IV.
Here end the yarns about the beginnings and first year of the War Flight. On the 12th of April I began to turn over the little show to my successor, and took up work under the Technical Department, a shore job.
The high lights in the picture alone have been painted in, the grilling hours of monotonous and apparently unproductive patrol put in by the pilots over that grim and unfriendly graveyard of ships, the North Sea, have been left out. Results only have been more or less fully presented, the loyal and often heartbreaking work of the ratings in the sheds has not even been sketched. But the hard and the soft, the comedy and the tragedy, are now in the past, and it is out of such stuff, seemingly raw and grey at the time, that Romance is made.
The German submarines, defeated and surrendered, have come streaming in through the guardships, up past the slipways, their crews on deck, and the white ensign flying above them, and are lying rusting and rotting, huddled together, in "Submarine Trot" off Parkeston, in Harwich harbour.
New and better flying-boats than we used have been built. And Old '61, her day done, has been dismantled and broken up. But glance down the bare bones of her career.
| Hours of patrol work | 300 |
| Total flying time | 368 |
Also the men of the War Flight are mostly back in civilian life.
They were nearly all 1914 and 1915 men, competent "tradesmen," cheerfully working overtime at their trades for a small wage, while men outside, absolutely free from discipline, were making big money for similar work. Not that the men were working for the money in it. They worked to down the Hun. But the point is mentioned because the high cost of living hit many of these service men very hard.
The officers are now scattered to the four corners of the earth, such as are still alive, in South Africa, Ceylon, Canada, South America, and the United States. There are few of them remaining in the new service. As required by the nature of the work, they were nearly all a bit older than the usual run of aeroplane pilots, and a peace time service made no appeal.
For "them as likes figures" the work they did in twelve months may be boiled down to—
| 8 | average number of boats a month: |
| 190 | flying days. |
| 605 | patrols carried out. |
| 105,397 | nautical miles flown. |
| 47 | enemy submarines sighted. |
| 25 | enemy submarines bombed. |
| 1 | Zeppelin destroyed. |
Also, at this time, the Service we belonged to and loved came to an untimely end, and although the War Flight carried on until the Armistice, and did great work under the Royal Air Force, the rose by another name did not smell as sweet.
On the last day of March there was a dinner given by the Mess to Rear-Admiral Cayley, C.B. He was a staunch friend of the Station, and had been in charge of operations from Harwich. But even he was leaving to take up new duties.
At this dinner many admirable speeches were made, both in style and substance, encouraging the Royal Naval Air Service pilots to play the game, and whole-heartedly turn over their allegiance to the new service that was being born at midnight—a service which many of the active service men felt might open the door for intrigue and unrest, and quick and unfortunate changes in command and policy, at a time when all hands should be busy mopping up the Hun.
But the Royal Naval Air Service was passing away.
It was the older of the two British flying services, having its beginnings in 1910. It had never been noted for its red-tape methods, its ingenuity in creating forms to be filled in, or the number of ground personnel required to administer it. But the debt which the nation owes to it for the development of engines and efficient aircraft, no less than for its operations on land and sea over the whole world, has hardly been appreciated. For at one time, without the pilots developed under its traditions and the machines and engines developed by its foresight, things would have gone hard with our arms in France.
It was a small service that had done great things. But its work was not appreciated, as it followed the traditions of its parent, and adopted, not without a struggle it is true, the virtue of silence. And now its people were asked to give up the legends about the mighty pilots who had created the service, the traditions which had accumulated so rapidly in war time, the uniform and routine which so well fitted their work, the comradeship which had permeated the personnel owing to its limited number, and the name which numberless brave men had laid down their lives to make honourable.
And bitterest pill of all, the Navy, our natural parent, was willing we should be put under the guardianship of an unknown and alien stepmother.
At this dinner the toast to the King was drunk in the mess sitting for the last time.
Blow this khaki! I feel hardly human.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FUTURE: RUNNING THE U.S. MAIL.
Lotus-eating down among the South Sea Islands, knocking about in a little old topsail schooner, trading a bit for occupation and not for profit, yet getting out with a pleasant balance on the right side, I had drowsily drifted down the river of life ten years nearer to the Great Uncharted Sea.
When I sloughed off my uniform at the end of the Great War, worn out in body, weary in mind, and sick with the so-called civilisation which had produced such a Frankenstein monster, I had promised myself a two-year holiday far from cities, telephones, and newspapers, and the two years had quietly and unobtrusively grown into ten.
Now, having travelled nearly around the world by devious and dawdling routes, and that morning having sauntered down the gang-plank of a rusty and battered old tramp steamer, I was standing in a street in Plymouth, rather dazed and bewildered by the noise and crowd of the busy seaport town.
Without a moment's warning, with an appalling suddenness, I staggered beneath a tremendous blow between my shoulder-blades, and a voice roared in my ear—"Pix, by all that's holy!"
Half turning, I saw a short stocky man, in a blue uniform, who was now trying to dislocate the bones in my right hand, and more or less succeeding.
"You don't know me," he shouted, laughing. "But you're the same old, thin, dried-up specimen you always were. I'd have known you anywhere. I'm Pank."
And it was Pank. Much broader, and therefore, by an optical illusion, much shorter; older and filled out; wearing a beard instead of being clean shaven; but Pank all the same. Pank, the active microbe, who in his lurid career at Felixstowe had bent many a Hun, and could always be relied upon to shake into activity even the most lethargic jelly-fish.
In an amazingly short space of time my empty glass was on the table before me, he had sucked out an outline sketch of my last ten years as though he were a large-bore semi-rotary bilge pump, found that I was thinking of returning to Canada, and had departed after saying—
"You're coming with me in the Swift. New boat. Open your eyes. I'm running the U.S. Mail. It's two o'clock now; be at the White Line landing-stage at four o'clock. Hand-baggage only. One berth returned; lucky, wasn't it. Expect to be properly gouged for it. See you later."
Galvanised into activity by his breezy energy, I made more haste than I had for years, and was at the landing-stage at four o'clock. Here I found a motor-boat waiting, her sides covered with soft fenders, and when my scant hand-luggage was put on board we pushed off. As we rounded the dock I saw her in all her splendour, lying at a buoy in the harbour, the Swift, a great triplane flying-boat.
But such a boat. She was pure white—hull, struts, and wings. Her six propellers seemed to be of some bright metal, for their curved surfaces caught the sun and winked points of fire at me. She loomed very large as we approached her, the top plane towering above us as we passed under her lower wing, but until the motor-boat came alongside her light steel hull I did not realise how big she was, so well was she proportioned. She was clean as a whistle, without a single excrescence, beautifully stream-lined. The simplicity of the whole design was a revelation.
The man in the motor-boat told me that the soft fenders of his craft were to prevent his scratching the "anti-skin friction paint." I asked him what it was for. He was very vague, but thought it made her slip easily through the air,—everything was covered with it, "wings and everything."
Climbing up a short companion-ladder and passing through a gangway, I was met by a steward who was apparently expecting me, as on giving my name he collected my hand-luggage without a word. He led me down a short alleyway. It opened into a long narrow dining-saloon, about twelve feet wide and forty feet long, set out with small tables and easy-chairs. There were a number of passengers fussing about and blocking the narrow space. As he led me aft I noticed that on each side of the saloon were five cabin doors.
At the end of the saloon we passed through a door in the middle into a rather narrow passage, which dipped down quickly to give head room under the main spar and three fat steel cylinders, which came through the wall on one side and passed out on the other. The floor of the passage rose again to the level of the smoking-room deck. On each side of the smoking-room were five cabins. The steward opened one of the doors.
"'Ere you are, sir," he said.
It was a small place, not larger than eight feet long by six feet wide, and containing two fixed bunks, one above the other. All the fittings were of spartan simplicity and extremely light. It was lit from the ceiling. The steward showed me how to work the ventilators, because the glass ports were fixed and did not open.
"When in the hair we're 'ermetically sealed, so to speak," he explained.
On coming out of my cabin I was met by the Purser. "The Skipper telephoned and told me to look out for you," he said. I asked him what time we started. "We'll take the air about six o'clock," he replied, "unless the mails are delayed by the train wreck, a bad pile up on the main line." And he offered the observation that he considered railway travelling dangerous, now that all the mail trains had been speeded up because of the competition of aeroplanes. "The road beds and rails are too light to stand the racket," he explained.
In reply to questions, he continued—
"Our scheduled time is seventeen hours, but we usually do the three thousand miles in fifteen, and will land in New York at three in the morning. No, it's not nine hours; you see we go west with the sun.
"We always make the run at night. You can post a letter as late as four o'clock in London and have it on a desk in an office in New York at eight o'clock next morning. Coming back? We leave at eleven o'clock in the morning, and the mails are delivered in London by ten o'clock.
"Then there's little room on board, and nothing to do, and while passengers are sleeping they don't take up much space or move about. We have forty on board; you were lucky to get a passage. All men this time. We occasionally have ladies, but not often; they prefer the surface liner, because they can dance and have a good time."
And then he told me what my passage would cost. The amount rather shook me. I asked if many people travelled by air when they had to pay such rates.
"List always full up," he replied. "Speed of transport means longer life, and they don't mind paying for life. Most of the passengers are men in big business, famous surgeons, or international lawyers, and they actually make money by it. They like to finish a day's work in London, have a day and a half in New York, and be back to carry on the following day. They have got to sleep wherever they are, and might as well sleep on board. They tell me they sleep like the dead. I suppose the idea of doing anything at such speed lets down their nerves. There's one stock speculator crosses with us every two weeks; he says it's the only decent night's rest he gets.
"By the way, your passage-money includes dinner; the line sets out to do you tremendously well. There's only room for half the passengers in the dining-saloon at one time; but dinner is on for three hours, and you can dine early or late. You will only get a cup of tea and a piece of toast in the morning, and have breakfast on shore."
He explained he would have to leave me.
"The Skipper told me you are an old flying-boat man," he said, "and, if he was not on board, to introduce you to the Chief Engineer."
I followed the Purser forward through the smoking-room, and, by means of a side door, to the engine-room. I was introduced to the Chief. As was to be expected, he was a Scotchman—Angus Munroe.
To him I opened my heart. I explained I was a poor Rip Van Winkle who had not seen a flying-boat or chewed on a figure for ten years, that I was bursting with curiosity, and in the sacred name of Pity to tell me the horse-power, weight, dimensions, and speed of his wonderful boat.
His long face cracked in a smile.
"Ay," he said. "The Skipper told me you learned him to fly in a bit boat weighing six tons."
He waved his hand at three long fat tubes running athwart ship overhead, from side to side of the boat, on a level with the lower wings.
"Turbines," he explained. "Thirty thousand horse. Steam. But vara likely ten years ago you peddled aboot with internal combustion fakements—chattering, clattering, and onreliable. But yon's power for you—silent, reliable, sweet, and done oop in a penny packet. Vara likely in your heathen islands ye never heard tell of Janes Fluid. We make steam wi' it instead of water. I could do wi' holding the patent. Condensing? That was the deeficulty. Great volumes of steam coming off at great velocity. But Janes Fluid and Toogoods condenser do the beesiness."
"One moment," I broke in. "Back in 1919 the destroyers of the 'flotilla leader' class had thirty-thousand horse turbines."
"Ay," said Munroe, "I've rattled roond in them."
"If I remember rightly, they were three hundred and fifty feet long and did thirty-five knots," I continued. "They carried two hundred and eighty tons of oil fuel. That was enough for eleven hours at full speed, or three hundred and eighty-five miles. That is, they used twenty-three tons of fuel an hour."
"Mon, your memory's fine," assented the Chief. "Ye'll well remember they could dae fifteen knots for aboot a hunder and sixty hours on the same fuel, using maybe less than twa tons an hour.
"But yon's better engines. The laddie that designed them did a wairkmanlike job. For an Englishman they're no sae dusty. But we're getting out a set on the Clyde that'll make him sit up.
"Fifteen tons of oil fuel an hour they eat developing full power. She steps along at three hunder knots. Forby we tank seventy tons, it's enough for four hours and a bit, and that'll be fourteen hundred miles. But the Skipper dinna drive her at that, thank the Lord, for the bed-plates are a bit light for my immediate liking. Twa hunder's our cruising speed. That takes only three tons an hour and gies us maybe four thousand six hunder miles."
He opened a door in a bulkhead and showed me a small room. It was very bare. There was a small bucket-seat, a row of levers and a board covered with indicators.
"Yon's whaur the fireman sits," explained the Chief. "He holds the steam at six hunder poonds preesure and superheated to four hunder and seventy degrees. That's aw there is tae it."
He poured into my entranced ears the way the steam was made. The fuel tanks were below the second deck. The oil was pumped up to hot pipes and vaporised, and was then blown under pressure from a row of nozzles upon the generator tubes. The Janes Fluid flashed into steam somewhere in the tube, nobody knew just where. It boiled at 20 degrees below water and the super-heating gave it a tremendous expansion.
"Boilers?" continued Munroe, in answer to a question. "We dinna have boilers to blow up and smash things to smithereens. The steam is made just as fast as we need it. It's as flexible as an auld glove. If a tube blaws out there's only a bit hiss and the body at the levers cuts it out. It shows on an indicator. Twa-three years ago they put in a thermostat to automatically control the pressure and temperature, but the elements in the gadgets were always warping and ganging wrang, and hand control is certain.
"But it's no' like the auld times, when a trained engineer was an engineer. There's nae wairk tae be done. It's a drawing-room life. If anything gaes wrang, it's—'Mister Munroe, the shore engineers are coming aboord.'"
He unscrewed an engine-room hatch. It was beautifully fitted, so that not a crack would show on the hull when it was closed. We stood together, with our heads out, and could look fore and aft along the hull and out on the snowy expanse of the lower plane. Immediately behind the trailing edge of the lower wing were two stream-lined funnels, protruding above the hull about a foot.
"She's twa hunder and forty feet from nose to tip of tail," Munroe told me. "She's licensed to weigh twa hunder tons when fully loaded. That's eleven and a half poonds a horse-power. Wing surface? Fifty-one thousand square feet. That's maybe loaded to eight pounds a square foot.
"Four hunder and fifty feet she measures from wing-tip to wing-tip. You'll notice there's no wires exposed. And you'll notice maybe that each wing-spar gets smaller as it goes out. That's the advantage of being big. Your small machine has a wing-spar big enough to take the greatest load all the way out. Vara wasteful. But we're deesigned with tapering wing-spars, steel girders they are, and so save weight and head resistance. Cost more? Yara likely, but consider the speed.
"Weight? Ye'll have played aboot with hunder-ton steel ten years ago, but we wairk with five-hunder-ton steel. Five times as light as aluminium for the same strength, it is.
WHITE LINE
F·B "Swift" and F·B "Swallow"
200 Tons.
Six Propellers - 30.000 h.p. length 240 Feet.
PLAN of ACCOMMODATION.
"You're looking at the props. There's six of them, driven by shaft and gears, a smart job—the laddie that cut them was nae fule. No engines out in the draught to make head reesistance. Murad steel they're made of, wood never stood up to the rain. Low speed, high efficiency, variable pitch, they are; absorbing five thousand horse-power each. I remember reading in an old report where a big expert said one propeller could only absorb twa thousand horse, but he was wrang.
"Getting off? I whack up the turbines with the blades of the propellers neutral, and then shift them to the correct pitch, and she accelerates on the water from nothing to seventy knots in less than forty seconds. She takes to the air inside of three-quarters of a mile."
Here we were interrupted by the tinkle of a bell, and the Chief told me the Skipper was on board in his cabin. If I went forward through the saloon I would find the door on the right-hand side, below the control cockpit.
I found Pank in his cabin, a roomy and comfortable place.
"Mail will be on board in ten minutes," he said, "and we'll push off at six sharp. Come up to the control cockpit with me and see us take off. We'll yarn about everything at dinner."
I followed Pank up a few shallow steps into the control cockpit. I was all agog for marvels, and was rather disappointed. It was a small place completely covered in with glass, following the stream-line shape of the hull. There was a padded basket-seat for the pilot and a control-wheel and yoke, very similar to what I remembered in the old boats. The whole affair looked inadequate to handle the huge machine.
"Remember Queenie's servo-motor?" Pank asked, noting the direction of my looks. "All the actual work of moving the control surfaces is done by an adaptation of his patent. The pilot has no strain on him at all, and yet has the feel of the machine."
Looking over the side, I saw a fast motor-launch racing towards us across the harbour, piled high with mail-bags, and in another moment the mail was being hoisted on board. A Quartermaster entered and settled himself down in the padded seat.
"When we start," Pank warned me, "lean up against the back bulkhead. We accelerate twice as quickly as a tube-train, and you may lose your balance." And then to the Quartermaster: "Switch on all control telephones." The Quartermaster shut down a switch, and Pank said in his ordinary voice: "Purser, are all the passengers seated?"
"All correct, sir," said the voice of the Purser at my elbow, and looking round I saw that it came from a large disk in the bulkhead.
"Engines?"
"Engines started, sir," said the voice of Angus Munroe.
Looking back at the planes I saw that the propellers had vanished. There was a soft whirr, a soughing like a wind in trees, and a very slight tremor through the structure of the boat.
Pank looked at the row of indicators on the wall. All had a white disk down except in the spaces numbered two and three. "Seal doors two and three," he ordered. The two white disks dropped in the indicators.
"Bow-man, stand by to let go."
"Aye, aye, sir."
"Engines. Stand by for four seconds half blade on port propellers."
"Standing by, sir."
"Bow-man, let go."
"All gone, sir."
The tide carried us clear of the buoy.
"Engines."
The bow of the Swift swung round to starboard. She was heading for an open stretch of water.
"Quartermaster, ready. Engines, full."
I was pushed back against the bulkhead as though by a heavy hand as the boat leaped forward. The air speed indicator jumped to sixty knots, a hundred, a hundred and fifty, two hundred. There was no noise such as I had been accustomed to in a flying-boat. For an instant there had been the crash of a breaking bow wave, but now there was only a rubbing, rustling noise along the hull, and an increased soughing of the wind in the tree-tops. I learned afterwards that this noise was made by the oil vapour being forced through the nozzles in the generators.
"Level at six hundred," ordered Pank.
"Level, sir."
"Engines, two hundred knots."
"Twa hunder, sir."
On a square ground-glass sheet in front of the Quartermaster appeared figures picked out in light.
"That's the wireless navigator," explained Pank. "He's on shore, but he keeps in touch with us all the way across. He gives us our latitude and longitude, the course to steer and the air speed to fly at. Simple, isn't it?"
All this time I had a dissolving view, a wild impressionistic sketch, of a sea snatched up in front of us and hurled behind. In six minutes, having travelled south, we were off Start Point, and the numbers on the wireless navigator, giving the course to steer, changed.
With a magnificent sweep of several miles and banking over slightly, the Quartermaster brought the Swift round on the new course and steadied. I noticed that he steered by a large gyro compass.
"No spill-all turns for us," laughed Pank. "No spins, or loops, or rolls."
At the height of six hundred feet our tremendous speed was apparent. The sea appeared to be working on a roller, pulled up over the horizon and passed back under us. Surface ships were in front, and then behind. In nine minutes we had the Eddystone abeam and in another ten minutes we passed the Lizard.
Every eighteen seconds, as steady as clockwork, a minute was added to the longitude on the wireless navigator, showing we had gone westward one mile. Every ninety seconds a minute was taken off the latitude, showing we had made a mile of southing.
Pank glanced at the figures.
"There's a beam wind of about twenty knots from the north," he said. "We are headed a bit north of our course to allow for the drift. It doesn't alter our speed though. The wireless navigator ashore has all the weather reports and adjusts our speed accordingly. With a following wind he usually slows us down to save oil, and speeds us up when we run into a head wind later on. Sometimes he shoves us through a region of high head wind at top speed. What we lose on the swings we pick up on the roundabout, and manage to get in on time."
"She's a bit nose heavy, sir," said the Quartermaster.
"Fireman, shift oil in forward tanks one and two," ordered Pank.
"When in the air," he explained, "we hold our fore-and-aft balance by an auxiliary elevator worked by a gyro through a servo-motor. But if the control surface has too much work to do it uses up power, so we shift oil fuel until we are in good trim."
I expressed amazement at the small amount of noise.
"Remember that small station that was working on silencing aeroplanes in 1918. It was washed out when the armistice was declared, but it had already laid the foundations for getting results."
Mr Wemp, the First Mate, came into the control cockpit, and Pank suggested I should look over the boat with him. He took me through her from bow to stern.
She had two decks.
The first deck ran from the bow to the leading edge of the wings, and from the trailing edge forty-five feet back. In the very bow, covered in with glass shaped to the stream-line of the hull, was an observation cabin for passengers, containing six easy-chairs. Passing aft, there was the wireless room and captain's cabin on the starboard side, and the officers' cabin on the port side.
In the wireless cabin were two lads, one on duty and the other taking a busman's holiday. The latter showed me round. It all looked simple enough; the valves, amplifiers, coils, and gear were boxed in, and only the switches and plugs showed. The aerials were carried inside the wings. I had expected a great display of all the mysterious paraphernalia of the wireless wizard, but was disappointed.
I was shown the machine which sent out five dots every thirty seconds, so that the wireless navigator on shore could plot out the position of the boat. "The old Morse system of signals has been washed out," the lad explained, "and if you wish to speak to anybody in England or America, we can plug you through on the wireless telephone."
Passing aft through the dining-saloon, with the ten double cabins, I found the galley. Here a chef was already active at an electric range with aluminium utensils. The most delectable odours were floating about.
Then came the engine-room, and aft of this the smoke-room, and ten double cabins, with an alleyway running athwartship. We passed down a companion-ladder to the lower deck. This was a short deck, part in front of the engine-room and part behind. It had just sufficient accommodation for the crew.
"How many hands does this bus carry?" I asked.
15-ton Porte Super Baby, 1800 horse-power.
"Eighteen in all, counting the five officers," the First Mate replied.
Then he took me down below and showed me the great oil-tanks, which were crowded as near to the centre of gravity as possible, under the engine-room. I took a look at the lattice-work steel keel which ran from the bow to the stern. It looked very light for the job it had to do.
From here I went forward to Pank's cabin, and when the First Mate had taken over in the control cockpit, Pank came down and asked, "Will you dine outside with the millionaires and suchlike, or shall we dine here?"
"Here," I replied, for I wanted him to talk.
After dinner, at his ease in an arm-chair, and prompted now and then by questions, he held forth.
"Remember in 1919," he began, "talking about a thirty thousand horse-power flying-boat. She could have been built then, even with the material and small engines available, but of course she would not have had the speed and carrying capacity the Swift has.
"In 1913, the Curtiss boat of sixty horse-power; in 1918, the Felixstowe Fury of eighteen hundred horse-power; in 1919, the first crossing of the Atlantic by a Curtiss-built American flying-boat; in 1923, the first ten thousand horse-power steam turbine-boat; and now the thirty thousand horse-power boat.
"Remember the land-machine ramp at the end of the Great War; how they pranced on their hind legs and frothed about breaking the rails and shipping companies; and the blokes that put their good cash into companies that promised to carry mails and passengers by air over land and sea. What happened to 'em? Got into flat spins and crashed, mostly.
"Went into an optimistic company as a joystick merchant; saw the whole show from the inside. Tried to run mails in England. Weather conditions and the competitions of the railways did us down.
"Speed and reliability are the essence of mail-carrying. It's the time taken from the office boy licking the stamp until the presentation paper-knife slits open the envelope at the other end that counts, and the letter has always got to get there. The only letter-writers in a tremendous hurry, excepting the mad people who are frantically in love, are in the main centres of population, and they are connected by fast train services. Also, the wireless telephone rather put a bend in the show—talk to anybody anywhere at any time.
Erecting the 15-ton Felixstowe Fury.
"We had to have our aerodromes well out from the centre of the cities—land too hard to get inside. Had to whiz the mail out from the post office to the bus, and tranship again at the other end. Took a lot of time. But the jolly old mail-trains started from a point near the post office, and the letters were sorted while the train was travelling. Mist or fog, gales and snow, blew our time-tables sky-high. You should have seen us tearing our hair in bad weather. Of course bad weather sometimes interfered with the train service a bit, but not to the same extent. There was nothing in it so far as time was concerned, and they had us beaten four ways on reliability.
"We speeded up the faithful old sky-waggons. But that meant bigger grounds to flop down into, so we had to go farther out from the cities. That made the time taken to get mails out to us a bit longer. We saved something at the receiving end by dropping the mails bang on top of the post office building. But the trains were speeded up too; they delivered special mails by motor-cycle straight from the railway station. We had nothing on them.
"But with the increase of speed we had more crashes in fog and mist. Rain was troublesome too. Summer wasn't so bad, but winter put us down and out. Mails have got to be carried every day in the year. Important mails were delayed and sometimes destroyed. That fed up the men who wrote 'em. We tried putting up a kite-balloon above the mist, and gliding down from that. Not good enough. The aerodromes were too small, and the dashing aviators fetched up into houses, ditches, and trees. And, of course, a forced landing on the way under bad weather conditions was nearly always fatal. Insurance went higher than the machines.
"We weren't reliable enough. No commercial firm could stand the expense. The Government gave no assistance. The Treasury was squeezing every penny until Britannia squealed. We tried for two years, and then my little lot went phut.
"Yes, the mail-carriers had more success in less well-developed countries. Better weather conditions, longer runs, slower trains. But the money in it was nothing to write home about.
"Then passenger carrying.
"You remember the rather slow and clumsy four-engine aeroplanes they made such a fuss about? Well, they proved to be about the limit in size for a land-machine. Bigger ones were tried, but they were no go. Landing wheel loads, landing speeds, surfaces of aerodromes, big sheds, cost of crashes. The big slow aeroplanes could get into an aerodrome that the ordinary fast scout merchant could get down into, but when they speeded them up, so that they could get from one place to another in a thirty-knot wind in a reasonable time, they took the most of a county to land in.
"Then there was the weather. They had the same troubles as the mail-carriers and a few more. Pilots were paid to take risks, but passengers objected to being strewn over the countryside in a mixed lot of metal and matchwood. Fly on half-power plant? Not when fully loaded. Passengers didn't like to go above three thousand feet, it made some of them ill. Couldn't sleep after being up high. With heavy low clouds the aeroplanes had to go under them or over them. Below them, often at five hundred feet, it was too dangerous over land, chimneys, and houses on hills; and they couldn't get down any place like we can at sea.
"The only run that would have paid was from London to Paris, joy-riders mostly, where you had to change from rail to boat and back to rail again. But the Channel Tunnel and the cut-throat competition between aeroplane companies left nothing in the bag.
"Yes, like the mail-carriers, they did a bit better in places with decent climates, but the shareholders could never afford to travel by air on the dividends paid.
"Everybody all at once got wise to the fact that it was the long hauls over the water routes that were going to pay. Competitors, comparatively slow steamers, fifteen to twenty-five knots. One or two flying-boat companies had been working on the job and were not making such a bad fist at it. But the land-machine people had a cut at it. Couldn't get it into their heads that big flying-boats were just as efficient as big land-machines, and a bit faster, as they hadn't to carry landing wheels and under-carriage.
"What happened? They drowned a good many people, lost a lot of mails and machines, and gave it up after about two years of bitter experience. You see they were handicapped by having to land on aerodromes in mist and fog, and couldn't get up to the same speed as flying-boats.
"The airship people?
"They are not doing badly, but they're essentially fair-weather craft. I don't mean mist and fog, for they can hover with engines shut down, but wind.
"The two million cubic foot gas-bags produced in 1919—by the way, the Germans had 'em that size at the end of 1917—had only a top speed of sixty-seven knots when new. Head resistance and skin friction. Their cruising speed was something like forty-five knots. They found there was only about eighty days in the year they could cross the Atlantic with safety, and they had to go south—about through the anti-cyclonic weather. Their average time was three days, not much better than a five-day surface boat. But they did carry on.
"They stuck to the job and built ten million cubic foot gas-bags—top speed eighty-three knots. They were really too slow for Transatlantic work. They were very very costly, and as they carried big loads the companies had a hard time getting enough mails and passengers to pay for operating them. Safe enough, much safer than travelling by surface ships, but too dependent on the wind. Speed is what counts.
"In the meantime the big armament firms and steamship companies were sitting on the fence, watching the other fellows spending money and buying experience. They experimented a bit and gathered a lot of valuable data. One of the steamship companies had flying decks put on their liners, and when within three hundred miles of harbour launched mail-carrying aeroplanes. It cut down the time tremendously.
"Flying-boats?
"Not much was done with them. The Air Ministry was starved for money, and big boats were too costly for small firms to play with. Fortunately some bright blokes in the Navy had experiments carried out in their own yards. Somehow, even in the hardest of hard times after the Great War, the Navy managed to get money. I suppose they knew that trouble was coming.
"Remember the drawings of the fifty-ton flying-boat we looked at in 1919? Well, that was built, and proved more or less of a success. It was found that a boat of that size could be built of steel, so the steel merchants were got busy and finally succeeded in making two-hundred-ton steel, and eventually got to five-hundred. It was a costly business.
"There was really nothing screamingly successful until the ten thousand horse-power turbine came along. Janes Fluid made them possible for aircraft. Ordinary steam made from water is full of air, and that makes condensing difficult: air-pumps and so on. Ammonia was tried a long time ago and other true fluids, but the mechanical difficulties were too great. Then Janes struck on a true fluid that answered the purpose.
"And then came war.
"You don't want to hear about it? Well, we had a Labour Government, and the Army and the Air Force became less than nothing, and the Navy was rather down at the heel, and the Empire was on the verge of breaking up. So a pushing Island People made a snatch at Australia and the islands in the Pacific. The League of Nations? That for practical purposes was the British Empire and America, and the enemy tackled both. Fortunately our Navy had about twenty ten-thousand horse-power flying-boats. I joined up at once and saw the only fleet action.
"Remember the comic Russian with the aerial torpedo they were experimenting with in 1917? Right idea, but wrong principle. Wouldn't work. The gunnery sharks took the idea, pulled it about, worried it, and produced the flying bomb. I believe Sperry tried it in 1915. They produced ton bombs with wings. Each boat carried two.
"We ran into the enemy in force. While the warships were piling on the heavy stuff we unloaded from ten thousand feet. The bombs glided a mile and a half for every thousand feet we were up. They were balanced by a gyroscope and steered by wireless. We nose-dived them into the lightly protected decks and made rather a wreck of the enemy. What was left of him was bottled up in his ports.
"Then we went after them. We'd let go from twenty miles out and the bombs would sail over boom and harbour defences. The surface ships had no chance. When we were finished you could have bought the Navies of the world for a song.
"The enemy was a stiff-necked and brave people, so we had to smash up a few of his coast towns before he surrendered. Aeroplanes? They hadn't got our speed, and if they had got at us we could have settled them with our one-inch quick-firers before they could have got close enough to get home. Antiaircraft guns? We always unloaded too far away for them to touch us. You see, we didn't have to pass over the target.
"And that was what put flying-boats on their feet. The whole of the British Navy is now in the air. It's a fine sight to see a destroyer flotilla.
"The bigger the boats got, the faster they were. Scale effect. Stream-line 'em better and save weight in the hull. No trouble getting off or on, there's lots of water. Fog? No more dangerous to us than it is to surface ships. The Wireless Navigator tells us where we are to within a mile. And if the fog is very thick in a harbour, or the clouds are right down to the water, we land outside and taxi in, just as we used to do.
"Remember Queenie's night-landing gadget? It put a boat down on the water automatically. You let a lever hang down over the side, shut off your engines, glided down, and when the tip of the lever touched the water it pulled back the controls and the boat landed smoothly. We use an adaptation of the gadget to-day.
"Cost? You may be surprised to know that our two boats running the U.S. Mail just pay their way and no more—even with the Government subsidy. Our company runs smaller boats, ten thousand horse-power, down through the Mediterranean, to Australia, and in various places all over the world. They pay, but the big ones don't make money yet. They will in time.
"And now let us yarn about the old days."
So we yarned about Felixstowe, and the six-ton boats, and the pilots, until he had to go to the control cockpit to relieve the First Mate.
"Like to come up before you turn in?" he asked.
We went up together. It was pitch dark outside. The control cockpit was lit only by the light in the binnacle and the Wireless Navigator.
"What happens about looking out from your glass-house when it rains or snows?" I asked.
"At our speed rain and snow won't stick to the stream-lined glass," he replied. And then to the Quartermaster, a new man, for the first one had been relieved: "Put me through to the Swallow."
When the Quartermaster shut down a switch, he said, "Hullo, Morrison. Going strong. What's your position?"
A rich jovial voice at my elbow answered: "Good evening, Pank. Have you come for the ashes?" This was evidently some obscure joke, for the two Skippers laughed heartily together. And Pank asked: "How's the Missis and kids?" Then Morrison gave his position.
"That's our sister ship, east-bound," Pank said to me. "Keep a sharp look-out over our port bow and you'll see her lights. She'll pass in a moment."
I looked out into the darkness and caught a momentary glimpse of a bright white light and a red one. They were gone in a flash.
"That's her," said Pank.
I went below to my cabin and turned in. The next thing I remembered was a steward standing at my elbow with a cup of tea.
"Where are we now?" I asked.
"We'll land in twenty minutes," he replied.
I scrambled into my clothes and went up into the control cockpit, where I found Pank. The daylight was just beginning to creep over the water.
"On time to the minute," said the Skipper.
"There's the Statue of Liberty," I cried.
And then Pank: "Quartermaster, stand by. Engines, stand by. Engines, cut off."
We glided down towards the grey water silently and flattened out. I felt the great wings cushioning as we ran along above the surface. We touched. The sharp keel began to drag the speed down. There was the roar of a breaking bow wave. And then she settled in and stopped.
"Bow-man, smart with the line," ordered Pank, as a motor-launch ran across our bows. We were in tow. "Unseal doors two, four, five, and six," he continued. The disks in the indicator were lifted.
Looking across the harbour I saw a mail-boat boiling towards us and an oiler standing by to pass us a filling hose when we were made fast to the buoy. Another motor-boat was on its way out to collect the passengers.
"I thought that crossing the Atlantic in a flying-boat was going to be an adventure," I said.
"Not at all," replied Pank. "It's a business."
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.