Sailing Sea and Sky
One way the memories of Hudson and Fulton were honored was in the replication of the Hudson’s Half Moon and Fulton’s Clermont, the sailboat and steamship they navigated on the river. Both vessels were newly constructed, displayed and dedicated with great fanfare, and were included in the Celebration’s grand naval parade, which emphasized the United States’ naval supremacy in the Western Hemisphere. Additionally, the Celebration’s military parade on Manhattan Island showcased American national identity and pride while simultaneously promoting international peace. The celebration also was a display of the different modes of transportation then in existence. The famous RMS Lusitania represented the newest advancement in steamship technology at the time and was likewise put on display in 1909, only six years before it was sunk by a German U-boat in 1915.
The Celebration also included public flights by Wilbur Wright, who had won world fame with demonstration flights in Europe in late 1908 and spring 1909. Using Governor's Island as an airfield, on September 29 he flew around the Statue of Liberty. On October 4 he made a 33-minute flight over the Hudson River to Grant's Tomb and back, enabling perhaps a million New Yorkers to see their first airplane flight. Glenn Curtiss also appeared, but made only very brief flights, preferring not to challenge the windy conditions.
Read more about this topic: Hudson-Fulton Celebration
Famous quotes containing the words sailing, sea and/or sky:
“Theologians should not be ashamed to admit that they cannot enter a contest with such antagonists [the sceptics], and that they do not want to expose the Gospel truths to such an attack. The ship of Jesus Christ is not made for sailing on this stormy sea, but for taking shelter from this tempest in the haven of faith.”
—Pierre Bayle (1647–1706)
“Everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart,—Liberty and Union, now and for ever; one and inseparable!”
—Daniel Webster (1782–1852)
“And there is nothing in the eye,
Shut shutter of the mineral man
Who takes the fatherless dark to bed,
The acid sky to the brain-pan;
And calls the crows to peck his head.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)