First flights of Ottawa - Episode Two
In the previous episode, we took a look back more than 150 years to the City of Ottawa’s first aerial ascents — coal gas and hot air balloons that allowed the first men and women to look down upon the streets, structures and rivers of this growing Victorian city. These flights were often dangerous and always at the whim of the winds. But soon a new kind of machine would be demonstrated to the good people of Ottawa - one that looked more like a bird than a jellyfish.
The balloon ascents of the 19th and early 20th centuries made by Thaddeus Lowe, Miss Carlotta, the Lowandas and Professor Grimley (See Episode One) were more theatre than technology, more hustle than promise. Ascending was not flying. Not like a bird anyway. Ottawans, like everyone who read the papers around the world had been following the flying exploits of a new generation of “bird men” and even “bird women” for the better part of a decade. Though possibly a few lucky folks had witnessed a flight of one of these new-fangled flying machines in some other location, the vast majority on the citizenry of Ottawa had never seen such an inspiring sight as a man flying like a bird. Despite the fact that writers had never seen an airplane, the newspapers from 1909 to 1911 contained stories that tried to explain the science behind flight including a full-page article in The Citizen on January 15, 1910 which stated in part:
“There are three practical forms of aerial craft: The balloon, the dirigible balloon and the aeroplane, or as Dr. Graham Bell more correctly calls it, the aerodrome. There is another form, called the helicopter, but this has not yet succeeded in making a flight. Between the lighter-than-air machine and the heavier-than-air machine the advantages now seem to rest with the latter.”
A flying machine was such a new concept that Ottawans could be easily persuaded that George Lohner’s massive 60-foot long flying contraption (See Episode One) was going to lift four people on its first flight and take them from Lansdowne Park on a twenty kilometre joyride on its first flight. There was hardly a person in Ottawa who understood how aerodynamics allowed for flight or just what an aeroplane should really look like. Any new and strange ideas were thought credible or even possible. The Citizen reported in 1909 about an unidentified Lohner-esque Toronto man building a “revolutionary” new kind of aeroplane:
“Man Now Building Fine New Aeroplane Which He Claims Will Be Famous. Initial Flight at Toronto Exhibition
Secretly, behind locked doors and barred windows, free from all prying eyes and inquisitive glances, there is a Toronto man laboring day and the greater part of the night upon an aeroplane that he claims will not only make him world-famous as an aviator, but will place Canada foremost among nations in the world of aviation.
This aeroplane will be finished in a couple of weeks he says, and its initial flight will be made during the exhibition. This machine, the inventor said, would revolutionize the aeroplane. It is prepared upon entirely new lines, the secret of which he most jealously guards day and night, letting no person near his obscure workshop, doing all the laboring himself.
The aeroplane, it is said, will not be any larger than a medium size. It will carry three people, and can stay in the air for more than half a day. At high speed it will travel thirty miles an hour and it is run by a four-cylinder gasoline engine.”
Another case in point is this story from the Ottawa Citizen on July 10, 1910 entItled AN OTTAWA INVENTOR:
“Gyroscope Aeroplane Which He Says Will Succeed
Mr. Joshua B. Toombs, of 385 Laurier avenue west, says he is the inventor of a new aeroplane with which he hopes to win the $15,000 which Andrew Carnegie has offered to the inventor of a successful twin engine aeroplane. The outstanding feature of his invention, besides the fact that there are two engines, is that a gyroscope is employed for balancing purposes instead of the usual planes. He states that he has already made a successful working model on a scale of an inch to a foot and is only waiting for the capital to build a trial aeroplane itself.
Such an aeroplane, if built, would be a biplane like a Wright machine, except for a peculiar curve which the planes possess. It would be forty feet across and twenty feet in length. Two 60 horsepower gasoline engines would furnish the motive power and each would have a separate tank. There would be two gyroscopes, one between the engines and the other in the tail of the machine. Mr. Toombs has calculated that his aeroplane when completed would weigh 1,200 pounds and would lift four persons besides the driver. Two lateral rudders and a horizontal plane would provide means of steering.”
These stories were reported on with such credulity that one wonders if they qualified as journalism at all. The unidentified man remained unidentified and Joshua Bower Toombs’ aeroplane idea was never mentioned again in any newspaper that I can find. His First World War service records indicate that he was a sheet metal worker and that he joined the Railway Supply Detachment of the Canadian Army Service Corps, attached to the Canadian Light Horse and spent his four years in the army entirely on the ground.
Ottawans devoured stories of the risks and horrors which pioneering aviators experienced. One such story in the Ottawa Evening Journal of November, 19, 1910 was entitled “HOW I DODGED DEATH SAILING THE UPPER AIR — Thrilling Stories of Their Most Perilous Flights By Noted Aviators” which was accompanied by a list called Death Toll of the Air, featuring a chronological listing of the 26 men who had been killed in the air since the first one — Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge. Ottawa was as ready to see a real flyer as people in Las Vegas were ready to see Evil Knievel jump the fountain at Caesar’s Palace in 1967. In September of 1911, Ottawans would see for the first time what an aeroplane should look like and witness a daring young man rise from a sheep meadow near Lansdowne Park and into the local history books.
Ottawa’s First Flight
It was the summer of 1911, two and a half years since the first powered flight took place in Canada 1,000 miles to the east at Baddeck, Nova Scotia and eight years since the Wright Brothers first tentative flights at Kittyhawk, North Carolina. The Ottawa Citizen and The Ottawa Journal kept Ottawans informed of the growing lists of daring feats and milestone firsts in aviation and the citizenry clamoured to witness a bird man fly into the air in a machine designed to do so.
Stories of the exploits of these bird men or aeronauts abounded nearly every day in the weeks leading to the first Ottawa flight. For instance, on August 8, The Journal ran a story about “Lieut. de Conneau of the French army, who flies under the name of Beaumont. He won the Daily Mail $50,000 prize for a circuit per aeroplane, of England and Scotland — 1010 miles. He beat his only competitor by an hour and 10 minutes.”
On August 17, The Ottawa Citizen ran an article about handsome Bostonian aviator Harry Atwood who made a journey of over 1,000 miles flying from St. Louis to Chicago and then to Washington, where he landed his Burgess-Wright aeroplane on the South Lawn of the White House. There he was greeted by President Taft.
For several years, the citizens of Ottawa could only read about these audacious aerial performers in their daily broadsheets. The world outside was witnessing first hand the aerial feats of a growing cast of theatrical and swashbuckling pilots (some of whom took on stage names) who were fast becoming household names. The Ottawa newspapers of 1910-11 were replete with their exploits and tragedies. It was only a matter of time before one of these pioneering pilots took his craft up into the skies above Ottawa. Two of these early aviators covered in the local newspapers were: Left: Harry Atwood, an American engineer and inventor known for pioneering work in the early days of aviation, including setting long-distance flying records and flying the first delivery of air mail in New England. Right: André Beaumont, a pseudonym of Jean Louis Conneau (1880-1937), a French aviation pioneer, naval Lieutenant, and flying boat manufacturer. In 1911 he won three of the toughest aeronautical tests: the 'Paris-Rome' race, the first Circuit d'Europe, and the Daily Mail Circuit of Britain Race. By 1911, Ottawa was impatiently waiting for one of the many new “aeronauts” to come to the city and demonstrate what they all had been reading about.
In the context of these stories of aviation firsts, flying accidents, tragedies and rich monetary prizes, it was decided by the organizers of the Central Canada Exhibition that it was about time they brought a real flying machine to Ottawa and have it demonstrated before the crowd at the Grandstand.
This was during the first era of aviation – before the technological advancements which a military application would bring in the coming world war. It was a period where, truthfully, the only real use for an airplane was to show it off in front of people. Airplanes had not yet found a use, or at least were incapable of utility — cargo, paying passengers, cameras and weapons were all in the near future. Owners and designers of airplanes and the pilots who flew them were by and large performers looking to demonstrate their flying machines for money, to win large purses for distance flights or races and rarely were they flying them around the countryside for the sport of it. The only flying employment that could be found was being paid to fly in front of audiences unfamiliar with flying machines.
1911 — The Aeronauts Are Coming, The Aeronauts Are Coming
Days before the opening of the Central Canada Exhibition that year, just who would be paid to conduct flying demonstrations at the Ex was still up in the air — no pun intended. At first it was thought that J.A.D. McCurdy himself, Canada’s first aviator, would be the hero at the Grandstand. A report in The Ottawa Journal a month before the Ex had stated:
“McCURDY PROMISED
Will Fly Here During the ExhibitionJ. A. D. McCurdy, the Canadian birdman, will be the aviator who will make daily flights at the Central Canada fair this September. A special arrangement has been made with Secretary McMahon through which Ottawans will have an opportunity of witnessing flights by a man of international reputation, head and shoulders above other Canadians in the field of aviation, holder of some of the most coveted records the science has to offer.”
People were really looking forward to seeing the Canadian hero in person, but as the Exhibition approached, it seemed his schedule would not permit it. With just a few days to go, The Journal announced that it would be Charles Willard flying instead of McCurdy:
“There is much interest this year in the announcement that Mr. Charles F. Willard, a well known aviator, will be seen here. In this connection, a few words regarding him will be of interest. The aviator is of international reputation., being not less a person than Charles F. Willard of the McCurdy-Willard Aeroplane Company. He will perform twice daily, starting in an open space in front of the grand stand. Circling around until he gains sufficient altitude, the bird man may be watched very closely by the crowds on Lansdowne park before he starts in his several miles of flight. His course across the city will be a spectacle that will make the Ottawa Fair of 1911 long remembered. This feature, thrilling and delightful to behold, illustrates the most marvelous of recent scientific achievements.”
Charles Foster Willard was originally scheduled to be the first man to fly in Ottawa, but was hit by lightning in Louisville, Kentucky the week before. Photo: City of Toronto Archives
Unbeknownst to The Ottawa Journal at the time of printing, Willard had been injured when he was struck by lightning in his tent hangar a week before. With just two days to go before the opening of the fair, two other groups of aviators arrived at Ottawa’s Union Station with their crated aircraft and plans to make flying demonstrations. George Mestach and his friends Wilmer and Gressiers had come up from Quebec City where, at the end of August they were contracted to perform at the Quebec Provincial Exhibition. The Montreal Gazette reported on September 4, 1911:
“ Round trip from Exhibition to Plains of Abraham. Quebec, September 3. — Mestach, the French [sic] aviator, who has been making flights daily at the exhibition, performed another sensational flight today, when he left the Exhibition grounds, flew to the Plains of Abraham, and, circling round, returned to the grounds. Earlier in the week, Mestach had flown from the grounds [Northeast of the city centre] over the city, circling the Champlain and Laval monuments.”
Their aircraft was an oil-spattered Morane-Borel monoplane with a single wing braced from a central post ahead of the pilot. This particular aircraft had recently been purchased from the world famous and heroically moustachioed French long-distance aeronaut, Jules Charles Toussaint Védrines, the first man to fly faster than 100 mph. The aircraft, having won purses and impressed people on both sides of the Atlantic was both a thoroughbred and a workhorse.
Also arriving around the same time was another small troupe of aviators under the leadership of Thomas Baldwin, a highly experienced aviator who designed the aircraft they were to exhibit. This aircraft, called the Red Devil, with its bright red framework and yellow wings contrasted sharply with the rougher condition of the Morane-Borel. Baldwin brought along with him a mechanic, and a few days later he was joined by a less-experienced but eager pilot named Lee Hammond, 20-years old from Boston, Massachusetts. Thomas Scott Baldwin was an American aviator and inventor. He is considered the father of the modern parachute and the American dirigible. Baldwin designed and built all his own aircraft including the Red Devils. A volunteer for the US Army during WWI, he was commissioned Captain, Aviation Section, US Signal Corps and rose to the rank of major. After the war, he went to work for the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. His most famous invention remains the Goodyear Blimp.
Somehow the groups either got their wires crossed or misinterpreted a communication from the organizers of the Central Canada Exhibition who possibly had been scrambling to find a replacement for McCurdy. Both entourages set up shop at a meadow across the Rideau Canal from Lansdowne Park known as Slattery’s Field, but after some discussion, the Morane-Borel group bowed out of the Lansdowne demonstrations. Mestach and Wilmer would remain in Ottawa another week with Wilmer offering to fly for the sum of $500.00 from Slattery’s Field over downtown Ottawa, circle the Parliament Buildings and the city of Hull across the Ottawa River. It did not seem that anyone took him up on the offer though as there is no record of such a feat.
Belgian aviation pioneer Georges Mestach at the controls of a Morane-Borel monoplane. Mestach, along with French aviator Romain Gressier and American John Wilmer (AKA Jean Wilmer, aircraft owner) were acting as a sort of troupe of aeronauts moving about North America and demonstrating the wonders of aviation at fairs and other municipal events. They also believed they had a contract in place to display at the annual Central Canada Exhibition in 1911 and brought their aeroplane to Ottawa by train to do just that. At Slattery’s Field, there was some discussion about who would have the honour and remuneration for flying the demonstrations at Lansdowne. In the end, Baldwin and Hammond won out. Here, the dashing Mestach can be seen sitting in his Morane in Grant Park, Chicago with a crowd of people in the background. This image was taken around the time of the International Aviation Meet held in Grant Park, August 12-20, 1911. Mestach appears to be wearing a pair of automobile inner tubes, perhaps anticipating being thrown from the cockpit over Lake Michigan. It was at this event that Mestach had met Lee Hammond and Thomas Baldwin. Photo: Chicago History Museum
John Wilmer (AKA Jean Wilmer), pilot and apparent owner of the Morane-Borel that conflicted with Baldwin and Hammond’s Red Devil. In addition to aviation, his favourite pastime was embezzlement. This photo comes from the archives of Westchester County which documented criminal convictions. John Wilmer (Martine) was convicted of grand larceny in the first degree in the County Court of Westchester. He was charged with having stolen from Belle Schreyer, a wealthy widow, diamonds and jewelry of the value of $1500 on October 16, 1912. Wilmer had no record at the time but had been charged with theft by his former employer, haberdasher W.A. McLaughlin Fine Shirt Maker of Fifth Avenue, New York City, where he was a salesman in 1906. Because at the time he was popular with wealthy New York society and rumored to have been engaged to the daughter of a former U.S. Senator, Ruth Mason of Illinois, he received parole. His subsequent employer also accused him of embezzlement however no formal charges were ever brought. Wilmer was well known in New York society, a stage performer of multiple talents, actor, vaudevillian and contortionist among them. A 1913 letter from attorney, Matthew Stern, enlisted for assistance in Wilmer's appeal, described him as "about 32 years old, married with 3 children, a graduate of the University of Virginia, spoke three or four languages, is a licensed aviator and a man of some histrionic ability". Letters from Wilmer confirm Stern's assessment of a penchant for the dramatic, images of him in this collection confirm his ability as an aviator, however his command of languages, education and number of children could not be verified. Wilmer's crime has all of the trappings of an early 20th century stage play. The cast of characters include: Belle Schreyer, the wealthy Westchester widow in her late fifties who enjoyed the company of younger men and Robert Miller, the naive young man who was acquainted with Schreyer and taken under the wing of Wilmer and convinced to be party to robbing her. The crime involved premeditated planning, coordination with trolley and train schedules, elite establishments in Westchester, including the Park Hotel in Larchmont and the Robin Hood Inn in New Rochelle, disguise (a moustache worn by Wilmer as he stalked the widow), chloroform for drugging Schreyer and a host of accomplices who provided false alibi's for Wilmer. Wilmer served a light sentence for his crime after Miller turned State's witness against him and was released in 1915 after suffering health complications in prison. Source: https://collections.westchestergov.com/
The Morane-Borel monoplane brought to Ottawa for the purposes of demonstrating the wonders of flight was the very same aircraft used by world-famous French long-distance aviator Jules Védrines (above) to win the $50,000.00 Daily Mail Prize that summer as well as the Paris to Madrid Race in May where “Women Showered Kisses and Roses upon [him]”. In the same aircraft, he also won a $100,000.00 prize in June for a Paris-Madrid-Turin race. Ottawans had been reading about his exploits all summer and now his aeroplane was in Ottawa, albeit with new owner John Wilmer. Photo: Ville de Vincennes, France
The very same aircraft that Georges Mestach and his entourage brought to Ottawa 110 years ago is now part of the world class collection of the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, just a few kilometres from Slattery’s Field. According the CASM website, “This Borel-Morane [The museum chose to reverse the order of the type’s name as it appears this way in their provenance records-Ed] is the only surviving aircraft of its type in the world and the oldest surviving aircraft to have flown in Canada. It was imported to the United States from France in 1912 by Georges Mestach, a Belgian exhibition pilot, and Ernest Mathis, Mestach’s manager and mechanic. Mestach and Mathis exhibited the aircraft across North America, with stops that included Quebec City, Sherbrooke and Winnipeg. The aircraft crashed several times, once in Winnipeg, where the harsh prairie winds proved too much for the Borel-Morane. Another crash occurred during an air meet in Chicago, and resulted in North America’s first midair collision fatality. Earl S. Daugherty, an American exhibition pilot, then acquired and flew the aircraft and it remained in his family’s possession until the Museum purchased it in 2002.” Photo: R L Kitterman at Deviant Art
Slattery’s Field, where both troupes had set up their camps is believed by most researchers to be a sheep and cattle meadow to the west of Main Street in what was then called Ottawa East (now Old Ottawa East). The meadow, owned by an Irish Canadian farmer, local politician and businessman named Bernard “Barnie” Slattery, was bordered by the Rideau Canal to the west, and what is now Main Street to the east. There is some confusion as to where exactly Slattery’s Field was, some believing the field was to the south of Riverdale Avenue where the neighbourhood of Rideau Gardens is today. Perhaps the problem of identifying where Slattery’s Field was lies in the fact that a plaque commemorating these early flights is in a more publicly accessible location on the wall of an Ottawa Hydro substation on the west side of Main Street but south of Riverdale.
Though the land between the Rideau River and the Rideau Canal has been fully developed for many decades, it was, in 1911, mostly pasture and farmed crop fields. Slattery owned several sizeable lots in the area where Riverdale meets Main Street today. The area marked in yellow is recognized by Ottawa East researchers as the sheep and cattle meadow come airfield known as Slattery’s Field. This aerial photo from the 1930s looking North shows the location of Slattery’s Field. At the far left, we can make out the horse-racing track in front of the grandstand at Lansdowne Park where curious and excited citizens of Ottawa gathered during the 1911 Central Canada Exhibition for the chance to see Lee Hammond fly Baldwin’s Red Devil aeroplane. Slattery’s Field would have been no more than a 20 second flight from Lansdowne Park, even for a slow-moving contraption like the Red Devil. Images via http://history.ottawaeast.ca/
The location today of Slattery’s Field today.
Although this photo was taken in 1898, 13 years before Hammond’s flight, Slattery’s Field looked much the same in 1911, including the livestock. Photo: Library and Archives Canada
A plaque mounted to the exterior wall of the Hydro substation at the southwest corner of Riverdale Avenue and Main Street is the only clue to the place where the first airplanes appeared in Ottawa. Though it is sited to be accessible to the greatest number of people it is also a misleading location for the plaque. Though Slattery’s farmhouse was directly across the street from where the plaque is today, his section of land, the one now known as Slattery’s Field, was farther north of Riverdale Avenue. Photo: Dave O’Malley
Slattery’s home on Riverdale Avenue was still there up to the 1990s, but was destroyed by fire in 1993. Photo: OldOttawaSouth.ca
The first flights.
While the Wilmer/Mestach group looked for ways to make some flying appearance money before they decamped for the United States, Baldwin and an unidentified mechanic set up a large canvas tent for a hangar and began assembling the intricate and box-kite-like Red Devil, bolting together it’s novel steel framework, tightening its myriad wires, and testing its Hall-Scott V-8 motor that would soon push the colourful machine into local history at a thrilling 60 mph.
Although Baldwin was a highly experienced pilot, aeronautical innovator and pioneer aviation legend, the coming flights at Landsdowne were billed in the local papers as a kind, of circus act opening for Vaudeville performers, acrobats and comedians. And even though Baldwin was so highly experienced, it would be the younger Lee Hammond who would be making the flying demonstrations at Lansdowne throughout the Exhibition. Hammond was a boyhood chum of the aforementioned Harry Atwood and had just learned to fly in June. On the day of the first scheduled flight demonstration Hammond arrived from New York by train fresh from a flying event in Brooklyn where he very nearly lost his life.
The two aviation pioneers who brought the Red Devil aircraft to demonstrate in Ottawa before crowds at Lansdowne Park were Thomas Scott Baldwin (left), designer and builder of the Red Devil aircraft series and recently trained pilot Edward Lee Hammond. Baldwin was a pioneer balloonist, aeronautical inventor and U.S. Army major during World War I. He was the first American to descend from a balloon by parachute. He held three pilot certificates: Balloon Pilot Certificate No. 1, Airship Pilot Certificate No. 9 and Airplane Pilot Certificate No. 7, all issued by the Aero Club of America. Hammond had soloed his first airplane just three months previous to his Ottawa performances Photos: Smithsonian Institution
Thomas Scott Baldwin was more than your average aeronaut in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was an experimenter, inventor and risk taker as he developed the concept of the dirigible… essentially a balloon that could be propelled and steered. Unlike many of the early balloonist performers, he did not call himself “Professor”, though he more than any qualified for the title. Here we see one of his paid pilots (likely Lincoln Beachy) at the turn of the century clambering along the central truss suspended beneath the gas bag of his California Arrow dirigible. Weight shifting was his only pitch control. At the left end of the truss is the slowly spinning propeller.
Thomas Scott Baldwin (right) was pilot during this Army Signal Corps Dirigible No. 1 trial at Fort Myers, Florida in 1908 with Glenn Hammond Curtiss (left) managing the water-cooled, four-cylinder engine. With this engine, the dirigible was capable of speeds up to 20 miles per hour. Curtiss and Baldwin collaborated on many projects throughout their careers. Photo: Historical Society of Quincy & Adams County
In 1911 “aeronauts” were largely thought of as Evil-Knievel-like daredevils, grouped with circus performers and Vaudeville acts. Lee Hammond’s upcoming flights at the grandstand show were a warm-up for popular variety shows from the stage at the Grandstand. Ottawa had waited a long time to witness the wonder of aerial flight. Image: Ottawa Journal, 1911
On September 10th, 1911, just the day before he arrived in Ottawa, Lee Hammond had a rather terrifying accident in New York City. He joined British pilot and future aircraft designer Tommy Sopwith as a passenger aboard his British-built Howard Wright 1910 biplane. Shortly after taking off from and circling the Brighton Beach racetrack, Sopwith flew out over the water crowded with bathers at which time he lost engine power and was forced down from 200 feet into the cold waters of Rockaway Inlet. Both men were rescued, but for Hammond it was a close-run thing, nearly drowning under the upturned aircraft. A New York Tribune piece the following day seemed to mock the flying that on the 10th as there were numerous accidents:
“In spite of as glorious a day for flight as ever graced these parts the Brighton Beach aviators spent most of yesterday afternoon putting aeroplanes out of business and slapping death on the back. Tom Sopwith and a passenger in a Wright biplane [not related to the Wright brothers - Ed] turned a somersault into the ocean off the Brighton Beach Casino.
While Brighton Beach bathers bob in the waves, lifesaving boats deal with the aftermath of Sopwith and Hammond’s crash in the Howard Wright 1910 Biplane the day before Hammond entrained for Ottawa. Image via New York Tribune
In the short time between Baldwin’s instruction and his performances at Ottawa, Hammond had crashed twice into bodies of water. In addition to the events at Brighton Beach, a month earlier at the Chicago International Aviation Meet, he crashed into Lake Michigan, three miles off shore (Baldwin posted a reward for the recovery of the machine which was retrieved on August 24). Hammond’s friend Bill Badger, also part of the Baldwin troupe at the meet, was killed in an identical Red Devil and fellow aviator St. Croix Johnstone crashed and drowned in Lake Michigan. After losing his first aircraft, Hammond was given another, which he promptly damaged a few days later. It was a deadly business indeed.
As if to underscore the dangers of flying in machines like the Red Devil and the persistence of aviation pioneers like Baldwin and Hammond, another pilot and protegé of Baldwin’s by the name of William R. Badger (above) was killed when flying an identical Baldwin Red Devil just four weeks before Baldwin brought one to Ottawa. Apparently, one of the propeller blades had failed in flight and Badger crashed at an international aviation meet in Chicago. Hammond himself crashed an airplane into Lake Michigan the day before at the same event and J. A. D. McCurdy crashed his airplane after hitting electrical wires.
In early September, at an agricultural fair at Staten Island, he had a “minor smashup” which was then followed by his near-drowning in Rockaway Inlet, Brooklyn a week later on September 10. Given the fact that Hammond had only flown less than three months and had four flying accidents in that time, it is a wonder he still persisted in flying from strange airfields in strange towns. Such was the nature of the first aviators. The Ottawa Citizen reported that Hammond had, as of the date of his arrival, nearly two years of flying experience, but according to the Smithsonian’s Harold E. Morehouse Flying Pioneers Biographies Collection, Morehouse writes that both Badger and Hammond had learned to fly in the summer of 1911. Like a lot of early aviators, it seems Baldwin and Hammond wanted to lend more credibility to their stories by embellishing their credentials or perhaps the reporting was not so accurate.
Tom Baldwin (Left) and aviator Lee Hammond with the Red Devil in another location. The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum website states: After making a reputation with lighter-than-air craft, Thomas Scott Baldwin turned to heavier-than-air flying machines in 1909. By 1911 he had built several airplanes and had gained extensive experience as an exhibition pilot. He began testing a new airplane in the spring of 1911. It was similar to the basic Curtiss pusher design that was becoming quite popular with builders by this time, but it was innovative in that it had steel-tube structural components. It was powered by a 60-horsepower Hall-Scott V-8. Baldwin called his new machine the Red Devil III, and thereafter each of his airplanes would be known as a Baldwin Red Devil. Baldwin built approximately six Red Devils. Most were powered by the Hall-Scott, but Curtiss engines were also occasionally used. By mid-1911, Baldwin was training pilots, taking up passengers, and performing regularly with Red Devil aircraft at air meets. He advertised Red Devils for sale into 1913. Using a Baldwin Red Devil, Hammond made the first-ever flight in the Philippines a few months after performing for crowds at Lansdowne Park. Photo: Collection of Shellie Brodie Nelson, via filipiknow.net
Of course, there are no living eye witnesses to Lee Hammond’s flights over Lansdowne Park and Ottawa. All that can be found concerning what happened for the duration of his and Baldwin’s stay in the city comes from the records in Ottawa’s two broadsheet dailies. For that reason, I will simply quote these historic record for the facts they share and the period flavour of their phrasing.
Monday, September 11th, Ottawa Journal
Daring Aviator Arrives
“Less than twelve hours ago Lee Hammond, a noted and daring young aeronaut was climbing from under the debris of a big Wright biplane in the waters of Coney Island. This afternoon he is already to make flights in a Baldwin bi-plane at the Exhibition grounds. He came in at noon today and after engaging a room at the Russell Hotel [on the present day site of the National War Memorial - Ed.] made haste in a cab to get his machine in readiness. Three weeks ago Hammond was flitting over Lake Michigan some 300 odd feet up when the motor got cranky, and two seconds afterwards he was entangled in the wooden wings and other pieces of his flying machine with a broken ankle, bruises, cuts etc. galore. This time a United States Revenue cutter picked him up. What was left of his machine arrived in New York a few days ago by fast express.
Same Day, Ottawa Citizen
“OTTAWA MAY SEE FIRST AVIATOR
Ottawans will be treated to their first aeroplane flight this afternoon at one o’clock or thereabouts, if conditions are favourable for flying.
This was the statement made to The Citizen last night by Henry Meyeroff of New York, the impresario who arranged to bring an aviator here in connection with the Central Canada Exhibition.”
The Red Devil, piloted by Lee Hammond rises near the Rideau River on Monday, September 11, 1911 from the open meadow known as Slattery’s Field. The caption accompanying this image states that it was the “Start of the first Aeroplane flight ever made in Ottawa. Photo: Ottawa Citizen, September 12, 1911
This photo is of Baldwin flying his Red Devil in another time and place, but this would have been the scene awaiting spectators would have seen to the east from the Grandstand… the strange and almost unbelievable sight of a man sitting in an aircraft rising above the trees on the Echo Drive heights along the bend in the Rideau Canal near Bank Street. — Image via commons.Wikimedia.com
Pilot Lee Hammond (left) and Captain Tom Baldwin pose with the Red Devil aircraft on the grass at Slattery’s Field in Ottawa East prior to Hammond’s second demonstration flight over the Central Canada Exhibition grounds at Lansdowne Park on September 11th. Photo: C. J. Wallis
Like a Bolt From the Blue
A report in the Ottawa Citizen on the 12th stated that Hammond had arrived in Ottawa at noon on the 11th, and then drove to Slattery’s Field where he found the Red Devil assembled, tested and ready for action. Shortly after 1 PM, the aircraft was wheeled to the eastern end of the field where Hammond climbed aboard and the engine was started.
“Skimming over the ground the moment it as released, the plane went about one hundred and fifty yards. When it gathered sufficient momentum, Hammond lunged forward elevating the front planes, and with a bird like motion the machine shot into the air well above the tree tops.
Going at high speed Hammond guided his aeroplane well over the exhibition grounds, going as far as Dow’s Lake on the trip west. Turning towards the north he shot back again over the grounds like a bolt from the blue, people at the fair being warned of his presence in the air above them by megaphones and by the purring of the engine. Skirting to the south of the grounds over the canal, he again turned his nose northward, completing a figure eight and then sailing off westward once more. Turning above Dow’s Lake again he drove the machine back to his starting point in the field, making the landing in fine style. Captain Baldwin waved a handkerchief in the centre of the field and Hammond came down almost at his feet. The flight [Ottawa’s First] lasted a little over five minutes.”
Lansdowne Park. Though this photo was taken 15 years after the first flight, the scene below would have looked somewhat like this for Lee Hammond. Slattery’s Field lies about a 50 metres to the left of the area captured by this photo. The Grandstand where citizens of Ottawa and area awaited anxiously for Hammond’s appearance is the long multi-window white structure at centre-right.
The Victorian-era Lansdowne Park Grandstand in front of which Hammond demonstrated the Red Devil on successive days. As a young boy, I sold popcorn and soft drinks to the same Exhibition and football crowds in the early 1960s. The building was demolished and replaced by a larger facility with an indoor hockey rink in 1967.
Hammond’s second flight of the day was much the same, except on landing back at Slattery’s Field he hit hard and tore two of the three tires from their wheels, but these were easily replaced. A somewhat humorous description of Hammond’s flubbed second landing appeared in the same September 12 issue of The Journal:
“It is generally known the air about us is not solid, or rather of continuous density, as water is or as a stone is. Here it is packed hard, here it is light and tenuous. These are the result of the ever varying currents of the air and the fact that air has considerable elasticity.
Now when Hammond was descending yesterday for the second time he struck and “air hole”, that is a spot where the air is so thin that is had very little bearing power. Already his machine was pointed to the ground. For a moment—and everyone in sight held his breath—his machine seemed to point itself straight at the earth 200 yards below as if determined on a dash of death. But in a moment it caught the air again as a bird might, and sailed gracefully groundward.
On alighting, owing to the roughness of the ground, the machine when about to touch, was given a little ascending tilt. The result was just as when a child throws a rubber ball from him with considerable force downwards. The machine after almost touching the ground, rose gracefully, perhaps twenty feet, and then alighted on the ground as a gull does on the ocean and spontaneously the crowd broke into a roar of cheers.”
Citizens of Ottawa, old and young, assist Hammond and Baldwin to position the Red Devil aircraft for a take off at Slattery’s Field. Photo: Ottawa Journal, Jun 27, 1967
On the same day, The Citizen was aflutter describing Hammond like an infatuated school girl:
“Young Hammond too, is a born birdman. It would do injustice to the rather favourable exterior with which nature has endowed him to say he looks like a hawk, yet certainly there is something that vaguely suggests the bird about his physical make-up. His eyes, too, are of the deep blue that is almost invariably seen in the King’s prize winners at Bisley or the crack shots at our own D.R.A. meet [Dominion of Canada Rifle Association - Ed]. For aviators, like riflemen, must have the keenest sight….”
It was still the early days of aviation, but clearly pilots were already subject to adoration and hyperbole, as The Journal would demonstrate the following day:
“The Lady’s Favourite
Let everyone understand, never mind who he may be, that he is not the blue-ribboned boy with the ladies at the Ex. This honour goes to Lee Hammond, blue eyed and handsome, with a kind of square chin that adds double attractiveness to his attractive personality. Hammond is unconscious of how he ranks locally, but some of the keystones to the chief arches of the best feminine society in Ottawa have been heard to make remarks about this young fellow who “goes up in the air higher than a kite.”… Any man who would go up in an aeroplane [to] the height he did yesterday when there was a thirty to forty-mile an hour zephyr, shimmering around 1500 feet up, can make himself a lion in the eyes of ladies and strong men too.”
Hammond, the darling of Ottawa’s pulchritudinous females, made similar flights on each day of the Exhibition, but on September 15th, he ran into a problem:
Hammonds’ Narrow Escape
In spite of the weather, Lee Hammond, the plucky young aeronaut flew from Slattery’s field, and his pluck nearly cost him his life. He was about 1,000 feet up in the air, where the fog was so dense that he could not see around. Then his engine, having got damp, gave out and he began to descend rapidly. Realizing the danger he was in, he contrived to gain some control over his machine, but descended rather heavily on the bank of the Rideau Canal, only missing the water by a few feet. He then made another flight and had a hard job to alight amongst the cows in the [Slattery’s] field, and the tail of his machine got caught in a tree, which did a little damage to it
Baldwin’s Red Devil at Slattery’s Field in 1911 amid a crowd of curious onlookers.
Hundreds of curious onlookers gather at Slattery’s Field along the Rideau Canal to catch a glimpse of the technology which would soon transform the world.
A good view of the large control surfaces of the Red Devil with its steel tube construction. The black and white photography of the day cannot show us the colourful scene there that day. Blue sky and green grass with the Red Devil’s wings in bright yellow and its steel tube construction painted bright red. It appears that the pusher propeller at the rear of the engine is turning, but it does not seem like there is anyone in the pilot’s seat at right.
Baldwin and Hammond packed up and prepared to leave on Sunday the 17th for Cassopolis, Michigan across the border from South Bend, Indiana where they were to fly under another “big” contract. Like a travelling circus, they folded their tent and moved on. Neither The Ottawa Journal or The Ottawa Citizen reported on their departure or the importance of their flights. A week later, a small advertisement appeared in the want ads section of The Journal which read: SNAP SHOTS OF LEE HAMMOND and his aeroplane, Unmounted 5 cents each; mounted, 2 for 15 cents, Apply Box 755 Journal.
And that was the end of it.
There were no lengthy editorials in any paper about entering a new era in transportation, about transformative technology or what the future held. Truthfully, people in Ottawa did not understand at the time what they had just seen nor grasp its potential. It was, for most, a spectacle along the lines a tightrope walker. Amazing to behold but not worth musing about afterward. It would be decades before people realized how the world was changed by aviation and 110 years on, flying machines are as a much a part of daily life as the streetcar was in 1911. While aviators no longer fly at local fairs, they are still in demand to fly at football games and national holidays. The modern airshow business continues to attract carnival-like characters, showmen and risk takers while audiences still marvel at their derring-do and their “the rather favourable exterior with which nature has endowed them”.
Hammond and Baldwin after Ottawa
At the beginning of December, 1911, Hammond starred as himself in a silent film produced by the Champion Film Company in New Jersey. The film was released in February of 1912. The IMDb page for The Aviator and the Autoist Race for a Bride reads:
William Crane, an autoist, has lots of admirers, among whom Bertha Monroe is the chiefest. Crane calls on Bertha for a spin in his machine. Bertha's mother, knowing Crane's reckless proclivities, is adverse to her daughter's acceptance. Now the terminus of their drive found them at the Aviation Field, where a number of flying men held forth. Among these was the dare-devil Lee Hammond himself. Lee was a great admirer of Bertha Monroe. Lee knew Miss Monroe's daring spirit, and his quickly given invitation to her for a flight was readily accepted by her. Before Crane realized what had happened, she was up in the air. In rage he dashed after them in his auto, but he soon came to grief, and was compelled to alight to tinker with the jarred mechanism. Hammond also alighted so that he might also pay his attentions to his fair companion. Soon, however, Crane was rushing on the scene, and what might have proved a tragic ending was averted by the clever girl, who proposed that the question of right to her be settled by a race. The race came off, the Aviation Field being selected for it. Then both machines, aero and auto, leaped forward like things alive, at terrific speed. At last the stamina of the thing of the air begins to count. The last lap had been made in a sensational flight; then came a startling culmination. The man-bird swooped down where the fair judge was standing, and the life and soul of the bird, Lee Hammond, reached out, clutched her, and bore her triumphantly aloft.
Hammond, playing himself in The Aviator and the Autoist Race for a Bride, takes the lovely Bertha Monroe by the hand and points to the sky where he will sweep her away. The actress who played Bertha was no femme fatale — she was Blanche (Betty) Scott who was in fact America’s second woman pilot and had more flying experience than Hammond and more driving experience than William Crane who played the “autoist”, having crossed the USA by car both ways — the first woman to do so from west to east. Scott became the first American woman to fly in a jet when she was the passenger in a TF-80C piloted by Chuck Yeager. Knowing Scott's history as a stunt pilot, Yeager treated her to some snap rolls and a 14,000 foot dive.
On December 20th Baldwin, Hammond and their mechanics took a train from New York to San Francisco, where they embarked for Manila and a Far East tour. They brought three Red Devil aircraft with them. From February 2nd, Hammond flew on ten consecutive days at the Manila Carnival where he carried many locally notable passengers and flew for US military and government officials. One of those he took up was a local tribal leader by the name of Gagaban, making him the first Filipino to fly. They then travelled to Japan, China and Hong Kong to make demonstrations. Hammond died of a heart attack in 1932 at the age of 41
Baldwin died in 1923 at the age of 77. He was truly one of the greatest of the pioneer aviators. Harold E. Morehouse, biographer of hundreds of the world’s first aviation pioneers had this to say about Baldwin:
“Flying Pioneer Thomas S. Baldwin was a most distinguished early aerial enthusiast. A Master showman, he travelled the world as a balloonist, chutist, aeronaut and aviator, a truly remarkable record of over forty years of aerial experience. … …Widely known, loved and respected by all who knew him, he certainly earned the name of “Grand Old Man of Aviation” in his later years. He is truly one of the most deserving of an honored place in American aviation history.”
Four months after their appearance at Ottawa’s Central Canada Exhibition in 1911, Baldwin and Hammond were in the Philippines exhibiting the same aircraft. They made the first flight in that island archipelago a year before and then in late 1911 convinced a local Igorot tribal chief by the name of Gagaban (above) to fly as a passenger, making him the first Filipino to fly. Photo: filipknow.net
1912 – Daredevil Balloonists Return
Another fixed-wing, powered flight in Ottawa would not happen for two more years after Hammond wowed the crowds at Lansdowne. Despite the tragedies of 1988 and 1909, daredevil balloonists were once again the featured attraction in 1912. At the opening day of the Central Canada Exhibition that year, the Grandstand Show featured several Vaudeville acts, a Musical Ride from the Royal Canadian Dragoons, fireworks and a reenactment of the Siege of Omdurman, one of the classic cavalry battles of the British conquest of the Sudan (an event to which a young Winston Churchill was witness). But the biggest draw of all was an afternoon balloon ascent by two young aeronauts by the names of George Sewell and Howard LeVan, both under the direction of a man who called himself Professor Edward R. Hutchison.
Each day of the Ex, Sewell and Levan, who were also aeroplane pilots, climbed into the basket of the balloon and made an ascent in front of the Grandstand. On the first day, when the balloon reached the proper height, Hutchison, on the ground, fired a revolver to signal Sewell to make his jump. Sewell leapt from the basket, deploying three parachutes sequentially, descending gracefully and landing in the middle of the horse judging ring in front of the Grandstand. The crowd rose to their feet in appreciation. Meanwhile Levan continued to climb to about 3,000 feet whereupon Hutchison fired the revolver again. This time, Levan deployed six parachutes to slow his descent. The Ottawa Citizen described it this way:
“… no less than six parachutes were used, the effect being most thrilling. And never has a prettier descent been witnessed here. When he cut loose Levan was over a point south of the canal. the gas bag dropped beyond the canal road opposite the grandstand, but Levan by clever work was able to make a landing inside the ring directly in front of the stand. During his descent several revolver shots were fired by Prof. Hutchison. One was for the aeronaut to watch out for the gas bag which was coming down almost directly over him. Another revolver signal was to work toward the fire pot where the bag had been inflated… …the first favourable day, Levan will make a drop using twelve parachutes.”
As I delved deeper into these 3-, 6- and 12-parachute jumps, I tried to understand whether these were three parachutes deployed together or whether they were sequential, with Sewell and Levan “cutting away” from each chute. Reading an article in a July, 1929 issue of Popular Mechanics, I found the following quote from parachutist Jack Cope:
“After that first jump, I had varied experience in balloon work and continued to use the stretched or fully extended chute until late in 1911, when Ed Hutchison, of Elmira, N.Y., packed a chute and made a double drop, using one chute wrapped in a bundle and the other stretched. Then came three, four and five drops, done by packing one parachute under the other and releasing them successively until the last one was reached. George Sewell and I made twenty-two drops from one balloon at the Wheeling, W.Va. state fair in 1912. George cut 12 chutes and I cut ten. I don’t believe anyone has beaten that record.”
Left: A diagram depicting how Sewell’s and Levan’s jumps would look. Top right: Edmund Rayne Hutchison, AKA Professor E. R. Hutchison, the circus-like performer, balloonist and parachute pioneer. Bottom right: Howard Levan, AKA Howard Le Van, balloonist, skydiver and pioneer aviator who started in the business at the age of 17.
Considering the date of 1912, jumping from a height of around 3,000 feet and cutting away twelve parachutes before landing was an extraordinary and some might say reckless feat. At the outset of the First World War two years later, pilots of the Royal Flying Corps and other air forces in the conflict still did not use parachutes, believing that it was safer to ride their stricken aircraft to the ground — despite men like Sewell and Levan proving otherwise. First World War balloonists, fearing aerial attacks on their hydrogen-filled reconnaissance balloons, had no compunction leaping with a parachute to save their lives.
On the second day of the Exhibition, Hutchison himself went aloft in the balloon, drifted eastward over the exhibition crowds and the Rideau Canal and then landed in Slattery’s Field. Despite the risks he took, Hutchison lived until 1950 in his home town of Elmira where he was best known for his awning and blinds business. Perhaps sewing balloons and parachutes paid off eventually.
Next Episode
The fall of 1913 was a banner season for flying in Ottawa as a a boy aviator thrills parliament and a publicity stunt connects Montreal to Ottawa by air. Stay tuned.
