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:
“I saw three ships come sailing by,
Come sailing by, come sailing by,
I saw three ships come sailing by,
On Christmas Day in the morning.”
—Unknown. As I Sat on a Sunny Bank. . .
Oxford Book of Light Verse, The. W. H. Auden, ed. (1938)
“Along the iron veins that traverse the frame of our country, beat and flow the fiery pulses of its exertion, hotter and faster every hour. All vitality is concentrated through those throbbing arteries into the central cities; the country is passed over like a green sea by narrow bridges, and we are thrown back in continually closer crowds on the city gates.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)
“And shall the earth
Seem all of paradise that we shall know?
The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
A part of labor and a part of pain,
And next in glory to enduring love,
Not this dividing and indifferent blue.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)