HOW THE FLIGHT WAS TO BE MADE
When Sunday came, Alan, Bob and Buck were glad enough to ease up on
their work. Supplies to be used on the flight were now accumulating in a
corner of the setting-up room. All the boys took luncheon with President
Atkinson this day. In the early afternoon the manager of the _Herald_
got Alan on the telephone and a long talk followed. At its close Alan
announced a surprising development.
“The editor,” Alan explained, “has a new proposition. I didn’t agree
with him because I want to talk it over with Ned. I’ll wire him at
Pittsburgh this evening and in the morning I’ll board his train and go
on into the city with him. If it comes to anything you fellows will be
interested.”
“And we’ve got to wait till to-morrow to know?” asked Bob.
“He wants to get up the story of the _Flyer_ and what it’s goin’ to do,
and spring it the night we get back.”
“_My_ story?” asked Buck. “The one that wasn’t printed?”
“The _real_ story,” added Alan nodding his head, “for I reckon you’d get
a different angle on it now.”
“You’re talkin’ now,” sighed Buck. “My, but I’d like to have another
chance at it.”
“The _Herald_ may give you all the chance you want,” went on Alan, “if
we agree to the plan.”
“Spit it out,” broke in Bob, his eyes dilated.
“Well, the idea is this. Neither the _Herald_ nor Ned and I want to do
any talkin’ if this thing ain’t a go. If we stick our nose in the Jersey
marshes or drop into the Sound we’ll let the other fellows guess at what
we were tryin’ to do. But as the _Herald_ suggests, if we reach London
and get back, there isn’t any reason why the story shouldn’t be told and
told right. The editor wants to get up a full account of the _Flyer_,
its motive power, pictures of it, the program of its proposed voyage,
the route and a sketch of its ‘brilliant’ crew, and have it all ready to
print the moment we return.”
“But what if we don’t quite do it?” broke in Buck.
“There won’t be any story to print,” laughed Alan.
“How are _we_ interested, specially?” asked Bob, pointing to young
Stewart and himself.
“You’ll have to write the story, that’s all,” answered Alan. “Who else
could?”
The young Kentuckian sprang to his feet.
“I told you I’d stick around,” he cried. “I told you something would
turn up.”
“Say,” added Bob skeptically, “don’t get excited. I’ve been on the point
of almost puttin’ over a story about those wise young fellows a good
many times. But don’t you count on ’em. Don’t forget they haven’t
consented yet. I’m not goin’ to believe there’s any job like that comin’
to me till it gets here.”
“The way things look now,” continued Alan, laughing, “I think I’m in
favor of the idea. If Ned is, it’ll probably go through.”
Neither of the reporters waited for formal orders. During the afternoon
they persuaded Alan to have the giant aeroplane hauled out into the
deserted factory yard, and Bob photographed it from every angle, getting
views in general and in detail. Alan was also pictured in a half-Arctic
costume. That evening, borrowing typewriters from Mr. Atkinson’s
business office, Bob and Buck began writing a story that they hoped
would be wanted.
“I know the machine, now,” suggested Buck. “I thought I did once before
but now I do. I’ll tell about it; how it was made and all about their
nightly experiments. You tell about the trip, how it’s to be made and
how the thing is to be navigated. And don’t forget to get in an account
of the Airship Boys.”
Not being under the pressure of a press hour, neither reporter finished
his work that night. In the morning their duties in the setting-up shed
called them to the plant. But at noon, when Alan told them over the
telephone that the new plan had been approved and that they were to
report at the _Herald_ office at once, they were off on the first train,
their pockets stuffed with manuscript and camera films. Ned and Alan
left for Newark on the three o’clock train with the engineer’s completed
sailing charts and at eight Buck and Bob had completed almost nine
columns of the big story.
This work was not done in the big local and telegraph room of the paper
but in an adjoining editorial office. It was in charge of Mr. Latimer,
the night city editor of the _Herald_, who for four days, representing
both the _Herald_ and _Telegram_, had been preparing for the great
event. He told Buck and Bob of the special edition which contained
features of all kinds that might interest Englishmen or represent the
good wishes of Americans from Canada to the West Indies.
The engineer’s final report on the direct or “as a bird flies” route
between New York and London was complete in all details. To Alan, a
mathematician and calculator himself, it appealed as a fine picture
interests an art connoisseur. Although the company expert gave the
initial direction from the Battery (magnetic course N. 67° E, and the
compass point as E. N. E.), and the names of the larger towns in
Connecticut and Massachusetts over or near which a direct line to
Ipswich, Massachusetts, would take the aerial navigators, he left this
portion of the line of travel to be worked out for land marks and other
details by the boys themselves.
For the use of the pilot he had furnished full directions covering the
trip between Ipswich and Fogo Island, off the east coast of
Newfoundland, and for the ocean voyage proper, a North Atlantic Pilot
Chart plotted on rhumb lines, and a table of true and magnetic courses
with latitude and longitude indicated. The directions and table were
carefully printed that they might hang in front of the pilot. The chart
was mounted so that the observer could check off the advances.
As soon as Newark was reached the two boys provided themselves with
large scale maps of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Newfoundland, Nova
Scotia, Ireland and England. Late that evening when the elated
journalists reached the hotel, Ned and Alan were yet busy with rule and
dividers locating land points, towns, railroads, rivers, hills and
lakes. The data on the water voyage and the big northward bend of the
charted ocean route instantly mystified Buck.
“Do you mean to tell me,” began the astounded Bob, “that when we start
for London we’re goin’ to begin by crossing over Connecticut?”
“Forty miles up the sound,” explained Ned.
“Why don’t we go right at it and hit the water?” added Buck. “What’s the
use of losing time to make that big curve? Want to keep over the land as
long as you can?”
“Say,” laughed Alan, “you fellows didn’t happen to try to tell anything
about our course in your story, did you?”
“Certainly,” answered Buck, “I said we’d sail east as the crow flies.”
“Well,” responded Alan, “we’ll never sail exactly east. Do you know what
a great circle course is?”
The good natured Buck blushed and shook his head.
“It’s an imaginary line that shows the shortest distance between two
parts of the world and it’s curved because the maps we generally use
represent the curve of the globe and a straight line on these wouldn’t
show the shortest distance,” volunteered Bob promptly and proudly. “But
I didn’t know it ran over Connecticut.”
“Correct,” exclaimed Alan.
“But what’s all these figures?” went on Buck.
“They’re to keep us on our course. You’ll find the same charts in the
navigating room of every liner. With these and our compass we hope to
cross the Atlantic without attempting an astronomical observation for
our bearings.”
“But out here on the Atlantic you’ve got a path laid down in ink. And
between Ipswich and where you leave Newfoundland you haven’t any path!”
continued the inquisitive Buck.
“For this reason,” explained Ned. Then, pausing, he continued, “Bob, you
ought to understand this. You were with us in Bering Straits and
Beaufort Sea. You tell him why.”
“Pie,” grunted Bob. “Maybe you think I don’t know. On short legs,” and
he winked, proud of his nautical record, “where there isn’t much
variation in the compass—”
“You know,” volunteered Alan, “that you can’t pick out a compass
direction and stick to it for a long voyage. You’ve got to allow for the
lessening tendency in the compass needle to point directly toward the
magnetic pole.”
“I’d have got to that in a second,” protested Bob. “Well, where the
distances are not great and you have land marks or lighthouses or buoys
to bring you up if you go wrong, sailors generally set a course by
compass and allow nothing for the variation of the needle. They may shy
off a few miles but a headland or a known lighthouse will bring ’em
right again. But, on the high seas, it’s a different story. When they
begin a voyage a course is laid to an imaginary point—say three hundred
miles out. You can pretty nearly tell when you’ve covered this on a
steamer by the speed of the engines. On a sailing vessel it’s often
necessary to find the point with an observation for longitude and
latitude. When that point is reached, the course is altered and a new
point taken. The direction of this is marked down by compass. That’s
called the ‘true course.’ Then, knowing your latitude and longitude,
you’ve got to calculate what the magnetic variation will be in that
place and from that you get what’s called a ‘magnetic course.’ That’s
the one you sail. And you do this over and over till you get there.”
Poor Buck shook his head, not much better off than before. Ned picked up
the engineer’s table of courses for the ocean flight.
“Look here,” he began, pointing to the chart. “Let me try. See Fogo
Island up here—where we leave Newfoundland?” Buck wrinkled his forehead
and looked. “Well, the bearing of that is known—it’s 54° and 5´ west
longitude and 49° 43´ north latitude. Our course from that looks like a
curve but the curve is really made up of short straight lines. We make
our first straight line end at a convenient place on our curve. The
first one stops at 50° west longitude and 54° 40´ north latitude. For a
navigator it is now a question in mathematics to find the true direction
between these two bearings. In this instance you’d reach the end of the
first straight line by sailing N. 67° E., from Fogo Island. That is, you
would if it were not for the variation in the compass due to the
magnetic pole. In this latitude and longitude the variation would be
33-1/2° W. Then it’s a question of more mathematics and your true course
of N. 67° E., becomes a magnetic course of S. 79-1/2° E., or, by
compass, E. by S.”
“I ain’t goin’ to be called on to do that figurin’, am I?” asked the
alarmed Buck.
“It’s all done,” laughed Ned, “thanks to our engineer.”
“Well, or try to understand it?” persisted Buck. “For I might as well
let you in on a secret: I don’t understand a bit of it. If you can start
goin’ N. 67° E., and then go the same way by runnin’ S. 79° E., you’ve
got my goat.”
“Oh, you’re not so much wiser,” exclaimed Alan when Ned and Bob laughed
at Buck’s perplexity and frankness. “Neither of you could make one of
these calculations.”
“Right,” retorted Ned, “but you watch me use ’em.”
Bob had been studying the Ipswich-Fogo courses and data.
“I think I could almost do this part of the trip myself. It’s pretty
plain sailin’.”
Ned took up this section of instructions and produced a map of the Gulf
of Maine and the Nova Scotia peninsula. A straight line had been drawn
on it from Ipswich harbor to Fogo Island.
“We can start from Ipswich almost any old way, so long as it’s seaward,”
he began with another laugh. “But, when we pick up the two lighthouses
on Thatcher’s Island off Cape Ann they ought to lie ten miles abeam to
the south.”
“What’s abeam?” asked Buck innocently.
“Anything at right angles with the deck,” explained Bob learnedly. “That
means when a vessel is nearest to an object it’s passing. In other
words, when you don’t see it forward—I mean for’ard—or astern.”
“At that point,” continued Ned, “we simply bring our vessel on a plain
compass course of E. N. E., and buckle down to it. If it were night,
when a little later we passed a red and white flash light eight miles
abeam to the north—”
“Nor’ard,” corrected Bob.
“To the nor’ard,” repeated Ned, “we’d know exactly where we were—fifteen
miles from Thatcher’s Island and off the Isle of Shoals. And so it goes
across the Bay. Ninety miles farther, or a half hour’s flight, ought to
put Montigan Light twelve miles abeam north of us, if we are on our
course. Then it’s 105 miles to Matinicus with its two fixed white
lights.”
“Oh, I see,” commented Buck with a chuckle. “You’ve got a mile post
every hundred miles or so.”
“Every half hour or so,” replied Ned significantly.
“And a height from which we can see fifty or sixty miles in a pinch,”
added Alan.
“That _may_ make a difference,” acknowledged the reporter.
“Then, something comes every few miles,” went on Ned, “points abeam,
north or south, but always in sight; thirty-two miles to Mt. Desert
rock, Great Duck alongside; seventeen miles to Petite Manan, sixteen
miles to Moosabec, nine miles to Libby, seven miles to Machias Seal
Islands, nine miles to Cutter’s Harbor and then twenty miles to the east
end of Grand Manan, a big island. At Matinicus we change our course from
E. N. E. to E. N. E. 1/4 E., and when we pass the fog horn on Long Eddy
Point at the east end of Grand Manan, we change again to E. by N.”
“When do we get there?” asked Buck soberly.
“That’s about five hundred and fifty miles from New York,” replied Ned
in the same tone. “Allowing a safe margin, if we leave New York on
schedule, at two twenty P. M., we ought to lay Eddy Point abeam before
six o’clock or better.”
“What’s the good o’ all the lighthouses in the daytime?” commented the
reporter.
“A lighthouse usually stands up in the air,” Bob put in, “and in many
cases, they’re white. Besides, and you may as well keep this in mind,
we’ll be returning that way the next evening sometime about nine o’clock
when the lights are working.”
“Very good,” responded Buck. “I understand that at least.”
“Got enough?” asked Ned, yawning and looking at his watch, which marked
after midnight.
“Go on,” exclaimed Buck with alacrity. “Acquiring information is my long
suit. When do we get to Nova Scotia, the ‘Land of the Blue Noses’?”
“From that on,” answered Ned, “we’ll follow its shore, for we’ll be over
the north branch of the Bay of Fundy where the tides come from—the ‘fog
factory.’ On our north, we’ll pass the city of St. Johns, New Brunswick,
forty-five miles farther east, and then for seventy-five miles the rocks
and trees of New Brunswick will be almost beneath us. At the town of
Amherst, where the Bay of Fundy ends, the _Flyer_ will have fifteen
miles of Nova Scotia to cross.”
“We ought to have supplies there,” broke in Alan.
“No stop scheduled,” commented Ned tartly. “On the east side of the
peninsula of Nova Scotia we’ll strike Northumberland Straits at Cold
Spring Harbor. At Amherst we alter our course again to E. 1/2 N.
Northumberland Straits are twenty-five miles wide. Then it’s Prince
Edward Island, which we cross. That puts us over the Gulf of St.
Lawrence with a one hundred and sixty-five mile glide to Cape Anguille
on the west side of Newfoundland. There’s a light on Anguille Point. A
last run of two hundred and forty miles across Newfoundland brings us to
Fogo and the real start. Then it’s ‘ho for Galway Bay’ in Ireland and
London Town.”
“It says we change our course to E. 1/4 S. at Anguille,” added Alan, who
was following the directions.
“That ought to make it easy,” remarked Buck with one of his grins. “Do
we stop at Fogo?”
“Not so you could notice it,” said Ned with a snap. “Good night.”