My Airships/Chapter 13

by Alberto Santos-Dumont

A FALL BEFORE A RISE

MY "No. 5" had proved itself so much more powerful than its predecessors that I now found courage to inscribe myself for the Deutsch prize competition.

Having taken this decisive step I at once convoked the Scientific Commission of the Aéro Club for a trial in accordance with the regulations.

The Commission assembled in the grounds of the Aéro Club at St Cloud on July 13th, 1901 at 6.30 A.M. At 6.41 I started off. I turned the Eiffel Tower in the tenth minute and came back against an unexpected head wind, reaching the timekeepers at St Cloud in the fortieth minute, at an altitude of 200 metres, and after a terrific struggle with the element.

Just at this moment my capricious motor stopped, and the air-ship, bereft of its power, was carried off, and fell on the tallest chestnut-tree in

"No. 5." ACCIDENT IN THE PARK OF M. EDMOND DE ROTHSCHILD

the park of M. Edmond de Rothschild. The inhabitants and servants of the villa, who came running, very naturally imagined that the air-ship must be wrecked and myself probably hurt. They were astonished to find me standing in my basket high up in the tree, while the propeller touched the ground. Considering the force with which the wind had blown when I was battling with it on the home stretch I was myself surprised to note how little the balloon was torn. Nevertheless, all its gas had left it.

This happened very near the house of the Princess Isabel, Comtesse d'Eu, who, hearing of my plight, and learning that I must be occupied some time in disengaging the air-ship, sent a lunch to me up in my tree, with an invitation to come and tell her the story of my trip. When the story was finished the daughter of Dom Pedro said to me:

"Your evolutions in the air make me think of the flight of our great birds of Brazil. I hope you will do as well with your propeller as they do with their wings, and that you will succeed for the glory of our common country."

A few days later I received the following letter:—

"1st August 1901.

"MONSIEUR SANTOS-DUMONT,—Here is a medal of St Benedict that protects against accidents.

"Accept it, and wear it at your watch-chain, in your card-case, or at your neck.

"I send it to you, thinking of your good mother, and praying God to help you always and to make you work for the glory of our country.

(Signed) "ISABEL, COMTESSE D'Eu."

As the newspapers have often spoken of my "bracelet" I may say that the thin gold chain of which it consists is simply the means I have taken to wear this medal, which I prize.

The air-ship, as a whole, was damaged very little, considering the force of the wind and the nature of the accident. When it was ready to be taken out again I nevertheless thought it prudent to make several trials with it over the grassy lawn of the Longchamps racecourse. One of these trials I will mention, because it gave me—something rare—a fairly accurate idea of the air-ship's speed in perfect calm. On this occasion Mr Maurice Farman followed me round the racecourse in his automobile at its second speed. His estimate was between 26 and 30 kilometres (16

AN ACCIDENT

and 18${\tfrac {1}{2}}$ miles) per hour with my guide rope dragging. Of course, when the guide rope drags it acts exactly like a brake. How much it holds one back depends upon the length that actually drags along the ground. Our calculation at the

time was about 5 kilometres (3 miles) per hour, which would have brought my proper speed up to between 30 and 35 kilometres (18${\tfrac {1}{2}}$ and 21${\tfrac {1}{2}}$ miles) per hour. All this encouraged me to make another trial for the Deutsch prize.

And now I come to a terrible day—8th August 1901. At 6.30 A.M., in presence of the Scientific Commission of the Aéro Club, I started again for the Eiffel Tower.

I turned the Tower at the end of nine minutes and took my way back to St Cloud; but my balloon was losing hydrogen through one of its two automatic gas valves, whose spring had been accidentally weakened.

I had perceived the beginning of this loss of gas even before reaching the Eiffel Tower, and ordinarily, in such an event, I should have come at once to earth to examine the lesion. But here I was competing for a prize of great honour, and my speed had been good. Therefore I risked going on.

The balloon now shrunk visibly. By the time I had got back to the fortifications of Paris, near La Muette, it caused the suspension wires to sag so much that those nearest to the screw propeller caught in it as it revolved.

I saw the propeller cutting and tearing at the wires. I stopped the motor instantly. Then, as a consequence, the air-ship was at once driven back toward the Tower by the wind, which was strong.

At the same time I was falling. The balloon had lost much gas. I might have thrown out ballast and greatly diminished the fall, but then the wind would have time to blow me back on the Eiffel Tower. I, therefore, preferred to let the air-ship go down as it was going. It may have seemed a terrific fall to those who watched it from the ground, but to me the worst detail was the air-ship's lack of equilibrium. The half-empty balloon, fluttering its empty end as an elephant waves his trunk, caused the air-ship's stem to point upward at an alarming angle. What I most feared, therefore, was that the unequal strain on the suspension wires would break them one by one and so precipitate me to the ground.

Why was the balloon fluttering an empty end and causing all this extra danger? How was it that the rotary ventilator was not fulfilling its purpose in feeding the interior air balloon and in this manner swelling out the gas balloon around it? The answer must be looked for in the nature of the accident. The rotary ventilator stopped working when the motor itself stopped, and I had been obliged to stop the motor to prevent the propeller from tearing the suspension wires near it when the balloon first began to sag from loss of gas. It is true that the ventilator, which was working at that moment, had not proved sufficient to prevent the first sagging. It may have been that the interior air balloon refused to fill out properly. The day after the accident, when my balloon constructor's man came to me for the plans of a "No. 6" balloon envelope, I gathered from something he said that the interior air balloon of the "No. 5," not having been given time for its varnish to dry before being adjusted, might have stuck together or stuck to the sides or bottom of the outer balloon. Such are the rewards of haste.

I was falling. At the same time the wind was carrying me toward the Eiffel Tower. It had already carried me so far that I was expecting to land on the Seine embankment beyond the Trocadero. My basket and the whole of the keel had already passed the Trocadero hotels, and had my balloon been a spherical one, it too would have cleared the building. But now, at the last critical moment, the end of the long balloon that was still full of gas came slapping down on the roof just before clearing it. It exploded with a great noise—exactly like a paper bag struck after being blown up. This was the "terrific explosion" described in the newspapers of the day.

I had made a mistake in my estimate of the wind's force by a few yards. Instead of being carried on to fall on the Seine embankment I now found myself hanging in my wicker basket high up in the courtyard of the Trocadero hotels, supported by my air-ship's keel, which stood braced at an angle of about 45 degrees between the courtyard wall above and the roof of a lower construction farther down. The keel, in spite of my weight, that of the motor and machinery, and the shock it had received in falling, resisted wonderfully. The thin pine scantlings and piano wires of Nice had saved my life!

After what seemed tedious waiting I saw a

PHASE OF AN ACCIDENT

rope being lowered to me from the roof above. I held to it, and was hauled up, when I perceived my rescuers to be the brave firemen of Paris. From their station at Passy they had been watching the flight of the air-ship. They had seen my fall, and immediately hastened to the spot. Then, having rescued me, they proceeded to rescue the air-ship.

The operation was painful. The remains of the balloon envelope and the suspension wires hung lamentably, and it was impossible to disengage them except in strips and fragments!

So I escaped—and my escape may have been narrow — but it was not from the particular danger always present in my mind during this period of trials around the Eiffel Tower. A Parisian journalist said that had the Eiffel Tower not existed it would have been necessary to invent it for the needs of aerostation. It is true that the engineers who remain at its summit have at their hands all necessary instruments for observing aerial and meteorological conditions: their chronometers are exact; and, as Professor Langley has said in a communication to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Committee, the position of the Tower as a central landmark, visible to everyone from considerable distances, made it a unique winning - post for an aerial contest. I myself had circled round it at a respectful distance, of my own free will, in 1899, before the stipulation of the Deutsch prize competition was dreamed of. Yet none of these considerations altered the other fact that the necessity to round the Eiffel Tower attached a unique element of danger to the task.

What I feared was that in my eagerness to make a quick turning, by some error in steering or by the influence of some unexpected side wind, I might be dashed against the Tower. The impact would certainly burst my balloon, and I should fall to the ground like a stone. Nor could the utmost prudence and self-control in making a wide turn guarantee me against the danger. Should my capricious motor stop as I approached the Tower—exactly as it stopped after I had passed over the timekeepers' heads at St Cloud, returning from my first trial on 13th July 1903—I should be powerless to hold the air-ship back.

Therefore I always dreaded the turn round the Eiffel Tower, looking on it as my principal danger. While never seeking to go high in my air-ships—on the contrary, I hold the record for the low altitudes in a free balloon—in passing over Paris I must necessarily move above and out of the way of the chimney-pots and steeples. The Eiffel Tower was my one danger, yet it was my winning-post!

Such were my fears while on the ground; while in the air I had no time for fear. I have always kept a cool head. Alone in the air-ship I am always busy, for there is more than enough work for one man. Like the captain of a yacht, I must not let go the rudder for an instant. Like its chief engineer, I must watch the motor. The balloon's rigidity of form must be preserved. And with this capital detail is connected the whole complex problem of the air-ship's altitude, the manœoeuvring of guide rope and shifting weights, the economising of ballast, and the surveillance of the air pump attached to the motor. Besides all this occupation there is also the strong joy of commanding rapid movement. The pleasurable sensations of aerial navigation experienced in my first air-ships were intensified in the powerful "No. 5." As M. Jaurès has well put it, I now felt myself a man in the air, commanding movement. In my spherical balloons I had felt myself to be only the shadow of a man!