The Airplane - Jay Spenser [107]
Held in the fall of 1909, the Hudson-Fulton Celebration treated New Yorkers to the astonishing sight of Wilbur Wright circling the Statue of Liberty. Conspicuously visible between the skids of his Wright Model A biplane was a canoe. Although placed there just for buoyancy in the event of a forced landing in the water, that canoe brought to mind the possibility of boat-hulled airplanes capable of operating off water.
Wilbur flew around the Statue of Liberty on September 29, 1909. On October 4, he flew up the Hudson to a point north of Grant’s Tomb and returned to land on the parade ground at Governor’s Island. He had covered 21 miles (34 kilometers) in thirty-four minutes. It was only the second time in history and the first in the Americas that an airplane had flown any distance over water.
Two months had elapsed since Louis Blériot conquered the English Channel to win the £1,000 prize posted by London’s Daily Mail newspaper. Blériot had made that flight at first light to avoid any wind. The year before, Daily Mail publisher Lord Northcliffe had contacted Wilbur in France to urge him to compete for the prize, even going so far as to offer considerably more money than the stated prize. Although tempted, Wilbur declined based on the unreliability of the era’s engines, and Hubert Latham’s subsequent ditchings suggested it may have been a wise decision. The Wrights also passed up requests to participate at Reims in the summer of 1909, although two of their airplanes flew in the hands of others.
Having won the Reims air meet’s crowning Gordon Bennett Cup race, a triumphant Glenn Curtiss also participated in New York’s Hudson-Fulton Celebration. Like Blériot, though, Curtiss lacked an airplane capable of operating in strong or gusty wind conditions. On September 2, 1909, Curtiss took off from Governor’s Island to duplicate Wright’s circling of the Statue of Liberty. Heading across the choppy gray waters of New York Harbor, Curtiss found himself blown so wildly about that he abandoned the attempt and landed visibly shaken.
Wilbur’s long Hudson River flight two days later took place in conditions so rough that observers saw his machine tossed “upwards and downwards like a ship in a gale,” as one reporter put it.1 Unfazed, the elder Wright brother prepared to fly again that same day. But as he and mechanic Charlie Taylor propped the canoe-equipped Flyer, an explosion blew a cylinder off the engine. It shot straight upward, punching a hole through the top wing, and landed a few paces from Wilbur’s feet.
The Flyer’s participation in New York’s celebration had come to an abrupt end. It didn’t matter. Wilbur’s courageous display of airmanship had shown the world what only he and Orville could do. Hailed by all America, it was the last public display by the Wrights and a triumphant note on which to exit the world stage.
As for Curtiss, he returned the following year and in better conditions flew the Hudson from Albany to New York City. This record flight covered 150 miles (240 kilometers), during which Curtiss had more time than he might have liked to contemplate the water below.
Glenn Curtiss saw great opportunity for the first person to perfect an airplane capable of operating off of the water. Able to dispense with prepared flying fields, such a machine would also be safer in the event of an engine failure along the coast or over rugged terrain. Given lakes and rivers, both forested countryside and communities without airports could have air service.
Unlike Wilbur Wright, who carried a canoe only for flotation in the event of an emergency, Curtiss decided to see whether an airplane could actually take off and alight on water that way. The resulting machine was so heavy that it failed as a boat and airplane alike. Curtiss then experimented with pontoons that he fitted to his June Bug. Thus equipped and renamed the Loon, it failed to rise from the waters of Keuka Lake at Hammondsport.
Deciding that warmer