The Short brothers followed suit. After seeing Wilbur Wright fly at Le Mans, in 1908, Mr. Eustace Short engaged the help of his brother, Mr. Horace Short, who was an expert in steam-turbines, and they established a primitive aerodrome at Shellness, on the marshes of the Isle of Sheppey, near the terminus of the Sheppey Railway. Here the more enthusiastic of the members of the Aero Club set to work with aeroplanes. The leading pioneers were Mr. Frank McClean, Mr. Alec Ogilvie, Mr. Moore-Brabazon, and Mr. Percy Grace, all of whom at a later date held commissions in one or other of the national air services; and two more, who held no such commissions, because before the Flying Corps was in being they had given their lives to the cause--Mr. Cecil Grace and the Hon. Charles Rolls. None of these men was in the business for profit, they were sportsmen and something more than sportsmen; they loved the new adventure and they spent their own money freely, but pleasure was not their goal; they understood what flying meant for the welfare of their country, and they worked for the safety and progress of the British Empire. It was at Shellness in October 1909 that Mr. Moore-Brabazon, on a machine designed and built by Mr. Horace Short and fitted with a Green engine, flew the first circular mile ever flown on a British aeroplane. There were many other experiments and achievements at Shellness. These were the days, says Mr. C. G. Grey (to whose knowledge of early aviation this book is much indebted), when the watchers lay flat on the ground in order to be sure that the aeroplane had really left it. At the close of 1909, Mr. Frank McClean, who devoted his whole fortune to the cause of aviation, purchased a large tract of ground, level and free from ditches, in the middle of the Isle of Sheppey, close to the railway station at Eastchurch, and gave the use of it free to the Aero Club. To this ground the Short brothers, who, besides building their own machines, had taken over the Wright patents for Great Britain, removed their factory, and Eastchurch very quickly became the scientific centre of British aviation. Early in 1911 the Admiralty were persuaded to allow four naval officers to learn to fly. The machines on which they learned were supplied free of cost by Mr. McClean, and another member of the Aero Club, Mr. G. B. Cockburn, who was the solitary representative of Great Britain at the Rheims meeting of 1909, supplied the tuition, also free of cost. The instructor naturally marked out for this purpose, says Mr. Cockburn, was Mr. Cecil Grace, a fine pilot, a great sportsman, and a man quite untouched by the spirit of commercialism, but only a few weeks earlier he had been lost while flying over the Channel from France to England. So Mr. Cockburn undertook the task, and for about six weeks took up his residence at Eastchurch. The four naval officers were Lieutenants C. R. Samson, R. Gregory, and A. M. Longmore, of the Royal Navy; and Captain E. L.