Gertrude Bacon on Waterbird |
The last weekend of October is spent in the
Lake District, combining a reunion dinner with a couple of days hiking in the
hills. As we check into the Windermere Hydro hotel at Bowness, a clutch of sepia
tinted photographs catch my eye. One shows a woman in Edwardian dress, with
high neck and leg of mutton sleeves. She is Gertrude Bacon, the first British
woman to fly as a passenger in an aeroplane, and is seated behind pilot Herbert
Stanley Adams in Waterbird, Britain’s first successful seaplane that made its
historic maiden flight on Lake Windermere in 1911.
The picture to the right of the doughty
pair shows an aerial photograph of the town of Bowness, taken by Gertrude in
July of the following year. In her book Memories Of Land and
Sky, published in 1928, Gertrude wrote,
“Windermere held no secrets from us that afternoon: fishers, bathers, lovers in
secluded corners, all were revealed. Somehow, the word had got around of our
intended flight and everywhere were waving handkerchiefs and friendly
greetings.”
Intrigued, I sit in front of the log fire
in the hotel lounge with my laptop and set about finding out more. The daughter
of a clergyman who gave up his ministry to concentrate on his scientific
interests, Gertrude was educated at home, and clearly relished helping her
father with his experiments – particularly ballooning and astronomy. In 1899, the
25 year old Gertrude took off with her father and experienced aeronaut Stanley
Spencer in a hydrogen balloon, from Newbury in Berkshire, to view a predicted
spectacular meteor shower.
After several hours of enjoyable flight
in the darkness, the trio discovered that the balloon showed no signs of descending
as planned. Moreover, because of a decision to dispense with the usual
butterfly valve, relying instead on natural leakage, there was no way of
letting off the gas. The balloon reached 9,000 ft and the trio found themselves
over the Bristol Channel. Concerned that when day came, the sun would add to
the problems by causing the balloon to rise even higher, they came to the
conclusion that they were doomed to a fatal end in the Atlantic or a crash
landing by using the ripping cord to puncture the balloon.
Reverend Bacon seems to have taken a rather
philosophical approach, his main concern being the composition of his message
to the flight’s sponsors, The Times
newspaper. Gertrude and Stanley Spencer made rather more practical use of his copious
supply of telegram forms. “We wrote and posted over the side three dozen or so
neatly folded notes, labelled Important,
and bearing the following message within. ‘Large balloon from Newbury overhead, above
clouds. Cannot descend. Telegraph to sea coast (coastguards) to be ready to
rescue.’”
Eventually, after ten hours of flight, the
balloon began to descend of its own accord, tossed by gale force winds,
crashing into an oak tree and then finally coming to rest in a barbed wire
fence in a field in Neath, Wales. Gertrude suffered a broken arm and her father
a lacerated leg.
Undeterred by this hair-raising flight,
Gertrude Bacon went on to become a highly regarded balloonist and aeronautical
engineer, permitted to accompany the British Astronomical Association on
various expeditions to India, the USA and Lapland. She was noted for her speaking
abilities, with one newspaper full of praise for a lecture which “was
illustrated with lantern slides, experiments and – as far as the possibilities
of the Parish Rooms would admit – of working models, including a non-rigid type
of dirigible balloon, which floated successfully over the heads of those
present”.
Gertrude was not only intrepid, but a
talented photographer and author with a precise yet witty writing style. Her
account of the hair-raising balloon flight is a joy to read. (The
Record of an Aeronaut, her biography of her father, published in 1907). Yet
despite being a pioneering and confident woman, one of her best selling titles
was How men fly.
Golden October on Lake Windermere |
Back to the present. The next day dawns
bright and clear and we are promised that rare event in the Lake District, a
dry day. After a wonderful four-hour walk, wearing my
new Salomon boots that replaced the venerable Italian pair that so
spectacularly parted company with their soles in the Arizona Rim Country (see The
Great Arizona road trip) we take
the ferry back to Bowness across Lake Windermere, with glorious golden sunlight
burnishing the brilliant crimson, copper and yellow trees along the shoreline.
In charge of the wooden ferry is a young
woman, with a ready smile and a sure hand on the wheel. She has worked for the company for eight
years, she tells me, promoted to driving the boats three years ago. She loves
the work.
We return to the hotel to find headlines announcing
the departure of Cynthia Carroll from Anglo American, after six years as Chief
Executive. A geologist by training, US born
Cynthia Carroll was the first woman and the first non-South African to be
appointed to the role when she was given the top job in 2007.
Earlier in the month Dame Marjorie Scardino
(Canadian) announced her decision to step down from publishing giant Pearson
after 16 years.
That leaves just two women at the top of
FTSE 100 companies in the UK, of whom only one is British - accountant Alison
Cooper who has been Chief Executive of Imperial Tobacco since 2010. The other
is Angela Ahrends (American), who restored the upmarket credibility of Burberry
from the excesses of WAG over-exposure.
The news has resurrected the calls for
quotas in boardrooms and the arguments that this will result in a flood of
mediocre appointments and the blight of tokenism. “We just need more women in
the pipeline, not special treatment,” goes the cry, “and then it will all
happen naturally."
And while we are talking about special
treatment, Cherie Blair reminded us at the Women
beyond leadership 2012 event held this week in London that the Davies Report revealed that only 5 per cent of Non
Executive Directors appointed to company boards go through due process.
Meanwhile an engineering friend reports
yet another example of the Catch 22 facing senior women in construction. She
was told by a headhunter just last week that FTSE board appointments will only
be a reality for her if she can demonstrate FTSE experience.
On a more positive note, it is good news that women are
driving boats, trains and planes in peacetime, and some are venturing higher. A century after Gertrude Bacon made her pioneering
flight, the first Chinese woman astronaut, Liu Yang, joined two others aboard
the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft that lifted off from the Gobi Desert for a 13 day mission in July this
year. Liu is a 33 year old fighter pilot, one of the cohort that completed
their training in 2009 and were rewarded with special Anti-G flight suits for
women that took 15 months to develop.
A far cry from the outfit devised by
another redoubtable woman, Edith Berg, who was so captivated by seeing Wilbur
Wright demonstrating his flying machine in France in 1908 that she persuaded
him to take her up for a ride. As she set off, she tied a rope around her skirt
to stop it blowing in the wind during the flight, becoming not only the first
American woman to fly as a passenger in an aeroplane but also the originator of
the fashionable ‘hobble skirt.’
Today’s astronaut Liu, from the poor and populous central province of Henan,
has been praised in state media for her nerves of steel after safely landing
her fighter jet after a bird strike that left the cockpit glass covered with
blood. Speaking
to the official Xinhua new agency Liu said she "yearns to experience the
wondrous, weightless environment of space, see the Earth and gaze upon the
motherland".
Sentiments rather similar to Gertrude Bacon’s introduction to her book All about flying, published in 1915, in which she says, “Who in this world of ours has not envied the birds their wings, and longed like them to soar their way through the free pure vault of heaven!”
Sentiments rather similar to Gertrude Bacon’s introduction to her book All about flying, published in 1915, in which she says, “Who in this world of ours has not envied the birds their wings, and longed like them to soar their way through the free pure vault of heaven!”
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