Flying the Atlantic in Sixteen Hours: With a Discussion of Aircraft in Commerce and TransportationBrown, Arthur Whitten, Sir
History
Flying the Atlantic in Sixteen Hours: With a Discussion of Aircraft in Commerce and Transportation
Brown, Arthur Whitten, Sir
Aeronautics, Commercial; Transatlantic flights
The warm-hearted crowd that we found waiting at Galway Station both
amazed and daunted us. We were grateful for their loud appreciation,
but scarcely able to respond to it adequately. Flowers were offered,
and we met the vanguard of the autograph hunters. We must have signed
our names hundreds of times during the journey to Dublin--on books,
cards, old envelopes and scraps of paper of every shape and every state
of cleanliness. This we did wonderingly, not yet understanding why so
many people should ask for our signatures, when three days earlier few
people had heard of our names.
The men, women and children that thronged every station on the way to
Dublin seemed to place a far higher value on our success than we did
ourselves. Until now, perhaps, we had been too self-centered to realize
that other people might be particularly interested in a flight from
America to England. We had finished the job we wanted to do, and could
not comprehend why it should lead to fuss.
Now, however, I know that the crowds saw more clearly than I did,
and that their cheers were not for us personally, but for what they
regarded as a manifestation of the spirit of adventure, the True
Romance--call it what you will. For the moment this elusive ideal was
suggested to them by the first non-stop journey by air across the
Atlantic, which we had been fortunate enough to make.
At one station, where a military band played our train in and out
again, a wooden model of an aëroplane was presented to Alcock by a
schoolboy. At Dublin, reached on the morning of Trinity Sunday, Alcock
and I passed with difficulty through the welcoming crowds, and drove
towards the Automobile Club in separate cars. In due course, I reached
sanctuary; but where was Alcock? We waited and waited, and finally sent
out scouts to search for him. They came back with the news that he had
been kidnapped, and taken to Commons in Trinity College.
Landing at Holyhead next morning, we were welcomed back to the shores
of England by Mr. R. K. Pierson, designer of our Vickers-Vimy machine,
by Captain Vickers, of the famous firm that built it, and by Mr. C.
Johnson, of the Rolls-Royce Company that supplied our motors. Scenes
all along the line to London were a magnified repetition of those from
Galway to Dublin. Chester, Crewe, Rugby and other towns each sent its
Mayor or another representative to the station. Aëroplanes escorted the
train all the way to London. Again we could only play our part in a
more or less dazed state of grateful wonder.
Of the warm-hearted welcome of the people of London, I have confused
recollections that include more receptions, more and larger crowds,
more stormy greetings, and an exciting, pleasant drive to the Royal
Aëro Club. Alcock delivered to the postal authorities the mail-bag from
St. John's, with regrets that it had not been possible to fly direct to
London with the letters. In the evening we separated, Alcock to see a
big prize fight, I to visit my fiancée.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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