COLONY'S EARLY AVIATION
25
2 Continuation
"Asked as to the financial side of the question, Mars said that a guarantee of $8,000 was required for an exhibition - all three machines participating.
Capt. Baldwin with his brother, ascended in a balloon at Happy Valley, and came down in a parachute on January 3, 1891. A description of the event was given in "Old Hongkong" on 16-5-34.
While these Americans were in the Colony, a French airman arrived. The S. C. M. Post of February 2, 1911 reports:
"Yesterday there arrived on the ss. Amiral Duperre of the Chargeurs Reunis line, M. Forest, a young French aviator with a record to be proud of. He is best known among French aviators for his famous trip last year around Mt. St. Michel in France.
"M. Forest, who has proceeding to Shanghai, also has with him a monoplane. With him are Vallon and Jukblez, who also have with them a Sommer biplane and a Bleriot monoplane.
"It is expected the French party will subsequently come to Canton and give an exhibition about the end of February or the beginning of March, and we understand that negotiations to this end have already been commenced.
They do not appear to have attempted to give any exhibition flights in this Colony.
All was set in due course for a flight by the Americans, but the flight authorities banned the means of raising money for the show, and the airmen left (presumably) in great disgust. The story is related in the S.C.M. Post of February 7, 1911:
"The public will be intensely disappointed to learn that the projected aerial flights, which were to have taken place in the New Territories this week-end, are off, but they are not more disappointed than the aviators themselves, who, it appears, have gone to a good deal of expense in the matter and have left Hongkong on Wednesday with feelings that can be better imagined than described.
"In the full hope that everything would be satisfactorily arranged with the powers-that-be, Messrs. Baldwin, Price, Mars, and Shriver stayed over in Hongkong, had their biplanes transported to Taipo, and commenced the erection of a forty-feet long shed for their accommodation pending the exhibition. As we learned from Aviator Mars, yesterday, there being no other way of recouping themselves, in view of the fact that no guarantee was forthcoming, it was practically decided that the railway should make such a charge for transportation to Taipo as would cover the price of admission to the aviation ground, and that the airmen receive fifty per cent of the takings. Somehow or other, the arrangement has at the last moment fallen through. The Government, it seems, is unwilling to sanction such an arrangement, and naturally enough, the airmen are not flying for love.