H.King Aeromarine Origins (Putnam)
Nevertheless, that same year - 1905 - saw the first manned (though unpowered) flight from water, by Gabriel Voisin on June 6. His craft was a float-mounted glider, towed behind the racing motor boat La Rapiere, and the trial was conducted over the Seine.
Gabriel tells the story in his book Mes dix mille cerfs volants (1961 ), translated by Oliver Stewart and published by Putnam in England in 1963 with the title Men, Women and 10,000 Kites. Thus Gabriel:
'Now, fifty-five years later, as I write these lines, I hear once more the lapping of the water against the sides of the floats.... I had the controls ready. I waited for a time and then I applied elevator. My lovely glider instantly left the water.
'In a few seconds I was as high as the tops of the poplars along the quay. I went along without oscillation either in pitch or roll. We were approaching the Sevres bridge. La Rapiere slowed and I alighted on the water without incident...
'I had flown from the Billancourt bridge to the Sevres bridge at an altitude of fifty to sixty-six feet.'
Gabriel made three flights above the Seine that day. One was of 600 metres; the others of 100 metres and 30 metres. His historic float-glider was of Hargrave box-kite type (poetic justice, for Hargrave came near to being the first man to achieve flight from water) and was mounted on two floats constructed to his own designs.
L.Opdyke French Aeroplanes Before the Great War (Schiffer)
Deleted by request of (c)Schiffer Publishing
In 1905 the Voisins built a balloon for Bertelli, and that same year Archdeacon commissioned Voisin to build him yet another glider at Surcouf, similar to No 2 but more substantial. It showed what were to become Voisin characteristics, 4 side-curtains and a biplane cell tail unit. The glider was mounted on 4 floats of inflated varnished fabric. On 8 June 1905, towed on the Seine by Alphonse Tellier's motorboat La Rapiere, it managed flights of 600 and 100 m. A windspeed indicator and a dynamometer were attached to the towline, where Archdeacon computed that 28 hp were necessary for take-off. Voisin was at the controls on the last attempt, when it pitched down and flipped over onto its port side. Voisin's wrist was badly injured, and he gave up flying on the spot.
(Span: 10 m; wing area: 37.4 sqm; tailplane area: c 20 sqm; length: 10 m; weight: 360 kg)
Archdeacon took the same glider, now fitted with heavier floats, to Evian-les-Bains on Lake Geneva to continue his experiments on a larger area of water, where towing straight into the wind was possible. Voisin reported one such experiment with the glider at anchor, when a high wind came up; the pilot was able to control the machine perfectly, taking off and alighting without incident. It was later sold to an Englishman, Bellamy, who took off the floats and installed a 50 hp motor driving 4 propellers. He took it to England in 1906 and tested it suspended from a balloon as Santos-Dumont had done earlier the same year.
At the end of 1905 Gabriel Voisin went off on his own. For a while Archdeacon took up further experiments with Delagrange, founding the Aero Club de France: in 1906 the group did research and built several gliders on Chanute's model near Palaisseau. Archdeacon himself had planned a new glider for 1907, but it was probably never built. He then went on to offer his name and his money for a series of prizes to develop the powered machines of other designers. His last participation in aeroplane construction was with Clerget and Marquezy at Juvisy in 1911, on the CAM monoplane.
Archdeacon was also the author of a drama, La Conquete de I'Air, the story of a poor inventor who fails to fly and then kills himself. The play was performed, also unsuccessfully, in Paris, in January 1905.