We have seen that all the tight-rope walkers at Niagara met with extraordinary luck while crossing the Gorge; in fact, we have no record that anybody ever lost his life while performing on the wire. Peere met with an accident, and was killed in night-time; it is said he was intoxicated and tried to cross with his boots on. Ballini met his death in the Thames River. Many lives, however, have been lost in attempting to brave the waters of the canyon at Niagara.
Attracted by the sensational setting adrift of the condemned brig Michigan over the Falls in 1829, Sam Patch, a man who had won fame at Pawtucket Falls and other Eastern points as a high-jumper, erected a ladder on the foot-path under Goat Island, and announced to the world that he would jump into Niagara River. The hotel keepers patted him on the back, and left no stone unturned to enable him to draw the biggest crowd of the season. Patch rested the bottom of his ladder on the edge, just north of the Biddle Stairs, with the top inclining over the river, staying it with ropes to the trees on the bank. At the top was a small platform, and from this Patch dived ninety-seven feet; he jumped a second time to prove that the first feat was not a fluke. Shortly afterwards he leaped to his death from the Genesee Fall in Rochester, N. Y.
Captain Matthew Webb, of Niagara fame, was born in Shropshire, England, in 1840. He went to sea at an early age and became captain of a merchantman, and first attracted notice by jumping from a Cunard steamer to save a man who had fallen overboard, for which he was awarded a gold medal by the Royal Humane Society. In 1875 he accomplished the feat of swimming the English Channel from Dover to Calais, a distance of twenty-five miles.
The disastrous attempt to swim the rapids at Niagara took place on July 2, 1883. Webb wore no life preserver and scorned a barrel, depending solely on his own strength to put him through. Leaving his hotel, the old Clifton House, since destroyed by fire, at 4 P.M., before an immense crowd on the cliffs and bridges (for the event had been well heralded), he entered a small boat with Jack McCloy at the oars, and was carried to a point on the lower river several hundred feet above the lower bridges. It was 4.25 when, clad in a pair of red trunks, he leaped from the boat into the water, and boldly swam towards the Rapids. It was 4.32 when he passed under the bridges. He then stroked out gracefully and beautifully. In three minutes more he had reached the fiercest part of the Rapids when a great wave struck him—and he disappeared from the sight of the thousands of eyes that watched the boiling waters, praying that his life might be spared. He came once again into view but then disappeared forever in the raging waters.
The Saturday Review of July 28, 1883,[15] voiced the British feeling when it said:
It was unquestionably very appropriate that Mr. Webb should have met his death in America, and in sight of the United States. That country has a passion for big shows, and has now been indulged in the biggest thing of its kind which has been seen in this generation. Nothing was to be gained by success—if success had been possible—beyond a temporary notoriety and the applause of a mob. . . .
As long as there is a popular demand for these essentially barbarous amusements, men and women will be found who are desperate, or greedy, or vain enough to risk their lives and ruin their health for money or applause. . . . The death of Mr. Webb is shocking in the last degree; but it will not be wholly useless if it at least awakens the sight-seeing world to some sense of what it is they have been encouraging.
It is interesting to compare this just criticism with that passed on Blondin's exhibition at Crystal Palace previously quoted.
When Webb swam across the channel, the feat was a remarkable instance of strength and endurance. It showed that a powerful man who was a good swimmer could continue to make progress through the water on a very fine day for over twenty hours. Indeed, shipwrecked sailors have done nearly as much under far less favorable circumstances; but as far as it went, Webb's was a very creditable performance. But in the Channel many vessels were following him and would have picked him up the moment he became exhausted. Yet it was nowise to his credit to throw his life away at Niagara, and render his children orphans, for the ignoble object of pleasing a mob.