A telegram had also recently arrived from Sam Perkins, copilot of the Düsseldorf II, in response to a request for information. “We have no idea of the location of the America II,” he said. “The only balloon we saw was a yellow one over Northern Michigan Tuesday afternoon, going south. If the America went north, the case is hopeless, as we are as far north as the railroad goes, and for the last 500 miles we saw no civilization.”
The most substantial clue was the message dropped from the basket of America II over Thompsonville on Tuesday afternoon. The authorities in Michigan had already made inquiries in the state to discover if anyone had seen the balloon after it passed Thompsonville, and someone had, over the town of St. Ignace on the Upper Peninsula. It was headed northeast, on a course, as was explained to Spindler, “which would carry it east of Lake Superior, past Sault Ste. Marie and into the wilderness north of the Canadian Pacific Railroad.” It was agreed that Spindler would depart in the evening for Chapleau, a remote Ontarian settlement 350 miles northwest of Toronto, from where the search would be coordinated.
The commencement of the search sent a frisson down the spines of American newspapers. LOST AERONAUTS, LIVING OR DEAD? was the headline in the Chicago Daily Tribune on Monday morning, which then answered the question in the first paragraph, saying they were “more probably dead from exposure or by accident.” That is, if the bears and wolves hadn’t polished them off first. But the Tribune ended with a flight of fancy: “It is within the range of possibilities that the America II has succeeded in traveling an even greater distance than was covered by the Düsseldorf II and that its crew, after enduring as great, or even greater hardships, has reached in safety some trapper’s cabin too remote to permit of communication with the outside world within a week or more.”
Hawley and Post awoke on Monday cold, hungry, and depressed. The contentment of the previous evening, like the broth, was gone. They had little left to eat now, just a box of biscuits, a few of their meat lozenges, and a tin of soup. The contents of their ballast bags they used as haver-sacks had been reduced to simple necessities, yet they seemed as heavy as ever. Four hard days had already started to emaciate Hawley’s once flabby physique, and his gray tweed suit, darkened with grime, flapped about his belly. Post’s brown velvet corduroy outfit had been shredded during the fight with the undergrowth, and his feet were blistered from his hobnailed boots, which had started to come apart. His goatee had grown wild across his face and itched with a week’s worth of dirt. They set off along the shore at seven A.M., the water to their right and the sky above blue and black like a deep bruise. The ground was flat for the first mile, and Hawley’s knee bore up well as they walked along the beach. Post fell back a little so his companion could lead for the first time. Suddenly Hawley stopped dead in his tracks and “gave an exclamation of surprise.” Post quickened his step and looked to where his companion was pointing. A few yards in front was a shovel leaning against a chopped log. Hawley looked about him and spotted something through the trees on their left. “There’s a tent!” he yelled.
A narrow path just wide enough for one man led through the trees to a clearing where the small white tent had been pitched. An ax was lying in the grass, near a homemade paddle, and a couple of pails containing pieces of muskrat and rabbit. Post could also see a short stick with a fishhook and several traps, but there was no sign of recent life, no footprints in the dew or lingering whiff of breakfast. They unfastened the tent and ducked inside. Good God, they couldn’t believe their eyes. In the center of the tent was a sheet-iron stove with a brown teapot underneath, and hanging from the ridgepole was a pair of round snowshoes. Two large pails were to one side. Hawley peered inside and told Post one contained lard and the other flour. What’s that under the blanket? asked Post. Hawley lifted the blanket. It was a sack of flour. There was a box of homespun clothing, a half-burned wax candle, a can of black powder, a bag of shot. Hawley uncorked a bottle of something syrupy and black and sniffed. Ugh! Post laughed and said it was probably all-purpose medicine for “what ails you.”
Post clicked his tongue in satisfaction when he saw a full box of matches, then gave an admiring whistle as he held up a knife with a curved blade and curiously made handle, which, he told Hawley, “was to be used as a wedge in getting bark off a birch tree to make a canoe.” In the far corner of the tent was a pot of cooked beans, a can of brown sugar, and a bar of soap.
Post went outside to collect a few pieces of wood for the stove and returned with a relieved look. It had started to snow. They put up the stovepipe, built a fire, and “as the flames crackled, we unrolled our blankets on the dry balsam floor and relaxed into a delightful state of mind.” “Post,” said Hawley, “if anyone asks me what heaven is like, I shall say it’s a trapper’s tent after four days of terrible travel.”
Post rested for an hour and then, leaving his friend asleep, crawled out of the five-foot-high tent and set about exploring their surrounds. With the snow still falling, he thought it prudent to husband some firewood for their stove. Once he’d chopped some logs and stashed them in the tent, Post began to walk along the trail that led from the shore toward the higher ground. “I had not gone far when I saw a cache on a big birch tree off to one side of the trail,” he wrote in his logbook. The cache was a big roll of birch bark, and inside were various articles of clothing, a tin pail, and a bag of salt. Attached to the cache was a note in French: No admission without business. Gone down to hunt and trap in lake Suniore. Hawley took a pencil from his jacket and added, Oct. 24, 1910. Alan R. Hawley and Augustus Post in the Balloon “America II” landed 15 miles northeast from here, Oct. 19, 1910. Left Mo. Oct. 17, 1910.
Post pressed on up the trail in the hope that when he reached the top of the ridge he would see further signs of habitation, or possibly find a canoe. But he saw nothing and after several minutes of fruitless halloing he returned the way he had come “as the snow was getting thick.” Hawley was awake and Post described his brief exploration. Hawley told Post he had been doing some thinking. He intended to stay at the campsite “to wait for the trapper, if it took all winter.”
Post didn’t argue, now wasn’t the time, but he knew better than his companion that unless the trapper returned before the spring, this tent would be their tomb. The snow had arrived and would remain for the next four or five months; not even the most skilled Canadian woodsman could survive such a climate, particularly if he was wearing a city suit.
Post concealed his anxiety from Hawley and instead cooked up a banquet of biscuits and hot soup. Then Post repaired his boot with a length of cord he had found in the tent and “with a smart fire burning in the stove, we rested, reviewing our hardships, speculating as to the return of the trapper, and canvassing our ability to cook the flour into cakes and biscuits.”
Later in the day Post exchanged a few strong words with his partner when “Hawley thought I was stingy with the firewood, but it took strength to split it, and I had been taught prudence.” Hawley also pestered for more food, confident that they were now out of danger, but Post advised caution. They replenished the stove with wood, finished off the box of biscuits, and settled down for the night, as outside the snow continued to fall.
Allan Ryan arrived at Belmont Park early on Monday morning in need of a change in fortune. Sunday had not been a good day for the general manager of the aviation tournament. No flying, a restless crowd, accusations of endangering aviators’ lives, an official protest about the safety of the course from Alfred Le Blanc, and a threatening letter from a Mr. William Ellison. To cap it all off, his wife—or rather, the family chauffeur—had been caught speeding on the way home from Sunday’s event. At this very moment his wife was waiting to appear at a Queens courthouse.
As if Ryan needed reminding of his trying Sunday, it was all there in the morning papers waiting for him on his desk. Even his wife’s indiscretion. He picked up the New York Herald with its disturbing front-page headline: FRENCH AVIATORS IN REVOLT, DEMAND NEW COURSE FOR TROPHY RACE. The N
ew York American carried an interview with the troublesome Monsieur Le Blanc in which he was quoted as saying, “The international course as it has been laid out by the Aero Club of America is a death trap. It goes over tall trees, stables, telegraph wires, and railroad tracks with scarcely a patch three hundred yards wide at any place where an airplane may land.”
Le Blanc had outlined his dissatisfaction in a wire to the Aero Club of France and was awaiting their response, but if they advised him to withdraw from the tournament, then he would not hesitate to do so. So would Hubert Latham, said the Herald, who had been asked by a reporter on Sunday what he thought of the course. “If I were to tell the truth about the track, it would be ‘suicidal,’ ” he had replied, adding, “and after that I probably would have to leave America.”
Unfortunately for Ryan, sipping his coffee as he flicked through the papers, the French aviators weren’t alone in disliking the course. Armstrong Drexel had been quoted in the New York Sun saying that the course was “doubly dangerous,” not just because of the obstacles listed by Le Blanc, but also because of the high winds. “Most emphatically do I say,” concluded Drexel, “that the international course is to be protested.”
What worried Charles Hamilton, according to an interview in the New York Sun, was that final corner before the home stretch. He didn’t use the expression dead man’s turn, but in the presence of the paper’s correspondent the American had jabbed his cane in the direction of the red-and-white pylon and warned that if Le Blanc or any flier in a hundred-horse power machine “tried to make that turn at the acute angle marked by the pylons the fore and aft ends of his airplane would come together like a jackknife while the engine broke through the center.” The Sun asked Hamilton how, if the organizers refused to alter the course before Saturday’s big race, one might successfully negotiate the corner. Well, that’s just the problem, replied Hamilton: “To get around that turn at great speed, a man would have to fly so wide that he would have covered eighty miles before he could be credited with flying the sixty miles prescribed. But if you make a wide turn, you have to fly over the grandstand, and if you fly over the grandstand, you will be penalized, and there you are.”
Hamilton, though, had no intention of withdrawing from the race, and neither did John Moisant, whose name brought a smile to Allan’s face. Good old John, he could always be relied on to offer his support. Asked to comment on the circuit by the New York Herald, Moisant had replied that he found the criticism a bit puzzling; after all, “at Rheims [in the 1909 International Aviation Cup] Mr. Curtiss had to fly over houses and trees when he won the cup. There isn’t a course in the world of five kilometers that is entirely free of obstructions of some sort. I certainly shall fly over the course.”
Claude Grahame-White and the two other British fliers, Alec Ogilvie and James Radley, were reported to have no gripes about the course, and neither did the Wright or Curtiss teams. We’ll have a race, Allan said to himself, aware that he was chairing a meeting of the committee later in the morning to discuss the French protest. Then he turned to the next problem—William Ellison, spokesman for the homeowners in the vicinity of the Belmont Park course.
The New York Sun carried a front-page report about the letter that Ellison had sent on Sunday to every aviator in which he expressed the anger felt by many local residents whose homes were under the flight path of the international course. What vexed them so was the erection of the giant canvas screens along the fence at the west end of the course. Not only were they an eyesore, they also blocked the residents’ view of the flying. If the screens were not removed, the paper reported, then “aviators who fly above certain adjacent properties will be winged with bullets.”
Ryan had already given his initial reaction to the letter—“childish”—but he couldn’t risk a few hotheaded cranks taking potshots at his aviators, so the screens, or at least some of them, would have to be dismantled. First, however, he had to attend to another pressing problem. Ryan called the head of the Pinkerton security team to his office. Have you seen the morning papers? he asked. No, he hadn’t. Ryan told him they were full of accounts of the heavy-handedness of his men; worse than that, it wasn’t the spectators complaining, it was the aviators. Ryan picked up a copy of the New York American and read a paragraph describing how John Moisant— the John Moisant—“was obliged to pay his own way into the meet on Sunday because he had forgotten his arm brassard.” Then Ryan’s old friend Monsieur Le Blanc was livid because his ballooning partner and translator, Walther de Mumm, hadn’t been granted access to the hangar area. The less we antagonize Le Blanc, the better, Ryan suggested. Then, pointing to the World, Ryan read the report about Claude Grahame-White being turned away from the entrance because he hadn’t his pass. How can your men not recognize the most famous aviator in the world—particularly when he had Pauline Chase on his arm? It had taken a few choice words from Grahame-White, the World said—“that sounded like the roaring of the lion”—to convince the Pinkerton guards it would be wise to step aside.
And then, said Ryan, the crowning indignity, the most astonishing blunder . . . Wilbur Wright barred from entering. Wilbur Wright . . . the man who invented the airplane. If not for him, none of us would be here! Ryan dismissed the Pinkerton chief with a demand that his men show a little bit of discretion, not to mention common sense.
Ryan then walked out of the clubhouse to organize the removal of the canvas screens. He looked up at the blue sky, then across toward the hangars and the flags curled sleepily round their poles. No wind. Perhaps his fortunes were about to turn.
The noon trains that departed Pennsylvania Station on Monday were filled to standing room, and the onboard vendors selling aviation magazines had to force their way through the carriages. Some of the passengers squashed in the center of the carriages swung themselves up to the racks and looked through the ventilators as they neared the grounds in the hope of being first to spot a flying machine.
Streetcars bound for Belmont Park “looked like Broadway cars at rush hour,” and by one P.M. not a parking space was to be had. Every one of the ten thousand spectators who clicked through the turnstiles glanced across at the scoreboard and smiled when they saw the flag was white, indicating “flight probable.” Pinned to the bulletin board was a statement just released by the Belmont Park committee, their response to the official French protest of the previous day. The statement concluded by saying that “Mr. [Cortlandt] Bishop again went over the course and made other suggestions as to improvements. This work will be done tomorrow in order that the course may be ready . . . The small trees and signposts are to be removed and it is suggested that one of the pylons be placed more to the north in order to avoid one or two houses and sheds which are in the way. It is not expected nor is it possible to provide a billiard table for the entire five kilometer course, but every effort will be made to render the course as safe as possible.”
It appeared, too, that the Pinkerton security men had heeded Ryan’s censure, and smiles had replaced snarls on the faces of gray-uniformed guards who patrolled the grounds. They were even allowing friends and family members of the fliers to visit the hangars, provided they were vouched for by an aviator. One of the first to flitter over was the delectable Grace McKenzie, the Canadian girl for whom Jacques de Lesseps had fallen. A “clubhouse rumor” was that an engagement was imminent. Tongues were also wagging about Claude Grahame-White, with a battalion of binoculars in the grandstand trained on hangar No. 14 as the Englishman laughed and joked with Eleonora Sears, who after Sunday’s “severely plain costume” was now wearing what the New York Sun’s style guru described as “a navy blue suit with the skirt at least six inches from the ground.” More than one newspaper found it curious that Pauline Chase was nowhere to be seen.
Armstrong Drexel spent a long time chatting with his brother and sister-in-law and generally, as was his nature, “being courteous to all visitors and [he] even allowed his flying toggery to be inspected.” He showed off his helmet to one reporter, exp
laining that experience had taught him it was invaluable when trying for an altitude prize. Drexel was one of the few aviators to wear a helmet, and his was “leather with several inches of padding . . . The flaps over the ears are perforated so that he can tell how his engine is working.”
As the spectators shopped, lunched, and gossiped, waiting for the program to start at one thirty P.M., great interest was shown in the “moving picture people” who were at Belmont Park for the first time since the meet’s inception, and not everyone approved of their presence.
Since September the New York World had been at the forefront of a campaign to clean up the moving-picture industry, citing as its reason a spate of juvenile crimes that had allegedly been inspired by films. A thirteen-year-old adolescent arrested for robbery had told police that he acquired the methods at a moving-picture show, while another boy had “conceived the idea of becoming a criminal and learned to go about it from a scene in a picture show.” The magistrate who convicted him of theft called the picture houses “sinks of iniquity” and demanded they clean up their act before it was too late.
Carl Laemmle, president of the Independent Moving Picture Company, had responded swiftly to the demand, issuing a circular warning scriptwriters that he would refuse to consider any scripts “which are built around murders or suicide or crimes of any kind . . . His company is trying to put the moving picture business on a higher plane and what it wants is preferably good, clean, light comedy.”
Aviation offered picture houses the chance to redeem themselves by showing wholesome entertainment, and one of the most popular films of the early autumn had been footage from the 1909 International Aviation Cup race in France. Now the camera operators were at Belmont Park to record the action from America’s biggest-ever aviation tournament. They began by setting up outside the Wright hangar and using an entire roll of film to capture Wilbur inspecting his airplane. His brother, Orville, had arrived from Dayton late on Sunday evening, but he was busy inside the hangar making final adjustments to their new machine. Next the cameraman tried to get some footage of the crowd moving around the course. This caused a few difficulties, much to the amusement of the New York Sun’s correspondent. What was so funny, he wrote, “was that many seemed to think that they had to walk as fast as they had seen figures move on the screen to get the right effect.”
Chasing Icarus Page 17