At Mrs. Guest’s request, Mr. Putnam agreed to act as the “backer” of the flight. It was at Miss Earhart’s request, primarily, that I agreed to see her through the rumpus in Europe. About the middle of May I set out for London. Mrs. Guest had preceded us.
Stultz and Gordon, the press believed, were Byrd’s men, grooming the giant Fokker, named the Friendship by Mrs. Guest, for the trip to the South Pole.
Toward noon on June 17 the Friendship cracked the ill luck which had glued her pontoons to the bay at Trepassey, Newfoundland, for more than two weeks. News of the take-off was flashed to the world.
Early the next morning we heard that the Friendship had circled the S.S. America, a few hundred miles out, to get her bearings; silence through the night had meant only that her radio was out of commission. After some hours I received direct word from Gordon that they had come down safely at Burry Port, Wales. I telegraphed them to remain aboard ship until I arrived by flying boat from Southampton.
That afternoon, landing near the Friendship, I caught a glimpse of Miss Earhart seated in the doorway of the fuselage.
“Hello!” she said.
After a flight of twenty hours and forty minutes they were all dog tired, but there was something else in Miss Earhart’s expression—disappointment.
“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Aren’t you excited?”
“Excited? No. It was a grand experience, but all I did was lie on my tummy and take pictures of the clouds. We didn’t see much of the ocean. Bill did all the flying—had to. I was just baggage, like a sack of potatoes.”
“What of it? You’re still the first woman to fly the Atlantic and, what’s more, the first woman pilot.”