[Newspaper Illustrations, Ltd.
HARRY AND GRIEVE LEAVING BUCKINGHAM PALACE AFTER HAVING BEEN DECORATED BY THE KING. ALTHOUGH A CIVILIAN, HARRY RECEIVED THE FIRST AIR FORCE CROSS—A SERVICE DECORATION.
[Facing p. 244.
On Sunday morning, May 25th, almost one week after starting, they sighted St. Kilda and later on the Butt of Lewis, when communication with the mainland became possible. It was a beautiful morning, with the sea as smooth as ever off this exposed coast. Shortly after 10 o’clock, heading for the Butt of Lewis, Captain Duhn, after running up signal flags reading “Mary,” began sounding the syren. With the weather so fine as it was, this could not but attract the attention of the coastguards. As the vessel drew nearer the shore, Captain Duhn, acting on Harry’s instructions, ran up the signal, “Communicate by Wire,” which had the desired effect of intimating to the coastguards, Chief officer William Ingham and Leading Seaman George Harding, that an important message would follow which they must transmit to headquarters by telegraph. The next signal run up was the international signal for “Saved Hands,” and this was then replaced by the symbol indicating that the following signals would be spelt. Up went the flags “S.O.P.,” followed by “A.E.R.” and after another interval by “O.P.L.,” and finally “A.N.E.” It was when they received the last syllable that the coast-guardsmen were thrilled with the knowledge that they had good news of men whom the world had given up as lost. Having delivered this message, Captain Duhn put out to sea, again, and was just going beyond signalling range when he saw on shore the flags asking “Is it.” Returning towards the shore, he read, “H-A-W-K-E-R.” Up went his reply, “Yes.” The form of signal was made out by Grieve, who was conversant with the code.
Off Loch Erribel the Mary was met by the British destroyer Woolston, sent out from Scapa Flow by Admiral Fremantle to take them aboard. Harry and Grieve therefore bade farewell to Captain Duhn and thanked him for the great kindness they had received at his hands. Captain Duhn described Harry and Grieve as a couple of unusually amiable and pleasant fellows in whose company it was a pleasure to be.
Harry and Grieve did not converse a great deal during the flight, although the noise from the engine was comparatively quiet, most of it being carried away behind them through a long exhaust-pipe. Their conversation was mostly carried on by signs. Grieve would hold up the vacuum flask when he wanted to know if Harry required a drink. They had an inter-communicating telephone, which they rarely used. As Grieve put it, they were too busy to talk much.
Sometimes they communicated by writing. One of Grieve’s messages read, “We didn’t have much to spare taking-off,” referring, of course, to their only just clearing the boundary of the starting-ground at Mount Pearl. He wrote all the compass bearings during the flight and held them up for Harry to read. Grieve used the clouds for his horizon simply because they saw more clouds than sea. In fact, with one exception it was nothing but clouds until they were forced down almost to the water during the last two or three hours. But the weather did not hinder them, and Harry was convinced that but for the radiator trouble he would have won through.
Speaking after the flight of their means of communication with ships, Grieve said that the first wireless fitted was tried during their test flight at St. Johns, when the exciter of the generator burnt out owing to the too great speed of the small windmill or air-driven “propeller.” They therefore had to discard this set, which they replaced at once by a small “Boy Scout” plain aerial set, designed to give a radius of about 25 miles. Their long wait at St. Johns gave them time to receive from England a new set slightly different from the original one, and more powerful than the “Boy Scout” set, for it had a range of 250 miles. They were unable to give this a preliminary test in the air, however, because they preferred not to risk any more test flights on such a small aerodrome as they had. When they got in the air they found the spark to be very feeble, and only a small ampèrage could be raised, owing to the windmill or “propeller” in this case being too small. Nevertheless, they felt they had enough power in their transmitter to communicate with any ships within moderate range, and they tapped out messages every half hour, with the object of letting the outside world know that they were still in the air. But no acknowledgment of these messages was ever received during or after the flight. When the engine was throttled down, during the last few hours to keep the temperature of the water as low as possible under the adverse circumstances in which it was circulating, the speed of the machine was not enough to drive the wireless windmill.
Nevertheless, the S.O.S. call was tapped out at intervals of 15 minutes in case the spark should happen to operate. Fortunately Grieve never intended to rely on the wireless for navigating purposes other than to check positions occasionally by communicating with any ships which they might pass above. Previously to the flight, ships were asked by wireless from St. Johns to make known their position in the event of their seeing an aeroplane by day or a red Vérey light at night. Harry and Grieve saw no vessel other than the Mary, and therefore fired no lights until then. Ships that reported having seen red lights in the sky before then probably saw the red glow from the exhaust-pipe of the machine as she passed in the night in and out between the clouds.
Exactly half the petrol carried, 170 gallons, was used, an equal amount remaining in the tanks when the machine took the water.