McClure's Magazine.
JULY, 1902
NO. 3
THE OVER-SEA EXPERIMENTS OF SANTOS-DUMONT
BY STERLING HEILIG
(Mr. Santos-Dumont, during his last winter's flights over the Mediterranean, was occupied with experiments quite different from those which took him around the Eiffel Tower in Paris. There, for a time, he went aside from his steadfast practice, to accomplish a set task and win a prize. Here, he resumed experimenting for his own information. A leading authority, M. Armengaud, jeune, President of the Société Frangaise de Navigation Aérienne, pronounces the results of these five flights, in spite of the final catastrophe, to be as precious as any previously obtained.—S. H.)
ON the sunny morning of the 28th of January, 1902, the airship ‘‘Santos-Dumont No. 6’’ made its first flight over the Bay of Monaco. Swifter than any steam-launch could follow, it sped out to sea, not swerving a point to right or to left. Soon it was over the open Mediterranean. On it sped until it seemed no larger than a great bird. Then it turned and came back at the same high speed. When inside the little bay again it slowed up, described a great circle, and mounted to the level of the terrace above the Pigeon Shooting Grounds at Monte Carlo. It approached so near that the lonely navigator of the air could call back acknowledgments to the congratulations of his friends below. Then it was out to sea again and back, and around in other circles, like a horse whose jockey puts him through his paces. To the sight-seeing crowd it made an exhilarating show of M. Santos-Dumont’s control of his airship; while to the inventor, to his aids and intimates, the maritime experiment had peculiar interests, both technical and general.
Over-sea ballooning has become the temptation of all European aëronauts. Lieutenant Tapissier, Director of the Toulon Maritime Ballooning Station, who accompanied Count Henry de La Vaulx in his recent highly subsidized but unsuccessful Mediterranean venture, says: ‘‘The balloon can render the navy immense services, on condition always that its direction can be assured. Floating over the sea, it can be at once a bird’s-eye scout and an offensive auxiliary of so delicate a character that the general service of the navy has not yet allowed itself to pronounce upon the matter. We can no longer conceal it from ourselves, however, that the hour approaches when balloons, having become new military engines, will acquire from the point of view of battle-results a great and perhaps decisive action de guerre.’’
The far-seeing Henri Rochefort, who was in the habit of coming daily to the Aërodrome from his hotel on the heights of La Turbie, was moved to generalize this warning to his country: ‘‘On the day when the ‘Santos-Dumont No. 7’ shall show the speed which all calculations expect from it, ‘there will remain little for the nations to do but lay down their arms.’ ’’
M. Santos-Dumont had already spent several industrious winters on the Riviera, while the weather made it impracticable to continue experimenting in Paris. Two seasons before he had made ascents from the Place Masséna, at Nice, in his ‘‘Santos-Dumont No. 3’’; and,
Copyright, 1902, by the S. S. McClure Co. All rights reserved.
