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There Came a
Mighty Swarm
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In
Their Own Words
 ilbur
and Orville arrived in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on July 10, 1901 and
spent the first night with the family of William Tate, who had become a
close friend. But rather than camp outside of
Kitty Hawk, as they did in 1900, they traveled south about 4 miles and
set up camp at the base of the Kill Devil Hills which would become their
flight laboratory for the next three years. In this letter to his sister
Katharine, Orville describes the first few days of their 1901 adventure.
Katharine Wright
Dayton, Ohio
July 28, 1901
This is Sunday evening, six o'clock, and I am
writing this letter while Will and Mr. Spratt are washing the dinner
dishes. We did not get up this morning till half past seven, and had
breakfast at a little after eleven, so 'that our dinner did not come
till after five this evening. I have been so busy that I have not at any
time had an opportunity to write, having had all the cooking to do
besides the work on the machine. We completed it yesterday and spent the
afternoon in gliding with some pretty exciting results which I will
relate "afer soon." Camping at Kill Devil is a different thing from that
at Kitty Hawk. We haven't had a nor'easter yet, though we have been here
over two weeks. In spite of the fact that I looked forward to
nor'easters last year with some fear, nothing could have been more
welcome this year, but it seems nature has been in a conspiracy with our
enemy, the mosquito.
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We landed at Kitty Hawk two weeks ago Thursday
evening, one day after a 93-mile nor'easter which demolished the only
remaining piece of our last year's machine. We slept at Tate's that
night on a bed which looked very much like this from the head end.
That's Will down in the center and that little fellow hanging on to the
side with both hands "is me." When I played out and couldn't stand it
any longer, I rolled down into the bottom and made Will crawl up the
side. The fellow in the bottom could get along pretty comfortably, for
when he was attacked by any foe (which roams at large over most of the
beds in these southern places) he had the opportunity of slapping back,
but the poor fellow on the side was in a pretty fix, having both hands
occupied, and had to endure the attacks the best he could.
The next morning we set out with all our baggage
for Kill Devil Hills, selecting our site and pitching our tent in a
drenching rain, which had come upon us unexpectedly but continued all
day and night. After fooling around all day inside the tent, excepting
on a few occasions when we rushed out to drive a few more tent pegs, our
thirst became unbearable, and we decided upon driving the Webbert pump,
no well where we could get water being within a mile's distance. Well
(pun), we got no well; the point came loose down in the sand, and we
lost it! Oh misery! Most dead for water and none within a mile,
excepting what was coming from the skies. However, we decided to catch a
little of this, and placed the dish-pan where the water dripped down
from the tent roof; and though it tasted somewhat of the soap which we
had rubbed on the canvas to keep it from mildewing, it pretty well
filled a long felt want. These troubles were nothing in comparison to
what was coming, so I will not relate them further.
We continued our well driving all day Saturday, and
Sunday spent the day in making a trip to Kitty Hawk (four miles) and in
reading. Sunday night I was taken sick and 'most died, that is, I felt
as if I did; and managed to keep Will up the best part of the night. The
next day I was all right, and we commenced work on our building. The
work went along well and we had the building done in three days. The
building is a grand institution, with awnings at both ends; that is,
with big doors hinged at the top, which we swing open and prop up,
making an awning the full length of the building at each end, and
extending out a little over the distance of the porch around our house.
We keep both ends open almost all the time and let the breezes have full
sway. These breezes, by the way, are a little stronger than that big
wind which blew the tops off the trees on our street a few days before
we left—the night Ed Sines was over—and continue day and night, coming
in turn from all points of the compass.
Mr. Huffaker arrived Thursday afternoon, and with
him a swarm of mosquitoes which came in a mighty cloud, almost darkening
the sun. This was the beginning of the most miserable existence I had
ever passed through. The agonies of typhoid fever with its attending
starvation are as nothing in comparison. But there was no escape. The
sand and grass and trees and hills and everything were fairly covered
with them. They chewed us clear through our underwear and socks. Lumps
began swelling up all over my, body like hen's eggs. We attempted to
escape by going to bed, which we did at a little after five o'clock. We
put our cots out under the awnings and wrapped up in our blankets with
only our noses protruding from the folds, thus exposing the least
possible surface to attack. Alas! Here nature's complicity in the
conspiracy against us became evident. The wind, which until now had been
blowing over twenty miles an hour, dropped off entirely. Our blankets
then became unbearable. The perspiration would roll off of us in
torrents. We would partly uncover and the mosquitoes would swoop down
upon us in vast multitudes. We would make a few desperate and vain
slaps, and again retire behind our blankets. Misery! Misery! The half
can never be told. We passed the next ten hours in a state of hopeless
desperation. Morning brought a little better condition, and we attempted
on several occasions to begin work on our machine, but all attempts had
to be abandoned. We now thought that surely our enemy had done its
worst, and we could hope for something better soon. Alas, "how seldom do
our dreams come true."
The next night we constructed mosquito frames and
nets over our cots, thinking in our childish error we could fix the
bloody beasts. We put our cots out on the sand twenty or thirty feet
from the tent and house, and crawled in under the netting and
bedclothes, Glen Osborn fashion, and lay there on our backs smiling at
the way in which we had got the best of them. The tops of the canopies
were covered with mosquitoes till there was hardly standing room for
another one; the buzzing was like the buzzing of a mighty buzz saw. But
what was our astonishment when in a few minutes we heard a terrific slap
and a cry from Mr. Huffaker announcing that the enemy had gained the
outer works and he was engaged in a hand-to-hand conflict with them. All
our forces were put to complete rout. In our desperate attacks on the
advancing foe our fortifications were almost entirely torn down, and in
desperation, we fled from them, rushing all about the sand for several
hundred feet around trying to find some place of safety. But it was of
no use. We again took refuge in our blankets with the same results as in
the previous night. Affairs had now become so desperate that it began to
look as if camp would have to be abandoned or we perish in the attempt
to maintain it.
Hope springs eternal; that is, it does the next
morning when we begin to recover from the attack of the night before.
Remembering the claim of the U.S. Army that safety is in "a superior
fire," we proceeded to build big fires about camp, dragging in old tree
stumps which are scattered about over the sands at about a quarter mile
from camp, and keeping up such a smoke that the enemy could not find us.
Mr. Spratt, after getting in bed with the smoke blowing over him, before
long announced that he could no longer stand the fire, and dragged his
cot out into the clear air. A few minutes later he returned, saying the
mosquitoes were worse than the smoke. He spent the balance of the night
in retreat from mosquito to smoke and from smoke to mosquito. However,
the mosquitoes this night were small in number as compared with any
previous night or even our fires would probably have been of no avail.
Mr. Huffaker, Will, and I had passed the night in comparative comfort,
but Mr. Spratt in the morning announced that that was the most miserable
night he had ever passed through. Of course we explained to him what we
had gone through, and that we were expecting a repetition of it every
night. We nearly scared him off after the first night, but as every
night since affairs have been improving, he is now a little less uneasy,
and has hopes of enduring the agony a few weeks longer.
Yesterday most of the mosquitoes had disappeared
and we had a fine day and wind for testing the new machine. We took it
off to the Big Hill, about a thousand feet distant, and began our
experiments. Our first experiments were rather disappointing. The
machine refused to act like our machine last year and at times seemed to
be entirely beyond control. On one occasion it began gliding off higher
and higher (Will doing the gliding) until it finally came almost at a
stop at a height variously estimated by Mr. Spratt and Huffaker at from
18 ft. to forty feet. This wound up in the most encouraging performance
of the whole afternoon. This was the very fix Lilienthal got into when
he was killed. His machine dropped head first to the ground and his neck
was broken. Our machine made a flat descent to the ground with no injury
to either operator or machine. On another occasion the machine made
another similar performance and showed that in this respect it is
entirely safe. These were the first descents ever made successfully
after getting into the above-mentioned predicament. The adjustments of
the machine are away off. We expect to get it in good shape in the
morning and make more successful attempts. Mr. Huffaker was much pleased
with a long glide we made, which he considered the longest ever made,
but we think at least three or four better have been made before. Some
of our glides were very encouraging.
It is now after bedtime and since very few
mosquitoes have shown up we are going to get a good start on them. Tell
Carrie I will write to her in a few days, at least at the first
opportunity. Tell Mr. Taylor of what is going on, or give him our
letters to read. I suspect it is a little tiresome running the shop all
alone. I will write again in a few days.
Orville Wright
Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina
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Orville's doodle showing the sleeping arrangements at the Tate's..
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