Then the New York Sun correspondent asked Orville what were the chances of England or France lifting the International Cup now that everyone had seen the power of the Baby Grand? “Well,” Wright answered with a wry smile, “I don’t know. I can’t tell yet whether Hamilton will keep the cup here or not!”
Tuesday at Belmont Park turned out to be what the New York Herald called “Wright Day.”* Orville had opened proceedings with his startling flight in the Baby Grand, and Ralph Johnstone wrapped up events by climbing to 7,303 feet, two hundred feet higher than Armstrong Drexel’s mark of the previous day. Earlier in the afternoon Johnstone and another of the Wright fliers, Arch Hoxsey—the “Stardust Twins”—had set off together in the altitude contest. Hoxsey had returned first, with his barograph indicating a height of 5,791 feet. Johnstone came down a while later and was met by Wilbur Wright, who was sure his boy had gone higher than Drexel. He looked for the barograph on his machine. Where was it? Wright asked. Johnstone blanched. He’d forgotten to attach it. The reporter from the New York Sun couldn’t see through his field glasses exactly what was being said in the center of the infield, but Wilbur Wright “conversed gently but earnestly with his pupil for a few minutes and as a punishment Mr. Johnstone was told that just for that he must go right out and break the American record before dinner.”
First Johnstone returned to the hangar to unknot his nerves before his second flight. He spent an hour or so making fun of his absentmindedness with his mechanics and Arch Hoxsey. He watched as de Lesseps and Hubert Latham tried unsuccessfully for the altitude record, then, a little after three o’clock, Johnstone quit his bantering and fell into a silent fidget; his mechanics knew it was time to prepare his plane. Johnstone buttoned up his leather coat over his thick sweater and pulled on his woolen cap, then he checked that he had his barograph, and at three thirty P.M. he and Hoxsey took off together.
Some greasy-looking clouds had started to roll in from the Jersey factories as the pair headed southeast, and by the time they were ascending in long spirals, a light drizzle was falling on Belmont Park. The crowd watched as “round and round they circled like hawks looking for prey.” One of the hawks was seen to descend, but the other grew smaller and smaller, then disappeared into a dark cloud. Johnstone’s leather gloves and boots were inadequate against the cold as he climbed higher, and he felt a chilling numbness. The rain had turned to a sleet that lashed and cut his face, and now the cloud brought with it a white, feathery snow. In a moment Johnstone was through the snowstorm and he glanced down at the barograph on his wrist. He could see nothing. He whipped off his goggles and banged them against his thigh, trying to break off the thin sheen of opaque ice that had formed. He thought he saw that the barograph read over seven thousand feet, but he couldn’t be sure. He felt desperately tired as he fumbled his goggles back over his weeping eyes.
Down on the ground the drizzle had stopped, and “anticipating accidents the crowd deserted the grandstand seats and crowded along the rail.” They watched as the speck flitted in and out of clouds, descending in great swoops, and then at a “height of about 4,000 feet and to the east of the aviation field, Johnstone dived out of a mist bank with his engine throttled down, and he finished his flight with a long volplane.” He landed his airplane on the far side of the aviation field and was collected by one of the tournament’s green automobiles, in which sat a race official and Wilbur Wright. Wright “delightedly held up the barograph,” and it was confirmed a little later that Ralph Johnstone had set a new American altitude record of 7,303 feet. When he arrived back at hangar row, John-stone’s clothes were dripping wet and his “knees shook and his face was swollen and red.” “Wow, that was cold,” he told a reporter from the New York American. “It was snowing furiously and sleeting up there . . . If I’d been able to see, I would have gone on and smashed the world’s record. That was my purpose. I’ll do it yet before I leave this place.”
The other achievements at Belmont Park on Tuesday were prosaic in comparison to Johnstone’s towering feat. The British flier James Radley won the twenty-mile cross-country event, beating John Moisant, John McCurdy, and Armstrong Drexel, and in the gathering gloom Charles Hamilton and the Curtiss fliers took their machines for a short spin ahead of Wednesday’s qualification race to decide which three American fliers would represent their country in Saturday’s International Cup race. Moisant’s repaired Blériot had stood up well to the rigors of the cross-country flight, and he was his normal confident self, and Hamilton had no complaints either about his machine. But as if to reassert the Wrights’ preeminence, Orville Wright reappeared at the end of the day in the Baby Grand and knocked three seconds off his morning lap time by sailing round in one minute and twenty-three seconds.
It had been an unforgettable day, and an illuminating one, too, for the representatives of the American military on official assignment at Belmont Park. General James Bell, chief of staff under President Theodore Roosevelt, walked over to the Wrights’ hangar to offer his congratulations, accompanied by Commander John Barry Ryan of the U.S. Aeronautic Reserve, General James Allen, chief officer of the Signal Corps, and Lieutenant Benjamin Fulois, whose task it was to write the official report about the tournament for the War Department. While Bell chatted with the Wrights—they had first met during the brothers’ military trials at Fort Myer two years earlier—General Allen answered a couple of questions from the New York Herald. He had been mightily impressed by what he had seen, he said, stressing that “with a fleet of biplanes and monoplanes as large as that which flew here today, an army could do immeasurable damage in time of war.” Would he thus be advising President Taft to increase spending on aviation? “I am encouraging the War Department to take a deeper interest in aviation all the time,” he replied, adding, “We have good aviators in this country, and they prove this themselves when compared to the foreigners who are here now.”
In the press stand the correspondent of the New York Evening Sun had also been seduced by what he had seen throughout the day, and as he watched a long line of automobiles queuing to leave Belmont Park, he wrote, “The sight of the auto chugging over the hillocks brought up a sense of ancient days and one, to be up to the minute, had only to glance to the heavens and see the graceful flights, the swift swoops, the searing aloft to dizzy altitudes, and then put off that resolution to buy an auto and determine to wait for an airplane.”
The only unsavory incident of the stupendous day was the contretemps between Count de Lesseps and Cortlandt Field Bishop, president of the Aero Club of America. Admittedly discontent had been growing in the French camp for many days, said the Evening Sun, with “the rivalry between the English-speaking and French aviators intense and bitter in some respects,” but that was no excuse for the “ugly moment” that occurred shortly before the close of the day’s program. The trouble arose when Bishop told a group of reporters that de Lesseps had charged Mrs. Eustis—a friend of his sister’s, the Countess de la Bergassiere—$2,000 for a brief flight. When the reporters relayed the story to de Lesseps, his face darkened, and with a Gallic roar he went “running out of hangar in his grotesque air-riding costume and dashed around until he found Bishop.” With the grinning reporters ringing the two protagonists like spectators at a cockfight, de Lesseps began “shaking his fists up and down nervously” as he asked Bishop if what he had been told was true. The New York Sun described what followed:
“I did not,” stammered Bishop. “That is, I merely—”
“You did. You told me, Mr. Bishop,” said a young man hotly, who had edged through the crowd.
Mr. Bishop whirled around. “Can’t you take a joke?” Mr. Bishop demanded of the indignant one. “I was only joking when I told you that.”
The young man—unidentified by the newspapers—turned on his heel, but not before he had jabbed a finger at the president of the Aero Club, warning him that he was “through with you, Bishop, for good.”
Bishop held out a hand to de Lesseps and swore blind that it had bee
n a joke, albeit an ill-judged one. “I have never accepted money for taking passengers up and I never will,” said the Frenchman, his gun-barrel eyes trained on Bishop. “I am a gentleman sportsman, not an aerial chauffeur.” The count stepped back and allowed the American safe passage from the ring. Then he turned to the reporters and told them if any more calumnies came from Bishop, he “would smash his face.”
Later that evening de Lesseps had forgotten all about the distasteful incident when his engagement to Grace McKenzie was officially announced at a discreet party at the Knickerbocker Hotel. With Bishop’s apology common knowledge among the guests, de Lesseps was satisfied that his fiancée’s wealthy family knew him to be a man of impeccable conduct.
* The New York American reported on October 29, 1910, that according to Edward Stratton of the Aero Club of America, “not less than 50,000 men were engaged in the search for Hawley and Post.”
* In the accounts given by Hawley and Post to newspapers in the immediate aftermath of their rescue, they confused their time line, presumably because of their exhausted mental state, telling reporters that they had come across the tent on Sunday morning. However, in an extensive article written by Augustus Post, published in the December 1910 edition of Century Magazine, he states that it was Monday morning. This is corroborated in written statements provided by Pedneaud and Simard.
* A tongue-in-cheek reference to the French philosopher whose work during the Age of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century brought him enduring fame.
* 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.
* 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.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Are You These Gentlemen?
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 hitch
ed 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.”
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