If you graduated from high school, there’s a good chance that, at some point, you had your physics acumen tested by way of an egg drop competition. So, you suffocated your egg in old bubble wrap and foam insulation, wrangled a mess of Popsicle sticks into the approximate shape of a box, Koosh-balled the hell out of the whole business and left its fate to gravity’s butter fingers. The brass-balled Niagara daredevils attempted similar feats – except they were the eggs, and while it was blind, stupid courage that brought them to the lip of the falls, it was their makeshift barrels, boats and bathyspheres that ultimately had to carry them over. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. 75 years’ worth of stuntmen, performers and sailors challenged the Niagara River before anyone dreamed of taking on the falls.

When people look at a giant waterfall, they instinctually want to send crap over it. Visit Niagara and then tell me you didn’t wish you had a dilapidated schooner full of wild animals to drop over the roaring cataract. I use that example because it’s totally what you wished, but also because in 1827, the owners of the only three Niagara-area hotels had the same collective dream (although their vision also involved lots of flying “No Vacancy” marquees and airborne dollar signs slam-dunking cash wads through money hoops). After procuring a condemned boat called the Michigan, the intrepid hoteliers began rabidly advertising that the “pirate Michigan,” along with a cargo of “animals of the most ferocious kind, such as Panthers, Wild Cats and Wolves,” would plunge over the falls on September 8. Word spread and people gathered. On the publicized date, a crowd of 10,000 onlookers watched as one buffalo, two raccoons, one dog and one goose road the Michigan over Horseshoe Falls (two bears were placed on the boat, but escaped into the river before the vertical drop). Only the duck survived.

The first Niagara daredevils, who may have had the recently pancaked buffalo in mind, avoided the actual falls, preferring instead to take on the surrounding rapids, gorges and whirlpools. Beginning in 1829, when famed stunt jumper Sam Patch (AKA “The Yankee Leaper”) successfully completed a 125-foot feet-first leap into the Niagara River, performers and wannabes from all corners of palookaville began squaring off with the area’s most treacherous geography, and the falls became an incidental backdrop to a vast culture of thrilling death defiance. Swimmers challenged the rushing river waters upstream from the falls. Along the river’s banks, divers flung themselves from makeshift ladders and platforms. Stuntmen and sailors attempted to steer boats and converted barrels through the treacherous downstream whirlpool rapids. But in 19th century Niagara, amid all the varied calculated showmanship and reckless heroism, one type of act reigned supreme– the gorge-spanning tightrope walk.

Of the dozen or so high-wire performers who balanced their way across the 160-foot-drop between tenuously strung cables and a definite, tangible fate (most on foot, though in 1869 J.F. “Professor” Jenkins crossed on a velocipede [all I can picture is Professor Frink riding Mr. Garrison’s IT]), none compared to the nimble Charles Blondin, AKA The Great Blondin, and his well-muscled, business-savvy rival William Hunt, AKA The Great Farini.

The Great Blondin (real name Jean-Francois Gravelet), a French-born acrobat, arrived in Niagara in 1859 with the intention of crossing the gorge on a tightrope. After stringing a 3 ½-inch-thick, 1,100-foot-long rope across the canyon, the svelte, mustachioed performer completed his goal with seemingly effortless aplomb, and immediately began working to up the ante. Over the next two years, Blondin performed a cornucopia of increasingly absurd acts, all while perched high above the Niagara River’s icy water and pummeling currents. He crossed blindfolded. He crossed on stilts. He crossed carrying his manager on his back. He crossed with a portable stove, sat down in the middle of the rope and cooked and ate an omelet.

During the second year of Blondin’s success, a new talent arrived in Niagara. New Yorker William Hunt had abandoned his family, his girlfriend and his name to become the high-wire extraordinaire known as The Great Farini (an unapologetic bid to cash-in on the erotic mystery of a European pedigree). Strong as moonshine and focused as a Ford Focus, Farini had one goal – out-perform Blondin. For his first stunt in Niagara, Farini high-wired halfway across the gorge, used a second rope to descend all the way down to the waiting Maid of the Mist, enjoyed a glass of wine (how European), climbed 160 feet back up to the tightrope and completed his crossing… only to re-cross minutes later, blindfolded and wearing baskets on his feet. Whereas Blondin ended his performances by humbly asking the audience for donations, Farini preceded his stunts with solicited sponsorship deals and publicity campaigns that guaranteed larger crowds and bigger profits. Farini matched Blondin stunt for stunt, carrying a local woman across the falls after Blondin piggybacked his manager, and even one-upping the omelet act by schlepping a washtub out on the line, lowering the basin down into the river, hoisting it back up and washing a dozen handkerchiefs in it. On several occasions, he called Blondin out, directly challenging him to mano a mano competition. The Frenchman never responded.

Eventually, Blondin moved to England where he became a respected acrobatic performer. Farini followed him and ultimately emerged the more successful man, touring much of Europe as an acrobat before eventually teaming up with P.T. Barnum to work behind the scenes as a circus coordinator. Interestingly, despite Farini’s long and varied career, it’s still Blondin whose name is synonymous with Niagara high-wire acts. As they say – life’s a bitch and then you yell at it until you get throat cancer and die a prolonged and agonizing death.

At the dawn of the 20th century, the ropes and platforms and fearsome freestyle strokes of daredevils past would be overshadowed by a new frontier in insane, ridiculous name-making – the journey over the falls.

(Continued on Friday)

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