Before Amelia by Eileen F. Lebow

Author:Eileen F. Lebow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
Published: 2002-09-19T04:00:00+00:00

A confident Harriet Quimby, America’s first licensed woman pilot, prepares to take off as Gustav Hamel gives a last-minute assist. INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM, INC.

Lowering from about two thousand feet to half that, a ray of sun struck her face; straight ahead was the sandy shore of France. Happiness struggled with uncertainty. Where was Calais? Being unfamiliar with the coastline, she decided to drop to about five hundred feet and travel along the coast to try to get her bearings. A rising wind with puffy gusts sent her inland, where she looked for a landing place, but the tilled fields neatly arranged below her discouraged her from coming down and tearing up a field. Turning back toward the coast, she decided on the beach; it was hard and empty. Jumping down from her machine in the middle of nowhere, she was soon surrounded by curious farmers and towns-people, who had heard the aeroplane overhead and came running on the double. They carried her in triumph to Hardelot, a short distance from the beach.

Newspapers the next day should have hailed her achievement. Instead, the sinking of the Titanic stole the headlines. Coverage on the first woman to pilot an aeroplane across the Channel was relegated to the back pages of the world’s newspapers, a disappointing show after such a unique feat. On Harriet’s arrival in New York City, a huge suffrage demonstration kept reporters away from their usual beat. There were none of the welcoming stories she had expected. Harriet was featured in a number of journals, including her own weekly, which published her written account of the adventure. Among her observations: The hotwater bottle that had been tied to her waist for added warmth “was cold as ice” when she landed. While Hamel’s warning—that a five-mile deviation in direction could result in being lost over the North Sea— was enough to intimidate the average person, Harriet wrote: “My heart was not in my mouth. I felt impatient to realize this project on which I was determined, despite the protests of my best friends.” She had supreme confidence and high expectations.

One story repeated frequently about the flight was Hamel’s offer to fly the Channel for Harriet dressed in disguise. The reason given was his concern for her safety; Harriet’s account in Leslie’s is silent on this, but Elizabeth Hiatt Gregory quotes Harriet telling the story—Harriet thought it amusing—in a Good Housekeeping article. In Leslie’s, she had only kind comments to make about him for his preflight assistance, but writing in World Magazine after her return, she expressed her disappointment that Hamel had taken Eleanor Trehawke Davies as a passenger across the Channel, thus depriving her of being “first woman to fly the Channel.” In this report, Harriet had confided her plans to an unnamed English pilot, whom she “trusted very much,” who, two days later, flew with a woman passenger across the Channel. Apparently, Harriet still smarted because of Hamel’s betrayal.

One biographer, Henry Holden, claims that the London Mirror canceled its financial backing when Davies made headlines as the first woman to fly the Channel.

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