COVER STORY
FORT PIERCE DAREDEVIL THRILLED CROWD AT INLET CELEBRATION
Madeline Davis poses aboard a seaplane, possibly the aircraft that took her over the new inlet on May 12, 1921, for Fort Pierce’s first parachute jump.
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FORT PIERCE INLET AT 100
While the new inlet was supposed to be the center of attention
on May 12, 1921, 24-year-old Madeline Davis stole
the show.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of locals gathered to watch
the daring young woman board a seaplane at Cobb’s Dock
and take to the air over the water, gradually reaching a
height of about 1,400 feet. Davis then slipped off the wing
and floated gently to earth, tethered to her canvas chute
only by a circus trapeze.
Spectators held their collective breath as Davis slid off
the wing. The chute seemed to drag, but after a few tense
seconds it opened perfectly, showering the area with newspaper
pages inserted between the folds to stop the apparatus
from jamming.
She floated down serenely and even entertained the cheering
crowds with a few tricks on her trapeze.
Davis had long been fascinated by all things aviation-related.
She’d always been a bit of a daredevil but it was seeing
someone jump from a tethered balloon at a county fair in
Nebraska that gave her the bug.
In 1918, her family relocated to Fort Pierce, where her
mother became a cook for the Old Dixie Cafeteria and her
father worked as a carpenter. Davis traveled all over the
country every summer with carnivals, making parachute
jumps and performing other aerial stunts.
JOANNE BLANDFORD
The Davis family still lives in St. Lucie County. Madeline’s
nephew, Bob Davis, for many years was the county tax
collector.
Yet her moment of glory in Fort Pierce was to be short-lived.
In October 1921, only months after jumping over the new
Fort Pierce Inlet, she was trying out for a job with Ruth Law’s
Flying Circus in New Jersey. Davis was practicing a new trick
in which Law drove an open car at about 45 mph along a
road while a pilot swooped down just above the speeding
vehicle. Madeline was supposed to grab a rope ladder dangling
from the plane and haul herself into the aircraft.
As the plane hovered overhead, Davis grabbed the ladder
but didn’t have enough strength in her hands to keep hold
of it. She fell out of the car and died of a fractured skull. She
was buried in Fort Pierce’s Riverview Memorial Park.
Laws later recalled Davis’ pitch for the new job.
“There is nothing on land or in the air that I am afraid
of,” she boasted, according to Laws. “I have been flying for
this last two years and doing all sorts of stunts in the air and
parachute jumping. Now I want to do something different;
something that no one else does, at least no other woman
does … I ought to be a big attraction for your company.”
— Anthony Westbury