Summer 1929. At the end of Steel Pier, a famous amusement park built on a pier in Atlantic City (New Jersey), on the northeast coast of the United States, several hundred people are gathered at the edge of the ocean . Their eyes are glued to a diving board hoisted to a height of twelve meters. At the very top stands a white stallion ridden by a young woman in a swimsuit. Everyone holds their breath. The performance lasts less than five seconds, but the wait is part of the show.
At the signal from its rider, the horse sets off, stepping over the diving board with an elastic leap. Hypnotized, the public sees the duo falling vertically at more than 80 km/h. A second and a half later, the horse and the young woman hit the water with a great crash of foam. Among the spectators, someone lets out a cry. Fortunately, no one was injured. The mount and the rider quickly surface, to the relieved applause of the tourists.
Not far from there, the director – and self-proclaimed inventor – of the horse-diving attraction (horse diving), a certain William Frank «Doc» Carverdon’t shy away from your pleasure. Certainly, this issue is not the first to exploit animals in grotesque attractions. At the same time, on exhibe dancing bears, boxing kangaroos and tightrope cats… Nevertheless, his show is one of the most popular on the east coast of the United States. Additionally, with six dives per day and 50 cents per viewer, it’s a very lucrative business.
An accidental idea
When asked how he came up with the crazy idea of diving horses, William Frank Carver always has the same answer. In 1881, while crossing the Platte River on horseback in Nebraska (American Midwest), the bridge on which he was walking would have collapsed. Shaken but alive, the survivor decided to transform an infrastructure defect into a business opportunity. THE horse diving had just been born.
A diving horse in full demonstration, at Hanlan’s Point Amusement Park, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, circa 1907. | Toronto History / public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Even if it’s hard to believe it (William Frank Carver knew how to maintain his legendby cleverly mixing realities and lies in the story of his life), those who hear him recount this youthful misadventure smile politely. With his six feet, his proud mustache and his broad shoulders, the man we nickname “Doc” – he was once a dentist – is not the kind of man we like to contradict. Before creating his diving horse act, he was a marksman in Buffalo Bill’s traveling shows. It is said that he could pierce a coin thrown in the air with a gunshot…
However, everything suggests that William Frank Carver was not the inventor of the number. Such performances have already been popping up at North American carnivals, fairgrounds and circuses since the 1880s. But “Doc” nevertheless contributes to increasing their popularity… despite the dangers involved.
The risks of the job
Because the slightest false movement of the horse can result in a very serious injury below: skull fractures, concussions, retinal detachments are part of the collateral damage. William Frank Carver learned this lesson painfully. While he was refining one of his first shows in San Antonio (Texas) in 1907, a teenager he employed was killed on impact in his first jump. Sonora Webster, his own daughter-in-law, will go blind after a botched dive in 1931 (which did not prevent him from continuing to dive for the next eleven years).
Despite the mishaps along the way, the number was a resounding success. After the death of William Frank Carver in 1927, the family business passed into the hands of his son and the Atlantic City shows continued to attract American crowds for more than forty years.
Until the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals got involved. Regularly campaigning against this odious act, always vigilant during performances given on the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, she ended up winning her case: the act disappeared for good in the 1970s. And despite a few attempts to bring it back to the front of the stage (the last one, in 2012, scandalized activists), everything suggests that the diving horses will not resurface anytime soon.
Source: www.slate.fr
