It was in August of 1901 that he made his first official trial for the Deutsch Prize. The start was perfect, and the machine swooped toward the distant tower straight as a crow flies and almost as fast. The first half of the distance was covered in nine minutes, so twenty-one minutes remained for the balance of the journey: success seemed assured; the prize was almost within the grasp of the aeronaut. Of a sudden assured success was changed to dire peril; the automatic valves began to leak, the balloon to sag, the cords supporting the wooden keel hung low, and before Santos-Dumont could stop the motor the propeller had cut them and the whole system was threatened. The wind was drifting the air-ship toward the Eiffel Tower; the navigator had lost control; 500 feet below were the roofs of the Trocadero Hotels; he had to decide which was the least dangerous; there was but a moment to think. Santos-Dumont, death staring him in the face, chose the roofs. A swift jerk of a cord, and a big slit was made in the balloon. Instantly man, motor, gas-bag, and keel went tumbling down straight into the court of the hotels. The great balloon burst with a noise like an explosion, and the man was lost in a confusion of yellow-silk covering, cords, and wires. When the firemen reached the place and put down their long ladders they found him standing calmly in his wicker basket, entirely unhurt. The long, staunch keel, resting by its ends on the walls of the court, prevented him from being dashed to pieces. And so ended No. 5.
Most men would have given up aerial navigation after such an experience, but Santos-Dumont could not be deterred from continuing his experiments. The night of the very day which witnessed his fearful fall and the destruction of No. 5 he ordered a new balloon for "Santos-Dumont No. 6." It showed the pluck and determination of the man as nothing else could.
Twenty-two days after the aeronaut's narrow escape his new air-ship was finished and ready for a flight. No. 6 was practically the same as its predecessor—the triangular keel was retained, but an eighteen horse-power gasoline motor was substituted for the sixteen horse-power used previously. The propeller, made of silk stretched over a bamboo frame, was hung at the after end of the keel; the motor was a little aft of the centre, while the basket to which led the steering-gear, the emergency valve to the balloon, and the motor-controlling gear was suspended farther forward. To control the upward or downward pointing of the new air-ship, shifting ballast was used which ran along a wire under the keel from one end to the other; the cords controlling this ran to the basket also.
The new air-ship worked well, and the experimental flights were successful with one exception—when the balloon came in contact with a tree.
It was in October, 1901 (the 19th), when the Deutsch Prize Committee was asked to meet again and see a man try to drive a balloon against the wind, round the Eiffel Tower, and return.
The start took place at 2:42 P.M. of October 19, 1901, with a beam wind blowing. Straight as a bullet the air-ship sped for the steel shaft of the tower, rising as she flew. On and on she sped, while the spectators, remembering the finish of the last trial, watched almost breathlessly. With the air of a cup-racer turning the stake-boat she rounded the steel spire, a run of three and three-fifth miles, in nine minutes (at the rate of more than twenty-two miles an hour), and started on the home-stretch.
For a few moments all went well, then those who watched were horrified to see the propeller slow down and nearly stop, while the wind carried the air-ship toward the Tower. Just in time the motor was speeded up and the course was resumed. As the group of men watched the speck grow larger and larger until things began to take definite shape, the white blur of the whirling propeller could be seen and the small figure in the basket could be at last distinguished. Again the motor failed, the speed slackened, and the ship began to sink. Santos-Dumont threw out enough ballast to recover his equilibrium and adjusted the motor. With but three minutes left and some distance to go, the great dirigible balloon got up speed and rushed for the goal. At eleven and a half minutes past three, twenty-nine minutes and thirty-one seconds after starting, Santos-Dumont crossed the line, the winner of the Deutsch Prize. And so the young Brazilian accomplished that which had been declared impossible.
The following winter the aerial navigator, in the same No. 5, sailed many times over the waters of the Mediterranean from Monte Carlo. These flights over the water, against, athwart, and with the wind, some of them faster than the attending steamboats could travel, continued until through careless inflation of the balloon the air-ship and navigator sank into the sea. Santos-Dumont was rescued without being harmed in the least, and the air-ship was preserved intact, to be exhibited later to American sightseers.
"Santos-Dumont No. 6," the most successful of the series built by the determined Brazilian, looks as if it were altogether too frail to intrust with the carrying of a human being. The 105-foot-long balloon, a light yellow in colour, sways and undulates with every passing breeze. The steel piano wires by which the keel and apparatus are hung to the balloon skin are like spider-webs in lightness and delicacy, and the motor that has the strength of eighteen horses is hardly bigger than a barrel. A little forward of the motor is suspended to the keel the cigar-shaped gasoline reservoir, and strung along the top rod are the batteries which furnish the current to make the sparks for the purpose of exploding the gas in the motor.