My Airships Part 10

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-s.h.i.+p'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!

[Ill.u.s.tration: PHASE OF AN ACCIDENT]

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 Pa.s.sy they had been watching the flight of the air-s.h.i.+p. They had seen my fall, and immediately hastened to the spot. Then, having rescued me, they proceeded to rescue the air-s.h.i.+p.

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 compet.i.tion 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 pa.s.sed over the timekeepers'

heads at St Cloud, returning from my first trial on 13th July 1903--I should be powerless to hold the air-s.h.i.+p back.

Therefore I always dreaded the turn round the Eiffel Tower, looking on it as my princ.i.p.al danger. While never seeking to go high in my air-s.h.i.+ps--on the contrary, I hold the record for the low alt.i.tudes in a free balloon--in pa.s.sing 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-s.h.i.+p 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-s.h.i.+p's alt.i.tude, the manoeuvring of guide rope and s.h.i.+fting 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-s.h.i.+ps were intensified in the powerful "No. 5." As M. Jaures 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!

CHAPTER XIV

THE BUILDING OF MY "NO. 6"

On the very evening of my fall to the roof of the Trocadero hotels I gave out the specifications of a "Santos-Dumont, No. 6," and after twenty-two days of continuous labour it was finished and inflated.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 10]

The new balloon had the shape of an elongated ellipsoid (Fig. 10), 33 metres (110 feet) by its great axis and 6 metres (20 feet) by its small axis, terminated fore and aft by cones.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "No. 6." FIRST TRIP]

I now gave more care than ever to the devices on which I depended to maintain the balloon's rigidity of form. I had fallen to the roof of the Trocadero hotels by the fault of the smallest and most insignificant-looking piece of mechanism of the entire system--a weakened valve that let out the balloon's hydrogen. In very much the same way the fall of the first of all my air-s.h.i.+ps had been occasioned by the failure of a little air-pump.

In all my constructions, except the big-bellied balloon of the "No.

3," I had depended much on the interior compensating air balloon (Fig. 5, page 119) fed by air pump or rotary ventilator. Sewed like a closed patch pocket to the inside bottom of the great balloon, this compensating air balloon would remain flat and empty so long as the great balloon remained distended with its gas. Then, as hydrogen might be condensed from time to time by changes of alt.i.tude and temperature, the air pump or ventilator worked by the motor would begin to fill the compensating air balloon, make it take up more room inside the great balloon, and so keep the latter distended.

Inside the balloon of my "No. 6" I now sewed such a compensating balloon, capable of holding 60 cubic metres (2118 cubic feet). The ventilator that was to feed it formed practically a part of the motor itself. Revolving continually while the motor worked, it would serve air continually to the compensating balloon whether or not the latter would be able to hold it. What air it could not hold would escape through a comparatively weak valve ("Air Valve," Fig. 10) communicating with the outer atmosphere through the bottom of the air balloon, which was also the bottom of the great outer balloon.

To relieve the great balloon of its dilated hydrogen when necessary I supplied it with two of the best valves I could make ("Gas Valves,"

Fig. 10). These also communicated with the outer atmosphere. Imagine, now, that after a certain condensation of my hydrogen the interior compensating balloon should have filled up in part with air from the ventilator and so maintained the form of the great balloon rigid.

Shortly after, by a change of temperature or alt.i.tude, the hydrogen would begin to dilate again. Something would have to give way, or the balloon would burst in a "cold explosion." What ought to give way first?

Evidently the weaker air valve ("Air Valve," Fig. 10). Letting out part or all of the air in the interior balloon, it would relieve the tension of the swelling hydrogen; and only afterwards, should this not be sufficient, would the stronger gas valves (Fig. 10) let out precious hydrogen.

All three valves were automatic, opening outward on a given pressure from within. One of the hypotheses to account for the terrible accident to the unhappy Severo's dirigible "Pax"[A] is concerned with this all-important problem of valves. The "Pax," as originally constructed, had two. M. Severo, who was not a practical aeronaut, stopped up one of them with wax before starting on his first and last voyage. In view of the decreasing pressure of the atmosphere as one goes higher the ascent of a dirigible should always be slow and never great, for gas will expand on the rise of a few yards. It is quite different from the case of the spherical balloon, which has no interior pressure to withstand. A dirigible whose envelope is distended by great pressure depends on its valves not to burst. With one of its valves stopped with wax the "Pax"

was allowed to shoot up from the earth, and immediately its occupants seem to have lost their heads. Instead of checking their rapid rise one of them threw out ballast--a handful of which will send up a great spherical balloon perceptibly. The mechanician of Severo is said to have been last seen throwing out a whole bag in his excitement. Up shot the "Pax" higher and higher, and the expansion, the explosion, and the awful fall came as a chain of consequences.

[A] In the early morning of 12th May 1902 M. Augusto Severo, accompanied by his mechanician, Sachet, started from Paris on a first trial with the "Pax," the invention and construction of M. Severo. The "Pax" rose at once to a height almost double that of the Eiffel Tower, when, for reasons not precisely known, it exploded, and came cras.h.i.+ng to earth with its two pa.s.sengers. The fall took eight seconds to accomplish, and the luckless experimenters were picked up broken and shapeless ma.s.ses.

The tonnage of my new balloon was 630 cubic metres (22,239 cubic feet), affording an absolute lifting power of 690 kilogrammes (1518 lbs.), but the increased weight of the new motor and machinery, nevertheless, put my disposable ballast at 110 kilogrammes (242 lbs.). It was a four-cylinder motor of 12 horse-power, cooled automatically by the circulation of water round the top of the piston (cula.s.se). While the water cooler brought extra weight, I was glad to have it, for the arrangement would permit me to utilise, without fear of overheating or jamming _en route_, the full power of the motor, which was able to communicate to the propeller a traction effort of 66 kilogrammes (145 lbs.).

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN ACCIDENT TO "No. 6"]

My daily practice with the new air-s.h.i.+p ended, 6th September 1901, in a slight accident. The balloon was reinflated by 15th September, but four days later it crashed against a tree in making a too sudden turn. Such accidents I have always taken philosophically, looking on them as a kind of insurance against more terrible ones. Were I to give a single word of caution to all dirigible balloonists, it would be: "Keep close to earth."

The place of the air-s.h.i.+p is not in high alt.i.tudes, and it is better to catch in the tops of trees, as I used to do in the Bois de Boulogne, than to risk the perils of the upper air without the slightest practical advantage.

CHAPTER XV

WINNING THE DEUTSCH PRIZE

And now, 19th October 1901, the air-s.h.i.+p "Santos-Dumont No. 6," having been repaired with great celerity, I tried again for the Deutsch prize and won it.

On the day before the weather had been wretched. Nevertheless, I had sent out the necessary telegrams convoking the Commission. Through the night the weather had improved, but the atmospheric conditions at 2 o'clock in the afternoon--the hour announced for the trial--were, nevertheless, so unfavourable that of the twenty-five members composing the Commission only five made their appearance--MM. Deutsch (de la Meurthe), de Dion, Fonvielle, Besancon, and Aime.

The Central Meteorological Bureau, consulted at this hour by telephone, reported a south-east wind blowing 6 metres per second at the alt.i.tude of the Eiffel Tower. When I consider that I was content when my first air-s.h.i.+p in 1898 had, in the opinion of myself and friends, been going at the rate of 7 metres per second I am still surprised at the progress realised in those three years, for I was now setting out to win a race against a time limit in a wind blowing almost as fast as the highest speed I had realised in my first air-s.h.i.+p.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SCIENTIFIC COMMISSION OF AeRO CLUB AT THE WINNING OF THE DEUTSCH PRIZE]

The official start took place at 2.42 P.M. In spite of the wind striking me sidewise, with a tendency to take me to the left of the Eiffel Tower, I held my course straight to that goal. Gradually I drove the air-s.h.i.+p onward and upward to a height of about 10 metres above its summit. In doing this I lost some time, but secured myself against accidental contact with the Tower as much as possible.

As I pa.s.sed the Tower I turned with a sudden movement of the rudder, bringing the air-s.h.i.+p round the Tower's lightning conductor at a distance of about 50 metres from it. The Tower was thus turned at 2.51 P.M., the distance of 5-1/2 kilometres, _plus the turning_, being done in nine minutes.

The return trip was longer, being in the teeth of this same wind. Also, during the trip to the Tower the motor had worked fairly well. Now, after I had left it some 500 metres behind me, the motor was actually on the point of stopping. I had a moment of great uncertainty. I must make a quick decision. It was to abandon the steering wheel for a moment, at the risk of drifting from my course, in order to devote my attention to the carburating lever and the lever controlling the electric spark.

The motor, which had almost stopped, began to work again. I had now reached the Bois, where, by a phenomenon known to all aeronauts, the cool air from the trees began making my balloon heavier and heavier--or in true physics, smaller by condensation. By an unlucky coincidence the motor at this moment began slowing again. Thus the air-s.h.i.+p was descending, while its motive power was decreasing.

To correct the descent I had to throw back both guide rope and s.h.i.+fting weights. This caused the air-s.h.i.+p to point diagonally upward, so that what propeller-force remained caused it to remount continually in the air.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "No. 6." MAKING FOR EIFFEL TOWER; ALt.i.tUDE 1000 FEET]

I was now over the crowd of the Auteuil racetrack, already with a sharp pointing upward. I heard the applause of the mighty throng, when suddenly my capricious motor started working at full speed again. The suddenly-accelerated propeller being almost under the high-pointed air-s.h.i.+p exaggerated the inclination, so that the applause of the crowd changed to cries of alarm. As for myself, I had no fear, being over the trees of the Bois, whose soft greenery, as I have already stated, always rea.s.sured me.

All this happened very quickly--before I had a chance to s.h.i.+ft my weights and guide rope back to the normal horizontal positions. I was now at an alt.i.tude of 150 metres. Of course, I might have checked the diagonal mounting of the air-s.h.i.+p by the simple means of slowing the motor that was driving it upward; but I was racing against a time limit, and so I just went on.

I soon righted myself by s.h.i.+fting the guide rope and the weights forward. I mention this in detail because at the time many of my friends imagined something terrible was happening. All the same, I did not have time to bring the air-s.h.i.+p to a lower alt.i.tude before reaching the timekeepers in the Aero Club's grounds--a thing I might easily have done by slowing the motor. This is why I pa.s.sed so high over the judges'

heads.

On my way to the Tower I never looked down on the house-tops of Paris: I navigated in a sea of white and azure, seeing nothing but the goal. On the return trip I had kept my eyes fixed on the verdure of the Bois de Boulogne and the silver streak of river where I had to cross it. Now, at my high alt.i.tude of 150 metres and with the propeller working at full power, I pa.s.sed above Longchamps, crossed the Seine, and continued on at full speed over the heads of the Commission and the spectators gathered in the Aero Club's grounds. At that moment it was eleven minutes and thirty seconds past three o'clock, making the time exactly twenty-nine minutes and thirty-one seconds.

The air-s.h.i.+p, carried by the impetus of its great speed, pa.s.sed on as a racehorse pa.s.ses the winning-post, as a sailing yacht pa.s.ses the winning-line, as a road racing automobile continues flying past the judges who have snapped its time. Like the jockey of the racehorse, I then turned and drove myself back to the aerodrome to have my guide rope caught and be drawn down at twelve minutes forty and four-fifths seconds past three, or thirty minutes and forty seconds from the start.