Frank started his engine. Then drove out into the Hudson.
We waited, drifting sideways a little, for a tug to churn itself out of the way: it seemed to be heading upriver after the St. Louis. Frank taxied out in a wide downstream curve, made a swift tight little turn into what wind there was, and—I wanted to squeeze my eyes shut but didn’t—we began bouncing forward, slap-slap, over the miniature waves, a fan of spray from the pontoon hull wetting my face and goggles, which I wiped with my sleeve. Our motion abruptly went smooth, and just above the water we sailed right past the end of the pier, and I had a swift glimpse of Mrs. Coffyn and Harriet Quimby—she was actually beautiful—smiling, waving, and when I faced front again, being up here didn’t seem so bad.
This was nothing of what I’d expected, sitting here putt-putting along above the water. This was no hundred tons of howling metal brutally thrusting through a thinned-out alien nothingness. This was another kind of thing, the sun on my face, the soft almost Indian-summer warmth of this strange 1912 early spring pressing my forehead: I could feel the air holding us up.
The engine putted along, the propeller revolved, and I heard it, but not loudly. We sat ahead of it, and possibly most of the sound poured away behind us. Sailing along here over the Hudson, gradually rising, I grinned and nodded at Frank.
And made a mistake. In moving my head, I glanced down over the side, then looked up fast, straight to the front, and it was all right again.
Frank began circling: slow, wide, easy circles leisurely lifting us higher, higher, and that seemed okay. Slowly corkscrewing up through the air, Frank stayed over the water that would accept us engineless, if need be. I’d see the long heights of the Jersey shore stretching out, green and rural mostly. Then see the great harbor. Then, sliding away behind us, the endless brown-black fingers of the west-side Manhattan docks. Glimpsed the toy-size St. Louis, two even tinier toys shoving her sideways at the American Line docks. Saw a white scrap of sailboat . . . a greenish-black spot that was a tug . . . two little red ferries perched on the water . . . then Ellis Island far behind us . . . the little Statue of Liberty, turned green since last I’d seen it, its torch revolving slowly as it slid back behind us. “I flew around Liberty last week,” Frank said, “with a motion picture cameraman right where you’re sitting. He took motion pictures of the crown and the torch, while inside the crown another man took motion pictures of us!” I grinned and nodded, wishing I could see those films; had they survived into the other end of the century?
It felt good now, this lazy hawklike circling gradually expanding the entire harbor for me. Well behind us now lay the green spot of Battery Park flecked with the colors of dresses and drab suits—they were watching us!
“Took a motion picture cameraman up to photograph the office buildings at the tip of the island. Flew level with the top windows, full of rubbernecks watching us and waving while he cranked away at them. Then, right over the East River the bolts worked loose, the camera fell off the wing, and that’s where it is now, bottom of the river somewhere.”
Finally, moving north as we climbed—how high? Two thousand feet? Three? I didn’t know—we turned in over the city, and I saw what I can still see in my mind: far down there, spread out for me in this faintly hazed morning, lay the city of this fresh new century, the city between the two other New Yorks I’d known, and it seemed beautiful.
I’ve never flown across the New York of the final years of the twentieth century, but I’ve looked at aerial photographs, and they’re stunning, especially the glittering unworldly night views. But the tall, tall, and ever taller buildings, so thick and close in midcity, hide the city they occupy. Often the aerial photographer, searching with his camera, can’t find streets or people, only layered walls, the city lost.
But not yet, not now. Now the long, slim, familiar map shape of Manhattan lay down there, its neat crisscrossed streets crawling with the specks and shapes of its life. And I began to search for—what? A kind of stone ship was all I could think of, an impossible stone ship with windows. Here and there the slim upward-pointing fingers of New York’s “skyscrapers” stood mostly alone, easily found. As if reading a familiar page, my eyes moved down from the great green rectangle of Central Park, following the curves of Upper Broadway—I could see the specks of color that were its people and vehicles—and easily found the slim white tower of the Times building rising alone and unchallenged. To the west the nineteenth century lay almost untouched in long brown-fronted, black-roofed stripes across the city map. I picked out the shining white newness of the Public Library at Forty-second Street, simultaneously seeing in my mind the reservoir that belonged there too. Off to the east, a smudge of scattered lumber, cut stone, and dirt ramps: Grand Central Station a-building. I sat in comfort there on the taut fabric of my wing, floating on the air, looking down at the two not-quite-the-same grays of the enclosing rivers . . . followed the long sun glints of the tiny strips of El lines down each side of the city. Then, yes, that was Thirty-third Street, must be, because the great white rectangle just beyond it, sparkling in its newness, could only be Penn Station. And off to the east where one day the Empire State Building would climb, lay the green peaks and domes and the fluttering flagpoles of the great Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
But Frank Coffyn had seen all this again and again, and occasionally he leaned forward to talk, to ask questions. And while he listened to my replies, I realized something that possibly he didn’t. That everything entering Frank’s mind and attention came out into something about flying.
So I’d come from Buffalo, eh? Well, before long I’d be able to travel from Buffalo to New York by aeroplane. How did I like the Plaza Hotel? Just fine: my room overlooked Central Park. And Frank nodded, and said it must be almost like seeing it from a plane. “Frank, what would you have done,” I said, “if you’d lived long before the aeroplane?” I’d turned to look at him, and his eyes actually went wide. “My God,” he said softly, “what an awful idea. But it didn’t happen, Si. And I’ll tell you why. I was born to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. I’m going to, Si. I want to be the first.”
I could only nod and say, “Well, Frank, it will be done.”
“Oh, yes; if only I can raise the money. I need bigger engines. And a bigger aeroplane to hold them. And protection from the weather. Si, it’s eighteen hundred and eighteen miles from Newfoundland to the coast of Ireland.” He was serious! He’d thought this out. “With a speed of forty-five miles an hour I could do it in forty hours. I’ve learned that from June to September”—his hands on the controls, his feet on the pedals moved frequently, carefully, but his mind was far away—“there is a prevailing wind blowing from the west which would give me from twenty to thirty miles an hour help.” He knew all this, and it was right. “Once started, there could be no landing on the water, but I firmly believe that with two engines, one of which could be switched on in case of damage to the other, and with two hundred gallons of gasoline, the thing could be done. We’re learning now, Si. We’re all of us learning the hazards of aeroplaning. I’ve learned to be careful flying low over city streets; the currents of air that come up from a city are treacherous. We have to learn, and on the day a man flies the Atlantic, he’ll need—well, what? Forethought. Careful preparation. Patience. All those virtues and more.”