balloonists

C.K. Wollam & W.T. Van Orman (LOC)

from The Library of Congress

• TVL1970 said:

  Legendary balloonist and Goodyear engineer, Ward Van Orman (1894-1978) with partner Carl K. Wollam (1893-1960[?]), photographed after (given the "6/25/25" date inscription) their adventurous participation the 1925 Gordon Bennett Trophy Race. As per Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Van_Orman

  During the 1925 International Race Van Orman performed world's first emergency night landing of a balloon on a deck of a steamship at high seas. The race took off June 9, 1925 at Brussels; at first the Goodyear III balloon floated over France towards Spain but then a change in wind dragged it into Atlantic Ocean. Van Orman's partner, Carl Wollam, desperate about inevitable death by drowning, intoxicated himself with cognac and attempted suicide at least twice. As Van Orman struggled to restrain Wollam from jumping overboard, he noticed navigation lights of a ship that turned out to be a small German freighter, Vaterland. Van Orman flashed morse code messages to the captain, who assisted the landing by turning on all available lighting and steering the ship towards the descending balloon. The balloon safely landed on Vaterland's forward deck. Van Orman and captain Rudolf Norman remained friends for life. This flight was the longest in the 1925 International Race, but Van Orman was disqualified and denied the Gordon Bennett Trophy according to the race rules requiring landing to be on land. Fifty years after this event, Van Orman was still bitterly hurt by the disqualification: "the memory of that unfair decision never has grown dim".

  This would be far from the last of Van Orman's aviation adventures and achievements in a remarkably lived life.

• swanq said:

  The Evening Star. June 30, 1925, Page 17, right-hand photo in second row chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1925-06-30/ed-... includes a picture of the two men, with caption, "BALLOONISTS WHO LANDED IN THE SEA. C. K. Wollam and W.T. Van Orman, American balloonists, who took part in the Brussels balloon race and were picked up at sea by a freight steamer. They arrived in New York yesterday aboard the Leviathan." So the Bain picture will presumably have been taken on the Leviathan.

• Jon (LOC P&P) said:

  Thanks TVL1970 and swanq. We'll update our catalog record.