Transcript

6.5.26 · History Hour

0:01
Speaker 1: Hello out there, Welcome. This is a radioized history show
0:05
and I'm your reader and host, Joseph Bolt. I'm happy
0:09
to be with you today. And before we begin, as
0:13
you know, we always need to remind you that Radio
0:16
I is listener driven, so that means you and we
0:20
welcome your comments suggestions about our programming or anything we do,
0:26
in particular the history show, So if you have any
0:30
thoughts about it, please let us know and call us
0:34
at eight five nine four two two six three nine
0:39
zero let us know what you are thinking. Radio I
0:44
is a reading service intended for people who are blind
0:47
or have other disabilities and make it difficult to read
0:50
printed material. I'll cite the sources as we go along,
0:56
and so today I thought we would talk about some
0:59
daredevil and in particular, the first one we're going to
1:03
talk about is somebody I'd never heard of. Maybe you
1:06
have a by the name of Sam Patch, and this
1:11
articles from Atlas Obscura dot com and it's entitled the
1:17
Story of Sam Patch, America's first professional water Jumper, and
1:23
it's written by Ella Morton and was done so in
1:27
June of twenty sixteen. So let's read about old Sam America.
1:37
Most of them involving fighting in a war, rising to
1:41
the top of political ranks. That doesn't make sense. I
1:47
don't know why that sentence came about, but anyway, let's
1:50
go on. For Sam Patch, the nation's first professional daredevil,
1:57
the path to celebrity was full of reckless plunges and
2:03
booming splashes, occasionally accompanied by a bear. This is the
2:11
story of a great waterfall jumper in his final leap
2:16
into an unforgiving abyss. Born around eighteen o seven, Sam
2:23
Patch grew up in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. As a boy,
2:29
he worked as a spinner in a cotton mill above
2:34
Pawtucket Falls. This formidable torrent of water, said Rochester's Democrat
2:41
and Chronicle in eighteen ninety seven, was quote what coaxed
2:46
Sam to go into the leaping business. Quote. Sam and
2:53
his fellow young mill workers began jumping from a bridge
3:00
into the Blackstone River to amuse themselves and impress each other.
3:06
Sam had a particular aptitude for elegant leaps and sought
3:11
ever higher platforms from which to hurl himself into the water.
3:16
The Democrat and Chronicle said, he quote developed as a
3:19
leaper in a wonderful way. Few of the boys caring
3:24
to duplicate his feats end quote. So as an adult,
3:29
Sam Patch moved to work in a cotton mill in Patterson,
3:37
New Jersey, where he stepped up his leaping efforts. In
3:43
December of eighteen twenty seven, a new bridge was being
3:47
installed on a ledge over the Passaic Falls at a
3:51
height of some eighty feet above the water. Capitalizing on
3:56
the public's interest in watching the preconstructed bridge being plumped
4:02
onto the ledge, Patch appeared before the crowd. Wearing just
4:07
a shirt and underwear. He hurled himself from the ledge,
4:14
hit the river feet first with an almighty splash, and
4:18
emerged a local celebrity. After a few more jumps from
4:26
the same spot, always in front of a crowd, greater
4:30
heights and tougher challenges beckoned. Patch settled on the Holy
4:36
Grail for a northern Northeastern waterfall leaper Niagara Falls. On
4:45
October seventh, eighteen twenty nine, he leapt from a platform
4:51
on Goat Island, which divides the two sets of falls
4:57
on the American side from Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side.
5:03
New York's Evening Posts reported that he quote walked out
5:07
clad in white, and with great deliberation, put his hands
5:14
close to his side, and jumped from the platform into
5:17
the mist of that vast gulf of foaming waters from
5:22
which none of humankind had ever before emerged in life.
5:29
End quote. Ten days later, Patch flung himself into the
5:35
Niagara Abyss once more, this time from a higher platform
5:40
built on top of two ladders on a cliff below
5:44
Gold Island. After witnessing this one hundred and twenty five
5:49
foot plunge along with thousands of other onlookers, a reporter
5:54
from the Buffalo Republican claimed the quote jump of Patch
6:00
is the greatest feat of the kind ever affected by man.
6:04
He may now challenge the universe for a competitor. No
6:12
other living entities, human or otherwise stepped up to challenge Patch.
6:18
He therefore sought only to better his own accomplishments and
6:22
tour his talents around a larger area. Following the triumph
6:29
of Niagara Falls, Patch turned his attention to the Genesee River,
6:35
which flowed through the rapidly industrializing city of Rochester, New York.
6:42
The river's high falls, which plunged from a depth of
6:45
ninety seven feet, seemed the perfect spot for this next
6:50
giant leap. On October twenty nine, eighteen twenty nine. Adds
6:59
touting Patch's upcoming feet appeared in the Rochester Daily Advertiser
7:05
and Telegraph. They promised no mistake could occur during the jump,
7:12
requested that spectators bring a donation to help ease Patch's
7:17
travel costs, and noted that Patch's newly acquired pet bear
7:23
would also be making the leap. At the appointed plunge time,
7:30
two pm on Friday, November sixth, between six thousand and
7:35
eight thousand people stood on the bank of the river
7:38
awaiting the emergence of the much heralded jumper and his
7:44
animal companion. Well, Patch didn't disappoint. According to the Rochester
7:52
Public Library's account, he first quote took the bear by
7:56
the collar and pushed it over the falls into the
8:00
turbulent water below. Once the animal was confirmed to have
8:06
survived the fall, Patch leapt after it. The whole thing
8:14
went off without a hitch, well there was one hitch.
8:18
Patch was disappointed by the final donation tallly. He decided
8:24
to stage one more jump from the same spot in
8:28
order to scrounge up some more cash to entice repeated viewers.
8:36
He arranged the construction of a platform that would rise
8:39
twenty five feet over the rock ledge, bringing the total
8:43
jump height to one hundred and twenty five feet. Once again,
8:47
ads appeared in the papers. This time they touted Patch's
8:53
last jump. Patch intended for the phrase to mean it
8:58
was his final jump of the season, but the ads
9:02
proved to be a lot more prophetic. At two a,
9:07
or rather two pm on November thirteenth, of Friday, Friday
9:14
the thirteenth, Patch scaled the platform and stood above the
9:20
thousands of spectators who had gathered to watch him leap.
9:26
As had become his custom, He delivered a short, somewhat
9:31
rambling speech in which he compared himself favorably to great
9:36
historical figures. He said, quote Napoleon was a great man
9:42
and a great general. He conquered armies, and he conquered nations,
9:47
but he couldn't jump the Genesee falls in quote. Witnesses
9:53
later argued over whether he was drunk or had just
9:57
knocked back a quick shot of brandy to take the
9:59
edge off the chilly November air well. Regardless when Patch leapt,
10:07
something wasn't right. After descending the first third of the
10:13
way as handsomely as he ever did quotes the evening post,
10:20
Patch quote evidently began to droop. His arms were extended,
10:26
his legs separated. In his condition, or rather in this condition,
10:32
he struck the water and sunk forever end quote. The
10:41
stun crowd waited to see if Genesee River would produce Patch,
10:46
or at least his body. Well, there was no sign
10:50
of him. It would be four months before his remains
10:56
were discovered seven miles downstream. Public reaction to Patch's final
11:03
jump was mixed. While some lauded his dream big and
11:08
take risk approach, the anti Masonic inquirer chose to scold
11:15
all involved, calling the incident quote a daring and useless
11:20
exposure of human life end quote that left the crowd
11:26
abashed and rebuked. After seeing the quote frail, mortal, standing
11:33
as it proved on the brink of eternity end quote.
11:41
Once the initial shock and sadness had faded, a mythos
11:44
began to build up a round Patch. Over the next
11:48
two decades, he kept popping up as a character. Few
11:53
persons in the United States of the nineteen thirties and
11:56
forties could have avoided all the poems, ballads, rhymes, antidotes, allusions, reminiscences,
12:08
tall tales, and theatrical farces that celebrated the braggadocio jumper
12:15
of history, fantasy, and hoax, wrote Richard Dorson in Sam
12:22
Patch Jumping. Hero. Writers and other creatives of the eighteen
12:28
thirties who were swelling with Jacksonian nationalism in response to
12:34
the revolutionary President, turned Patch into a folk legend imbued
12:41
with whatever profound and lamentable characteristics they saw fit. President
12:48
Andrew Jackson himself even named his favorite horse Sam Patch
12:56
in eighteen thirty three. These tributes was a more informal
13:02
legacy well into the late nineteenth century. Anyone who jumped
13:09
from a great height into a body of water was
13:12
referred to as the new sam Patch. The New York
13:17
Times sighted several such sam Patches over the decades, none
13:22
of whom quite measured up to the real deal. A
13:27
piece of reportage from eighteen fifty three, entitled sam Patch
13:31
Come Again sums it all up when it says a
13:38
couple of gentlemen were walking quietly across the wire bridge
13:42
yesterday evening, and when about the middle one of them
13:47
stripped himself of all his clothes except as pantaloons and
13:52
jumped off into the river a distance of about one
13:55
hundred and fifty feet. He swam to the shore and
13:59
came up uninjured, except he was very fatigued. The gentleman
14:05
declined to give his name, but we understand that he
14:08
is employed in the manufacturing works. This is certainly a
14:13
capital way to cool off this warm weather, but most
14:19
persons would refer or rather prefer a shorter jump. Well,
14:26
whether sam Patch was a drunken fool, an acrobatic hero,
14:31
or some combination thereof, his leaping feats ushered in the
14:37
daredevil philosophy, seeking ever loftier heights, aim to astound and
14:45
get paid as much as possible for every reckless stunt. Well,
14:52
now let's read from smithsoniamag dot com an article entitled
14:57
The Daredevil of Niagara Falls, written by Abbot Collar in
15:01
October two thousand eleven, a few years after sam Patch's demise,
15:08
and during the winter of eighteen fifty eight, a thirty
15:12
four year old French acrobat named Jeanne Francois Gravelet, better
15:21
known as Monsieur Charles Blondon, travel to Niagara Falls, hoping
15:29
to become the first person to cross the boiling Cataract.
15:36
Noting the masses of ice and snow on either bank
15:40
and the violent whirls of wind circling the gorge, Blondon
15:44
delayed the grand event until he would have better weather.
15:50
He always worked without a net, believing that preparing for
15:54
disaster only made one more likely to occur. A rope
16:01
thirteen hundred feet long, two inches in diameter and made
16:06
entirely of hemp, would be the sole thing separating him
16:11
from the roiling waters below. Blondon, born in eighteen twenty four,
16:18
grew to be only five feet five and a hundred
16:22
and forty pounds. He had bright blue eyes and golden hair,
16:27
which gave him his nickname. He believed that a rope
16:31
walker was quote like a poet born and not made
16:36
in quote, and discovered his calling at the age of
16:40
four mounting a rope strunk between two chairs and placed
16:45
a few feet apart. The following year he enrolled in
16:50
the Accidazem Nass in Lyon, which was basically a gymnastics facility.
16:59
He first came to America in eighteen fifty five at
17:02
the behest of theatrical agent William Niblow, and was about
17:11
to begin an engagement with Franconi's equestrian troop. When the
17:17
idea struck to cross the falls, he was more like
17:22
a fantastic sprite than a human being, wrote his manager,
17:27
Harry Colcord. Harry goes on to say, had he lived
17:32
a century or two earlier, he would have been treated
17:35
as one possessed of the devil. He could walk the
17:40
rope as a bird cleaves to air. Blondon also understood
17:48
the appeal of the morbid to the masses, and reveled
17:54
when gamblers began to take bets on whether he would
17:59
plunge to a watery death. Most of the smart money
18:03
said yes. On the morning of June thirty, eighteen fifty nine,
18:09
about twenty five thousand thrill seekers arrived by train and
18:14
steamer and dispersed on the American or Canadian side of
18:18
the falls, the latter said to have been the better view.
18:25
Both banks grew fairly black, with swarms of spectators, among
18:32
them statesmen, judges, clerics, generals, members of Congress, capitalists, artists,
18:39
newspaper editors, professors, debutants, salesmen and hucksters. Vendors hawked everything
18:48
from lemonade to whiskey, and Colcord gave tours to the
18:52
press explaining the logistics of what the Great Blondon was
18:57
about to attempt. A light rope not even an inch thick,
19:03
had been attached to one end of his hempen cable
19:08
so it could be conveyed across the Niagara River on
19:13
the American side. The cable was wound around a trunk
19:17
of an oak tree in White's pleasure Grounds, but securing
19:22
it on the Canadian side presented a problem. London's assistance
19:28
feared that the light rope wouldn't bear the weight of
19:31
the cable as it was drawn up the gorge for
19:34
anchorage in Canada, but the rope dancer, to the delight
19:38
of his audience, executed a daring solution. After tying another
19:45
rope around his waist, he repelled two hundred feet on
19:48
the small rope attached to the second rope to the
19:53
end of the cable, and then blithely climbed back to
19:57
Canadian ground and secured the cable to a rock to
20:03
prevent swaying. Guy ropes ran from the cable at twenty
20:07
foot intervals to post in both banks, creating the effect
20:13
of a massive spider web. Bonded could do nothing, however,
20:19
about the inevitable sag in the center, approximately fifty feet
20:24
of cable to which it was impossible to fasten guy ropes.
20:31
At that spot. In the middle of his crossing, he
20:33
would be only one hundred and ninety feet above the gorge.
20:38
There were hundreds of people examining the rope, reported one witness,
20:43
and with scarcely an exception, they all declared the inability
20:48
of m Blonding to perform the feat, the incapacity of
20:54
the rope to sustain him, and that he deserved to
21:00
be dashed to atoms for his desperate fool heartiness. Shortly
21:09
before five PM, Blondon took his position on the American side.
21:15
Dressed in pink tights be decked with spangles. The lowering
21:21
sun made him appear as if clothed in light. He
21:26
wore fine leather shoes with soft soles, and brandished a
21:30
balancing pole made of ash, twenty six feet long and
21:34
weighed nearly fifty pounds. Slowly and calmly, he started to walk.
21:41
His gait, one man noted, was very like the walk
21:45
of some barnyard cock. Children clung to their mother's legs,
21:50
women peek from behind their parasols. Several onlookers fainted about
21:57
a third of the way across. Blondin shocked the crowd
22:00
by sitting down on his cable and calling for the
22:03
Maid of the Mist, the famed tourist vessel to anchor
22:08
momentarily beneath him. He cast down a line and hauled
22:13
up a bottle of wine. He drank and started off again,
22:18
breaking into a run after he passed the sagging center
22:24
while the band played Home Sweet Home. Blondon reached Canada.
22:30
One man helped pull him ashore and exclaimed, I wouldn't
22:34
look at anything like that again for a million dollars.
22:39
After twenty minutes of rest, Blondon began the journey to
22:43
the other side, this time with a Daguera type camera
22:49
strapped to his back. He advanced two hundred feet, affixed
22:54
his balancing pole to the cable, untied his load and
22:59
adjusted it, and run of him and snapped the likeness
23:01
of the crowd along the American side. Then he hoisted
23:06
the camera back into place and continued on his way.
23:10
The entire walk from bank to bank took twenty three minutes,
23:14
and Blondon immediately announced an encore performance to take place
23:18
on the fourth of July. Not everyone admired Blondon's feet.
23:23
The New York Times condemned such a reckless act, and
23:27
the thoughtless people who enjoyed looking at a fellow created
23:31
a fellow creature rather in deadly peril. Mark Twain later
23:37
dismissed Blondon as that adventurous ass. One indignant resident of
23:44
Niagara Falls insisted that he was a hoax, that there
23:48
was no such person in the world. Well, nevertheless, on
23:52
July fourth, Blondon appeared at the American end of the cable,
23:57
this time without his balancing pole. Halfway across, he lay
24:02
down on the cable, flipped himself over, and began walking backwards.
24:09
He stopped again to take a swig from his flask,
24:12
and then made it safely to the Canadian side. On
24:17
the journey back, he wore a sack over his body,
24:20
depriving him of sight. One can scarcely believe that the
24:24
feat was real. Indeed, wrote one reporter, and stands gazing
24:30
upon the lender cord and the awful gulf, in the
24:33
state of other utter bewilderment. I looked back upon it
24:37
as a dream. Blondon announced subsequent crossings, promising that each
24:46
would be more daring than the last. On July fifteenth,
24:49
with President Milliard Fillmore in attendance, Blondon walked backward to
24:54
Canada and returned to the US pushing a wheelbarrow. Two
24:59
weeks later, hersalted and backflipped his way across, occasionally pausing
25:04
to dangle from the cable by one hand. Shortly after that,
25:08
he made another crossing, and after a brief rest, appeared
25:11
on the Canadian end of the cable, with Harry cold
25:14
Cord clinging on his back. Blondon gave his manager the
25:19
following instructions, Look up, Harry, You're no longer cold Cord.
25:22
You are Blondon. Until I clear this place, be a
25:27
part of me, my mind, body, and soul. If I
25:31
sway sway with me. Do not attempt to do any
25:34
balancing yourself. If you do, we'll both go to our death.
25:39
A few of the guy ropes snapped along the way,
25:42
but they made it. Blondon performed in China, Japan, Australia, India,
25:48
and throughout Europe. He soured on America in eighteen eighty
25:51
eight when he was forbidden to perform in Central Park
25:55
and had to settle instead for Saint George and Staten Island.
25:59
Although he was then sixty five years of age, he
26:03
carried his son and another man on his back and
26:05
made an omelet for the crowd. By the time he
26:10
gave his final performance in eighteen ninety six, it was
26:15
estimated that Blondon had crossed Niagara Falls three hundred times
26:20
and walked more than ten thousand miles on his rope.
26:25
He died of complications from diabetes the following year, in
26:30
nearly seventy three years on this earth. He never had
26:34
life insurance. No one, he'd always joked, would take the risk.
26:43
By the way Blondon made his omelet at one point
26:48
by carrying a stove in utensils on his back as
26:53
he walked across the cable. Well, that about does it
27:00
for this chapter of Radio I History. I hope you
27:04
enjoyed hearing this as much as I did reading it
27:08
to you. Thank you for your time. This is Joseph
27:12
Bolt and I'll be back next time with another chapter
27:17
Radio I History. Until then, happy trails to you.