Chasing Icarus by Gavin Mortimer Read Free Book Online

minutes later.
    * Few women had ever flown up to this time, and only one, Baroness de Laroche of France, had her pi lot’s license. The first American woman licensed was Harriet Quimby in 1911. Before the decade was out, both women were killed in flying accidents.
    * The ninety-eight-foot lighthouse, the oldest in the United States, is on Little Brewster Island in Boston Harbor.
    † The Belmont Park of today bears little resemblance to the original. In the 1950s the clubhouse was demolished and rebuilt, and the course closed between 1963 and 1968 for a $30.7 million renovation. The old grandstand suffered a similar fate to that of the clubhouse, and new parking lots and approach roads were constructed.
    * Nearly $5,000 was collected at the eleventh hour, with $3,000 coming from Gordon Bennett, but donations also came from the Aero Club and $500 from the brewing magnate Adolphus Busch, founder of Anheuser-Busch.

CHAPTER TWO
    Let’s Stick by the Ship
    Sunday, October 16, 1910
    When the balloonists began arriving for their meeting with Albert Lambert shortly before ten A.M., the local papers were in the lobby of the Jefferson Hotel. One story dominated the morning news, encapsulated by the headline in the St. Louis Republic : WELLMAN’S AIRSHIP MAY BE DESTROYED BY TERRIFIC GALE. Alongside the bleak article was the photograph of Wellman and his crew taken twenty-four hours earlier, just before they climbed up the rope ladder into the car, and underneath was another, slightly smaller headline: 100 DEAD IN STORM THAT SWEEPS CUBA. The hurricane had ripped through the Carib bean on Friday, killing scores and causing over a million dollars’ worth of damage in Havana alone when seas broke through the city’s Malecón seawall. Now, the paper warned, the hurricane was tearing up the eastern coast and the America airship was slap bang in its path.

    In the first hours after their departure from Atlantic City, everything had gone according to plan on board the America . Wellman stationed himself as lookout in the lifeboat, passing the time with Jack Irwin, the wireless operator, who had on two thick woolen earphone pads. The young Australian sent his first brief message at eleven A.M.: “We have sighted Long Island and are driving ahead into the northeast.” It was picked up by Robert Miller at the wireless station on Million Dollar Pier, where the families of the crew had assembled after the airship had disappeared from sight. Two hours later Irwin informed Miller that the fog was lifting, and at one P.M. he tapped out a message to their support team: “All did nobly. We are doing our best to repay you for your support.”
    Up in the car Simon was delighted to find that steering a ship in the air was exactly the same as steering a ship in the water. He had cut two circular holes in the celluloid windows to enhance his field of vision, and with the fog now gone he had a magnificent view of the ocean. With Vaniman and his two assistants aft in the engine room, and Wellman and Irwin down below in the lifeboat, Simon was left alone with his thoughts. Conversation was all but impossible because of the noise of the motors, but a few minutes after midday the engines stopped. Vaniman shouted through the speaking tube that it was nothing to worry about, just a bit of sand in the motor. Fred Aubert took advantage of the pause to prepare a round of ham sandwiches, and Wellman asked Irwin to send progress reports to the London Daily Telegraph , the New York Times , and the Chicago Record- Herald .
    The rest of the daylight hours had been unexceptional, but dusk revealed a disconcerting sight; illuminating the sky was a steady shower of red-hot sparks from the America ’s exhaust. The fireworks display was pretty, but if just one stray spark landed in some cranny of the airship, they would be blown to kingdom come. Wellman had rushed into the engine room, but Vaniman had just shrugged and reassured his skipper that they were perfectly safe.