to Orville.19 And file a lawsuit he did. What really seemed to bother Wilbur was that prize money, specifically to Grahame-White, had been paid out of gross receipts, and August Belmont, a stockholder, was reimbursed for expenses in preparing the facility before the Wright Company had received its cut.
Allan Ryan, an original stockholder in the Wright Company, characterized the action as “disgraceful” and added, “While the Aero Corporation is trying to advance the science and art of aviation, the Wrights are imbued only with the spirit of commercialism and have little or no interest in real science.”20 Andrew Freedman vehemently opposed the lawsuit and was furious with Wilbur as well. “Ryan and Freedman are hot,” was how Wilbur phrased it, “but I intend to have the money collected.”21
But the courts apparently agreed with Ryan and Freedman. The action was perfunctorily thrown out only weeks later.
The night after the Liberty race, Grahame-White refused to attend the Aero Club banquet. Chip Drexel submitted a letter of resignation to the club and then hosted a dinner of his own attended by, among others, Leblanc, Latham, Clifford Harmon, and Charles Hamilton. Moisant was undeterred and received the club’s full backing. Grahame-White refused further comment but canceled his plans to lease a home in New York for the winter.
On December 1, with $100,000 in winnings and a good deal more from endorsements and private flights, Grahame-White sailed for England. Just before he boarded ship, he was served with papers; the Wrights were asking for $50,000 in damages for bringing infringing machines into the country. The suit was problematic because Grahame-White had flown in sanctioned meets, but that he had supplemented his winnings with private activities was not in doubt. Of course, so had a number of other foreign aviators, none of whom the Wrights had chosen to bring similar action against.
The Wrights eventually won the suit but received only $1,700, a pittance considering the fortune Grahame-White had garnered in a mere two months in the United States. Most commentators have considered the verdict a victory for the Wrights, observing that the mere fact of a judgment showed that the courts would protect their patent rights.22 But the trivial size of the award, the prospect of earning thousands and thousands while losing mere hundreds, would have discouraged very few.
* * *
*1 A federation had been established in 1824, only to collapse fifteen years later.
*2 The process was developed in parallel by American Charles Martin Hall and Paul Héroult of France, both obscure and twenty-two at the time, working independently and unknown to each other. Each obtained a patent for what turned out to be the same invention. Like Newton and Leibniz developing calculus, there was some dispute as to how to apportion credit. The technique, now called the Hall–Héroult process, was eventually credited to both men.
*3 Further examination revealed that L’Ecrevisse was fully capable of sustaining flight, which is to say Moisant successfully designed an airplane though he had no training or experience.
*4 That, of course, changed when the Wrights introduced the Flyer B.
*5 There had been rumblings that Orville himself would man the controls but that never seemed in serious consideration.
*6 Count de Lesseps was the second man to fly across the English Channel and the son of the man who conceived of the Suez Canal.
*7 A barograph is a barometer with an attached paper-wrapped drum on which changes in barometric pressure over time are recorded, from which altitude above sea level may then be extrapolated.
*8 That at least one of the four flyers in a Curtiss machine had not been chosen by the Aero Club to defend Curtiss’s title had caused some outcry, but with Curtiss himself declining to enter, sentiment ran against him.
Faster, Steeper, Higher
While John Moisant’s victory in the Statue of Liberty race did not change the course of aviation, it did accelerate prevailing trends, which put enormous pressure on designers as well as flyers. Exhibition flying became increasingly audacious and performance limits were tested on every machine in the air. For Glenn Curtiss and the Wrights, whose attention was deflected from the shop to either the courtroom or the boardroom, this presented a significant impediment to remaining competitive.
The Wrights, for example, lacked either the time or the inclination to consider an alternative to wing warping, although European designers were beginning to employ a more efficient and reliable aileron alignment. Curtiss had moved his from the front to the rear strut for superior handling. Within two years, no other airplane would use the Wright technology. Even the Wrights’ most sympathetic biographer admitted that after Belmont “it was clear that they had lost their technological edge … the inventors of the airplane resigned themselves to a position back in the middle of the pack.”1
Curtiss watched superiority in motor design pass to the Continent. The rotary Gnôme, which had supplanted Curtiss’s V-design in Blériots, Farmans, and Antoinettes, was being increasingly utilized by American manufacturers.*1 And, while the biplane favored by both Curtiss and the Wrights remained the sturdier construction, monoplanes, which predominated in Europe, were flying faster and longer. Curtiss had shown up with a monoplane at Belmont for the Gordon Bennett, but the untested machine was never put in the air.
But still, Wilbur and Curtiss continued to battle each other, the puncher stalking the boxer, Wilbur attempting to land a crushing body blow to a weakened opponent and Curtiss, his resources depleted, dodging, feinting, and trying to survive. Curtiss relied almost solely on revenues garnered by the exhibition company; he could not use the Hammondsport factory he had built with his own hands without permission of the receiver until the Herring–Curtiss bankruptcy was resolved.
Wilbur and Curtiss spoke at Belmont, where Curtiss proposed they settle the dispute out of court and asked Wilbur for terms. Wilbur responded in a note of November 5, 1910. Although Wilbur characterized his proposed settlement as “satisfactory in all probability to both factions,” it would have reduced Curtiss to a de facto employee of the Wright Company. Wilbur asked $1,000 on every machine Curtiss had ever or would ever manufacture and $100 for each day a Curtiss machine flew in exhibitions.
Curtiss either did not receive or pretended not to receive the note, because on November 14, he wrote to Wilbur again asking for his terms. Wilbur reiterated his offer in a letter in which he referred to “our recent conference.” Curtiss replied a week later. “It had been my intention to make you a counter offer, but in thinking the matter over, it has occurred to me that to accept a license—even at no cost to us—might not improve our condition. In fact,” he added disingenuously, “it had been my idea that a principal advantage in a deal of this kind would be the assistance it afforded you toward excluding the foreign aviators and those who do use your device.”
Wilbur replied with obvious irritation on November 30. “The negotiation was initiated at your request and now seems similarly closed by you … it is well for both parties to revert to the established mode of settlement,” meaning the courts. In a letter to Orville, Wilbur demonstrated the conviction that he was playing from strength. “The Curtiss people have evidently given up the license idea.… I think they fear that their business is just about played out and that if they could escape the profitable past they could afford to pay license on the small future, but in this also they were disappointed.”2
But the Wrights had problems of their own. Unlike Curtiss, whose precarious survival emanated from a desiccated capital base, Wilbur and Orville’s difficulties were created by expansion.
Soon after the Belmont meet had closed, Orville sailed for Europe to once again assess the state of the German and French affiliates. He was not cheered by what he found. The infringeme
nt suits filed with French courts showed no promise of early resolution and the disastrously managed French company licensed to sell Wright aircraft had gone under. As Orville wrote to Wilbur on November 24, the affiliate was “in such bad repute to the government that it could not do business.” The bankrupt company had then seen its assets shifted to another manufacturer, Astra, which had also acquired the license to produce Wright aircraft in effect royalty-free. Orville learned from his friend Count de Lambert that Astra had conspired to secure precisely that arrangement. “The entire business in France seems to have been a graft,” he wrote to Wilbur.
In Germany, the infringement suit was faring no better than in France, nor was the affiliate. While Orville described the manufacturing facilities and workmanship as “first class,” he discovered “a great many machines have been built on which we are receiving no royalties.” Orville found the manager of the German operation “entirely incompetent to handle the business,” then observed, “He is a bright fellow and a hustler, but lacks judgment.” In the end, Orville concluded, “I have about made up my mind to let the European business go. I don’t propose to be bothered with it all my life and I see no prospect of its ever amounting to anything unless we send a representative here to stay and watch our interests.”3
The Wrights were also running into domestic problems, instigated by none other than Charles Hamilton. Wilbur had demanded a $15,000 fee for entering their airplanes in a proposed meet in San Francisco at which star aviators from the United States and Europe would be solicited to compete for prize money that might exceed $100,000. Wilbur had specified that the money would be paid “as a testimonial to the work he and his brother had done in furthering the future of aviation.” Israel Ludlow, representing the meet, had all but gained agreement from an excellent lineup, including Latham, Grahame-White, and Moisant, when Hamilton protested. “If we agree to this plan,” he observed, “we virtually are acknowledging the validity of the Wright patents and we are prejudicing ourselves in any future suit that may arise. I demand the same guarantee they receive.”4 The other aviators agreed with Hamilton’s assessment and for a while it appeared as though the meet might be canceled, but Wilbur stood firm. He eventually got his money and Hamilton did not participate.