Aircraft and Submarines. Willis J. Abbot
Seine embankment, I now found myself hanging in my wicker basket high up in the courtyard of the Trocadero hotels, supported by my airship's keel, that stood braced at an angle of about forty-five 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 (the town where the idea of a keel first suggested itself) had saved my life!
After what seemed tedious waiting, I saw a 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 airship. They had seen my fall and immediately hastened to the spot. Then, having rescued me, they proceeded to rescue the airship.
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!
The later balloon "No. VI." with which Santos-Dumont won the Deutsch prize may fairly be taken as his conception of the finished type of dirigible for one man. In fact his aspirations never soared as high as those of Count Zeppelin, and the largest airship he ever planned—called "the Omnibus"—carried only four men. It is probable that the diversion of his interest from dirigibles to airplanes had most to do with his failure to carry his development further than he did. "No. VI." was 108 feet long, and 20 feet in diameter with an eighteen-horse-power gasoline engine which could drive it at about nineteen miles an hour. Naturally the aeronaut's first thought in his new construction was of the valves. The memory of the anxious minutes spent perched on the window-sill of the Trocadero Hotel or dangling like a spider at the end of the firemen's rope were still fresh. The ballonet which had failed him in "No. V." was perfected in its successor. Notwithstanding the care with which she was constructed the prize-winner turned out to be a rather unlucky ship. On her trial voyage she ran into a tree and was damaged, and even on the day of her greatest conquest she behaved badly. The test was made on October 1, 1901. The aeronaut had rounded the Tower finely and was making for home when the motor began to miss and threatened to stop altogether. While Santos-Dumont was tinkering with the engine, leaving the steering wheel to itself, the balloon drifted over the Bois de Boulogne. As usual the cool air from the wood caused the hydrogen in the balloon to contract and the craft dropped until it appeared the voyage would end in the tree tops. Hastily shifting his weights the aeronaut forced the prow of the ship upwards to a sharp angle with the earth. Just at this moment the reluctant engine started up again with such vigour that for a moment the ship threatened to assume a perpendicular position, pointing straight up in the sky. A cry went up from the spectators below who feared a dire catastrophe was about to end a voyage which promised success. But with incomparable sang-froid the young Brazilian manipulated the weights, restored the ship to the horizontal again without stopping the engines, and reached the finishing stake in time to win the prize. Soon after it was awarded him the Brazilian Government presented him with another substantial prize, together with a gold medal bearing the words: Por ceos nunca d'antes navegados ("Through heavens hitherto unsailed").
In a sense the reference to the heavens is a trifle over-rhetorical. Santos-Dumont differed from all aviators (or pilots of airplanes) and most navigators of dirigibles in always advocating the strategy of staying near the ground. In his flights he barely topped the roofs of the houses, and in his writings he repeatedly refers to the sense of safety that came to him when he knew he was close to the tree tops of a forest. This may have been due to the fact that in his very first flight in a dirigible he narrowly escaped a fatal accident due to flying too high. As he descended, the gas which had expanded now contracted. The balloon began to collapse in the middle. Cords subjected to unusual stress began to snap. The air pump, which should have pumped the ballonet full of air to keep the balloon rigid failed to work. Seeing that he was about to fall into a field in which his drag rope was already trailing the imperilled airman had a happy thought. Some boys were there flying kites. He shouted to them to seize his rope and run against the wind. The balloon responded to the new force like a kite. The rapidity of its fall was checked, and its pilot landed with only a serious shaking.
But thereafter Santos-Dumont preached the maxim—rare among airmen—"Keep near the ground. That way lies safety!" Most aviators however, prefer the heights of the atmosphere, as the sailor prefers the wide and open sea to a course near land.
After winning the Deutsch prize, Santos-Dumont continued for a time to amuse himself with dirigibles. I say "amuse" purposely, for never did serious aeronaut get so much fun out of a rather perilous pastime as he. In his "No. IX." he built the smallest dirigible ever known. The balloon had just power enough to raise her pilot and sixty-six pounds more beside a three-horse-power motor. But she attained a speed of twelve miles an hour, was readily handled, and it was her owner's dearest delight to use her for a taxicab, calling for lunch at the cafés in the Bois, and paying visits to friends upon whom he looked in, literally, at their second-story windows. He ran her in and out of her hangar as one would a motor-car from its garage. One day he sailed down the Avenue des Champs Élysées at the level of the second-and third-story windows of the palaces that line that stately street. Coming to his own house he descended, made fast, and went in to déjeuner, leaving his aërial cab without. In the city streets he steered mainly by aid of a guide rope trailing behind him. With this he turned sharp corners, went round the Arc de Triomphe, and said: "I might have guide-roped under it had I thought myself worthy." On occasion he picked up children in the streets and gave them a ride.
Though before losing his interest in dirigibles Santos-Dumont carried the number of his construction up to ten, he cannot be said to have devised any new and useful improvements after his "No. VI." The largest of his ships was "No. X.," which had a capacity of eighty thousand cubic feet—about ten times the size of the little runabout with which he played pranks in Paris streets. In this balloon he placed partitions to prevent the gas shifting to one part of the envelope, and to guard against losing it all in the event of a tear. The same principle was fundamental in Count Zeppelin's airships. In 1904 he brought a dirigible to the United States expecting to compete for a prize at the St. Louis Exposition. But while suffering exasperating delay from the red-tape which enveloped the exposition authorities, he discovered one morning that his craft had been mutilated almost beyond repair in its storage place. In high dudgeon he left at once for Paris. The explanation of the malicious act has never been made clear, though many Americans had an uneasy feeling that the gallant and sportsman-like Brazilian had been badly treated in our land. On his return to Paris he at once began experimenting with heavier-than-air machines. Of his work with them we shall give some account later.
Despite his great personal popularity the airship built by Santos-Dumont never appealed to the French military authorities. Probably this was largely due to the fact that he never built one of a sufficient size to meet military tests. The amateur in him was unconquerable. While von Zeppelin's first ship was big enough to take the air in actual war the Frenchman went on building craft for one or two men—good models for others to seize and build upon, but nothing which a war office could actually adopt. But he served his country well by stimulating the creation of great companies who built largely upon the foundations he had laid.
First and greatest of these was the company formed by the Lebaudy Brothers, wealthy sugar manufacturers. Their model was semi-rigid, that is, provided with an inflexible keel or floor to the gas bag, which was cigar shaped. The most successful of the earlier ships was 190 feet long, with a car suspended by cables ten feet below the balloon and carrying the twin motors, together with passengers and supplies. Although it made many voyages without accident, it finally encountered what seems to be the chief peril of dirigible balloons, being torn from its moorings at Châlons and dashed against trees to the complete demolition of its envelope. Repaired in eleven weeks she was taken over by the French Department of War, and was in active service at the beginning of the war. Her two successors on the company's building ways were less fortunate. La Patrie, after many successful trips, and manœuvres with the troops, was insecurely moored at Verdun, the famous fortress where she was to have been permanently stationed. Came up a heavy gale. Her anchors began to drag. The bugles sounded and the soldiers by hundreds rushed from the fort to aid. Hurled along by the wind she dragged the soldiers after her. Fearing