¶ Flying, by this time, had become a more practical affair. With the elemental principles understood and conquered, minor improvements were developed as a result of ever-widening experience. In the summer of 1909, Bleriot crossed the English Channel in a frail monoplane and received an ovation almost as great as that accorded Lindbergh for his daring feat.
¶ But before Lindbergh could take a ’plane from New York to Paris in one triumphant jump, years had to pass, years of war that spread havoc and desolation throughout the world. But from the embers of that conflagration one thing, at least, emerged with greater glory. While guns and ammunition were dumped in the sea, and warships scrapped, the airplane rose in the eyes of the world to a new height of importance.
¶ For the war had wrought a great change in this device—no longer were ’planes but the playthings of a few, but servants that could serve a world!
¶ Today we can see on the air mail stamps of Spain, of Brazil, and the African Congo, portraits of the early craft—and by turning a few leaves of the album, can view the wartime “devils of the air”—the D. H. 4’s, the Curtiss “Jennies,” and the deadly Fokkers.
¶ Soon after the great conflict had ended, the hundreds of daring airmen who found themselves footloose, began to gamble their lives against a new element. Where formerly they had defied machine-gun bullets, they now pitted their skill against the hazards of sea and jungle.
¶ The London “Daily Mail” had offered a handsome prize of ten thousand pounds for the first successful dash across the Atlantic Ocean. Having this as a powerful incentive, two intrepid flyers, Major Harry G. Hawker and Commander K. Mackenzie Grieve, were striving to be the first to span this dangerous trail with a non-stop flight.
¶ On the morning of Sunday, May 18, 1919, while the populace of Newfoundland’s capital were sunk in slumber, these two men trundled forth their frail Sopwith biplane and launched it over the turbulent sea, a desert of water that would menace them for thousands of miles. According to available records, they soon had the ill fortune to be caught in a series of storms. In Hawker’s own story of the flight, he states that after these will-o-the-wisp squalls had been overcome, the cooling system began to clog. In a few moments, the temperature of the water spurted to the boiling point.
¶ By diving quickly several times, Hawker managed to free the flow momentarily, but this expedient soon proved useless as the trouble became more acute. With its cooling agency crippled, the engine balked. Hawker declared that when the motor had gone dead, they suffered some nerve-racking seconds as the sea came toward them at a smashing speed.
¶ But Grieve climbed to the forward part of the ship, near the gasoline tank, and furiously worked to bring life back to the stilled engine. Despite Hawker’s best efforts to check the fall, they were dropping steadily and, according to his statement, were but twenty feet above the sea when the cylinders spluttered. Only ten feet when the motor took up its full load again.
¶ Knowing that their only hope was to sight a vessel, they searched frantically for one through the gathering dusk. At last when things seemed rather bleak, a Danish freighter, the “Mary,” was espied by the anxious airmen and after twelve hundred arduous miles of flying, they landed to be rescued by this good Samaritan of the sea.