His return trip was greeted with enthusiasm as great or greater than that upriver. Now the Jersey hills were black with people, and piers and building roofs on the Manhattan side were packed to capacity. It was estimated a million people were watching.
At precisely 10:26 A.M., Wilbur landed at Governors Island within a few feet of the spot where he had taken off. His time in the air was 33 minutes and 33 seconds. The distance traveled to Grant’s Tomb and back was approximately 20 miles, his average speed 36 miles per hour.
In spite of stiff winds, skyscraper gusts, whistles, horns, shrieking crowds, and battleship salutes, he had done it. How formidable the wind problem had been could be measured by the small American flag Katharine had given him. Brand-new at the start of the flight, it had returned in shreds.
Charlie Taylor told reporters how extremely concerned he had been the whole time Wilbur was “up.”
I was staring with both eyes square at that big flag over the Singer building. Sometimes it layed down and hugged the pole, and then I knew Wilbur was having it good. And sometimes it stood out pretty near even and I knew he was having his troubles. And once it flipped right out and the tip began to point upward like it did all day Saturday. I began to tremble. For I didn’t know what Wilbur could do against a gust like that.
No, he had not conquered the air, Wilbur remarked to the press as he walked away. “A man who works for the immediate present and its immediate rewards is nothing but a fool.”
Shortly afterward, to much surprise, he announced he would fly again that afternoon and this time it would be much farther, an hour-long flight in which he would circle Manhattan. But about four o’clock as he and Charlie Taylor were cranking up the plane the head of one of the engine’s piston rods blew off with a terrible roar, and the head, which was about six inches long and four wide, “flew like a cannon ball” no more than 20 inches from Wilbur’s head.
To Charlie Taylor he said, “It’s a darn good thing that didn’t happen up in the air.” The plane was taken away. The New York performances were over.
Talking with a correspondent for Scientific American magazine a little later, in the gathering dusk of the October afternoon, Wilbur was asked what the explosion of the engine indicated and what direction the development of aviation would take in the future. The broken cylinder was only “an incident,” Wilbur said. As for the future, direction was the thing: “High flying.”
We must get up clear of the belt of disturbed air which results from the irregularities of the earth’s surface. From now on you will see a great increase in the average elevation at which aviators will take their flights; for not only will they find in the higher strata more favorable atmospheric conditions, but in case of motor trouble, they will have more time and distance in which to recover control or make a safe glide to earth.
“On Monday I made a flight up the Hudson to Grant’s Tomb and back to Governor’s Island,” Wilbur wrote to his father three days later from College Park, Maryland. “It was an interesting trip and at times rather exciting.” And that was that. He had come to College Park to begin training U.S. Army pilots.
On Monday, October 18, two weeks after Wilbur’s flight up the Hudson, Orville and Katharine were in Paris. Their events in Germany successfully concluded, they had stopped for a brief stay en route home, and by all evidence were unaware that shortly before five o’clock that afternoon a Wright plane would appear in the sky causing a sensation such as Paris had never experienced. It was not only the first airplane to fly over the city, but the first to fly directly over any city. Close as he was to New York on his flight up the Hudson and back, Wilbur had flown over water only.
The Comte de Lambert, having told almost no one his plans, not even his wife, had taken off from Port-Aviation at Juvisy, fifteen miles southeast of Paris. He was spotted first in the golden afternoon sky by hundreds of visitors high up on the Eiffel Tower. Then came shouts from the streets below, “L’Aéroplane! L’Aéroplane!”