My Airships/Chapter 17

by Alberto Santos-Dumont

MONACO AND THE MARITIME GUIDE ROPE

WHEN I arrived at Monte Carlo, in the latter part of January 1902, the balloon house of the Prince of Monaco was already practically completed from suggestions I had given.

The new aerodrome rose on the Boulevard de la Condamine, just across the electric tramcar tracks from the sea wall. It was an immense empty shell of wood and canvas over a stout iron skeleton 55 metres (180 feet) long, 10 metres (33 feet) wide, and 15 metres (50 feet) high. It had to be solidly constructed, not to risk the fate of the all-wood aerodrome of the French Maritime Ballooning Station at Toulon, twice wrecked, and once all but carried away, like a veritable wooden balloon, by tempests.

In spite of the aerodrome's risky form and curious construction its sensational features were its doors. Tourists told each other (quite correctly) that doors so great as these had never been before in ancient times or modern. They had been made to slide open and shut, above on wheels hanging from an iron construction that extended from the façade on each side, and below on wheels that rolled over a rail. Each door was 15 metres (50 feet) high by 5 metres (16${\tfrac {1}{2}}$ feet) wide, and each weighed 4400 kilogrammes (9680 lbs.). Yet their equilibrium was so well calculated that on the day of the inauguration of the aerodrome these giant doors were rolled apart by two little boys of eight and ten years respectively, the young Princes Ruspoli, grandsons of the Duc de Dino, my host at Monte Carlo.

While the new situation attracted me by its promise of convenient and protected winter practice the prospect of doing some oversea navigation with my air-ship was even more alluring. Even to the spherical balloonist the oversea problem has great temptations, concerning which an expert of the French Navy has said:

"The balloon can render the navy immense services, on condition that its direction can be assured.

"Floating over the sea, it can be at once scout and offensive auxiliary of so delicate a character

IN THE BAY OF MONACO

that the general service of the navy has not yet allowed itself to pronounce on the matter. We can no longer conceal it from ourselves, however, that the hour approaches when balloons, now become military engines, will acquire, from the point of view of battle results, a great and, perhaps, decisive influence in war."

As for myself, I have never made it any secret that, to my mind, the first practical use of the air-ship will be found in war, and the far-seeing Henri Rochefort, who was in the habit of coming to the aerodrome from his hotel at La Turbie, wrote a most significant editorial in this sense after I had laid before him the speed calculations of my "No. 7," then in course of building.

"The day when it shall be established that a man can make his air-ship travel in a given direction and manœuvre it at will during the four hours which the young Santos demands to go from Monaco to Calvi," wrote Henri Rochefort, "there will remain little more for the nations to do than to throw down their arms. . . .

"I am astonished that the capital importance of this matter has not yet been grasped by all the professionals of aerostation. To mount in a balloon that one has not constructed, and which one is not in a state to guide, constitutes the easiest of performances. A little cat has done it at the Folies-Bergère."

Now in war service overland the air-ship will, doubtless, have often to mount to considerable heights to avoid the rifle fire of the enemy, but, as the maritime auxiliary described by the expert of the French Navy, its scouting rôle will for the most part be performed at the end of its guide rope, comparatively close to the waves, and yet high enough to take in a wide view. Only when for easily-imagined reasons it is desired to mount high for a short time will it quit the convenient contact of its guide rope with the surface of the sea.

For these considerations—and particularly the last—I was anxious to do a great deal of guide-roping over the Mediterranean. If the maritime experiment promises so much to spherical ballooning it is doubly promising to the air-ship, which, from the nature of its construction, carries comparatively little ballast. This ballast ought not to be currently sacrificed, as it is by the spherical balloonist, for the remedying of every little vertical aberration. Its purpose is for use in great emergencies. Nor ought the aerial navigator, particularly if he be alone, be forced to rectify his altitude continually by means of his propeller and shifting weights. He ought to be free to navigate his air-ship; if on pleasure bent, with ease and leisure to enjoy his flight; if on war service, with facility for his observations and hostile manœuvres. Therefore any automatic guarantee of vertical stability is peculiarly welcome to him.

You know already what the guide rope is. I have described it in my first experience of spherical ballooning. Overland, where there are level plains or roads or even streets, where there are not too many troublesome trees, buildings, fences, telegraph and trolley poles and wires and like irregularities, the guide rope is as great an aid to the air-ship as to the spherical balloon. Indeed, I have made it more so, for with me it is the central feature of my shifting weights (Figs. 8 and 9, page 148).

Over the uninterrupted stretches of the sea my first Monaco flight proved it to be a true stabilisateur. Its very slight dragging resistance through the water is out of all proportion to the considerable weight of its floating extremity. According to its greater or less immersion, therefore, it ballasts or unballasts the air-ship (Fig. 11). The balloon is held by the weight of the guide rope down to a fixed level over the waves without danger of bei ng drawn into contact with them. For the moment that the air-ship descends the slightest distance nearer to them that very moment it becomes rel ieved of just so much weight, and must naturally

rise again by that amount of momentary unballasting. In this way an incessant little tugging toward and away from the waves is produced, infinitely gentle, an automatic ballasting and unballasting of the air-ship without loss of ballast.

My first flight over the Mediterranean, which was made on the morning of 29th January 1902, proved more than this, unfortunately. It was seen that a miscalculation had been made with respect to the site of the aerodrome itself. In the navigation of the air, where all is new, such surprises meet the experimenter at every turn. This ought to be remembered when one takes account of progress. In the Paris-Madrid automobile race of 1903 what minute precautions were not taken to secure the competitors against the perils of quick turnings and grade crossings? And yet how notably insufficient did they not turn out to be.

As the air-ship was being taken out from its house for its first flight on the morning of 29th January 1902 the spectators could see that nothing equivalent to the landing-stages which the air-ships of the future must have built for them existed in front of the building. The air-ship, loaded with ballast until it was a trifle heavier than the surrounding atmosphere, had to be towed, or helped, out of the aerodrome and across the Boulevard de la Condamine before it could be launched into the air over the sea wall.

Now that sea wall proved to be a dangerous obstruction. From the side walk it was only waist high, but on the other side of it the surf rolled over pebbles from four to five metres below.

The air-ship had to be lifted over the sea wall more than waist high; also, not to risk damaging the arms of its propeller, and when half over, there was no one to sustain it from the other side. Its stem pointed obliquely downward, while its stern threatened to grind on the wall. Scuffling among the pebbles below, on the sea side, half-a-dozen workmen held their arms high toward the descending keel as it was let down and pushed on toward them by the workmen in charge of it on the boulevard in front of the wall, and they were at last able to catch and right it only in time to prevent me from being precipitated from the basket.

For this reason my return to the aerodrome after this first flight became the occasion of a real triumph, for the crowd promptly took cognisance of the perils of the situation and foresaw difficulties for me when I should attempt to reenter the balloon house. As there was no wind, however, and as I steered boldly, I was able to make a sensational entry without damage — and without aid. Straight as a dart the air-ship sped to the balloon house. The police of the prince

FROM THE BALLOON HOUSE AT MONACO. FEB 12, 1902

had with difficulty cleared the boulevard between the sea wall and the wide-open doors. Assistants and supernumeraries leaned over the wall with outstretched arms waiting for me; below on the beach were others, but this time I did not need them. I slowed the speed of the propeller as I came to them. Just as I was half way over the sea wall, well above them all, I stopped the motor. Carried onward by the dying momentum, the air-ship glided over their heads on toward the open door. They had grasped my guide rope to draw me down, but as I had been coming diagonally there was no need of it. Now they walked beside the air-ship into the balloon house, as its trainer or the stable-boys grasp the bridle of their racehorse after the course and lead him back

in honour to the stable with his jockey in the saddle.

It was admitted, nevertheless, that I ought not to be obliged to steer so closely on returning from my flights—to enter the aerodrome as a needle is threaded by a steady hand—because a side gust of wind might catch me at the critical moment and dash me against a tree or lamp-post, or telegraph or telephone pole, not to speak of the sharp - cornered buildings on either side of the aerodrome. When I went out again for a short spin that same afternoon of 29th January 1902 the obstruction of the sea wall made itself only too evident. The prince offered to tear down the wall.

"I will not ask you to do so much," I said.

"It will be enough to build a landing - stage on the sea side of the wall at the level of the boulevard."

This was done after twelve days of work, interrupted by persistent rain, and the air-ship, when it issued for its third flight, 10th February 1902, had simply to be lifted a few feet by men on each side of the wall. They drew it gently on until its whole length floated in equilibrium over the new platform that extended so far out into the surf that its farthermost piles were always in six feet of water.

Standing on this platform they steadied the air-ship while its motor was being started, while I let out the overplus of water ballast and shifted my guide rope so as to point for an oblique drive upward. The motor began spitting and rumbling. The propeller began turning.

"Let go all!" I cried, for the third time at Monaco.

Lightly the air-ship slid along its oblique course, onward and upward. Then as the propeller gathered force a mighty push sent me flying over the bay. I shifted forward the guide rope again to make a level course. And out to sea the air-ship darted, its scarlet pennant fluttering symbolic letters as upon a streak of flame. They were the initial letters of the first line of Camoëns' "Lusiad," the epic poet of my race:

For mares nunca d'antes navegados!

(O'er seas hereto unsailed.)