THE FUTURE: RUNNING THE U.S. MAIL.
Lotus-eating down among the South Sea Islands, knocking about in a
little old topsail schooner, trading a bit for occupation and not for
profit, yet getting out with a pleasant balance on the right side, I
had drowsily drifted down the river of life ten years nearer to the
Great Uncharted Sea.
When I sloughed off my uniform at the end of the Great War, worn out in
body, weary in mind, and sick with the so-called civilisation which had
produced such a Frankenstein monster, I had promised myself a two-year
holiday far from cities, telephones, and newspapers, and the two years
had quietly and unobtrusively grown into ten.
Now, having travelled nearly around the world by devious and dawdling
routes, and that morning having sauntered down the gang-plank of a
rusty and battered old tramp steamer, I was standing in a street in
Plymouth, rather dazed and bewildered by the noise and crowd of the
busy seaport town.
Without a moment's warning, with an appalling suddenness, I staggered
beneath a tremendous blow between my shoulder-blades, and a voice
roared in my ear--"Pix, by all that's holy!"
Half turning, I saw a short stocky man, in a blue uniform, who was
now trying to dislocate the bones in my right hand, and more or less
succeeding.
"You don't know me," he shouted, laughing. "But you're the same old,
thin, dried-up specimen you always were. I'd have known you anywhere.
I'm Pank."
And it was Pank. Much broader, and therefore, by an optical illusion,
much shorter; older and filled out; wearing a beard instead of being
clean shaven; but Pank all the same. Pank, the active microbe, who in
his lurid career at Felixstowe had bent many a Hun, and could always be
relied upon to shake into activity even the most lethargic jelly-fish.
In an amazingly short space of time my empty glass was on the table
before me, he had sucked out an outline sketch of my last ten years as
though he were a large-bore semi-rotary bilge pump, found that I was
thinking of returning to Canada, and had departed after saying--
"You're coming with me in the _Swift_. New boat. Open your eyes. I'm
running the U.S. Mail. It's two o'clock now; be at the White Line
landing-stage at four o'clock. Hand-baggage only. One berth returned;
lucky, wasn't it. Expect to be properly gouged for it. See you later."
Galvanised into activity by his breezy energy, I made more haste than
I had for years, and was at the landing-stage at four o'clock. Here
I found a motor-boat waiting, her sides covered with soft fenders,
and when my scant hand-luggage was put on board we pushed off. As we
rounded the dock I saw her in all her splendour, lying at a buoy in the
harbour, the _Swift_, a great triplane flying-boat.
But such a boat. She was pure white--hull, struts, and wings. Her six
propellers seemed to be of some bright metal, for their curved surfaces
caught the sun and winked points of fire at me. She loomed very large
as we approached her, the top plane towering above us as we passed
under her lower wing, but until the motor-boat came alongside her
light steel hull I did not realise how big she was, so well was she
proportioned. She was clean as a whistle, without a single excrescence,
beautifully stream-lined. The simplicity of the whole design was a
revelation.
The man in the motor-boat told me that the soft fenders of his craft
were to prevent his scratching the "anti-skin friction paint." I asked
him what it was for. He was very vague, but thought it made her slip
easily through the air,--everything was covered with it, "wings and
everything."
Climbing up a short companion-ladder and passing through a gangway,
I was met by a steward who was apparently expecting me, as on giving
my name he collected my hand-luggage without a word. He led me down
a short alleyway. It opened into a long narrow dining-saloon, about
twelve feet wide and forty feet long, set out with small tables and
easy-chairs. There were a number of passengers fussing about and
blocking the narrow space. As he led me aft I noticed that on each side
of the saloon were five cabin doors.
At the end of the saloon we passed through a door in the middle into
a rather narrow passage, which dipped down quickly to give head room
under the main spar and three fat steel cylinders, which came through
the wall on one side and passed out on the other. The floor of the
passage rose again to the level of the smoking-room deck. On each side
of the smoking-room were five cabins. The steward opened one of the
doors.
"'Ere you are, sir," he said.
It was a small place, not larger than eight feet long by six feet wide,
and containing two fixed bunks, one above the other. All the fittings
were of spartan simplicity and extremely light. It was lit from the
ceiling. The steward showed me how to work the ventilators, because the
glass ports were fixed and did not open.
"When in the hair we're 'ermetically sealed, so to speak," he explained.
On coming out of my cabin I was met by the Purser. "The Skipper
telephoned and told me to look out for you," he said. I asked him what
time we started. "We'll take the air about six o'clock," he replied,
"unless the mails are delayed by the train wreck, a bad pile up on the
main line." And he offered the observation that he considered railway
travelling dangerous, now that all the mail trains had been speeded up
because of the competition of aeroplanes. "The road beds and rails are
too light to stand the racket," he explained.
In reply to questions, he continued--
"Our scheduled time is seventeen hours, but we usually do the three
thousand miles in fifteen, and will land in New York at three in the
morning. No, it's not nine hours; you see we go west with the sun.
"We always make the run at night. You can post a letter as late as four
o'clock in London and have it on a desk in an office in New York at
eight o'clock next morning. Coming back? We leave at eleven o'clock in
the morning, and the mails are delivered in London by ten o'clock.
"Then there's little room on board, and nothing to do, and while
passengers are sleeping they don't take up much space or move about.
We have forty on board; you were lucky to get a passage. All men this
time. We occasionally have ladies, but not often; they prefer the
surface liner, because they can dance and have a good time."
And then he told me what my passage would cost. The amount rather
shook me. I asked if many people travelled by air when they had to pay
such rates.
"List always full up," he replied. "Speed of transport means longer
life, and they don't mind paying for life. Most of the passengers are
men in big business, famous surgeons, or international lawyers, and
they actually make money by it. They like to finish a day's work in
London, have a day and a half in New York, and be back to carry on the
following day. They have got to sleep wherever they are, and might as
well sleep on board. They tell me they sleep like the dead. I suppose
the idea of doing anything at such speed lets down their nerves.
There's one stock speculator crosses with us every two weeks; he says
it's the only decent night's rest he gets.
"By the way, your passage-money includes dinner; the line sets out to
do you tremendously well. There's only room for half the passengers in
the dining-saloon at one time; but dinner is on for three hours, and
you can dine early or late. You will only get a cup of tea and a piece
of toast in the morning, and have breakfast on shore."
He explained he would have to leave me.
"The Skipper told me you are an old flying-boat man," he said, "and, if
he was not on board, to introduce you to the Chief Engineer."
I followed the Purser forward through the smoking-room, and, by means
of a side door, to the engine-room. I was introduced to the Chief. As
was to be expected, he was a Scotchman--Angus Munroe.
To him I opened my heart. I explained I was a poor Rip Van Winkle who
had not seen a flying-boat or chewed on a figure for ten years, that I
was bursting with curiosity, and in the sacred name of Pity to tell me
the horse-power, weight, dimensions, and speed of his wonderful boat.
His long face cracked in a smile.
"Ay," he said. "The Skipper told me you learned him to fly in a bit
boat weighing six tons."
He waved his hand at three long fat tubes running athwart ship
overhead, from side to side of the boat, on a level with the lower
wings.
"Turbines," he explained. "Thirty thousand horse. Steam. But vara
likely ten years ago you peddled aboot with internal combustion
fakements--chattering, clattering, and onreliable. But yon's power for
you--silent, reliable, sweet, and done oop in a penny packet. Vara
likely in your heathen islands ye never heard tell of Janes Fluid. We
make steam wi' it instead of water. I could do wi' holding the patent.
Condensing? That was the deeficulty. Great volumes of steam coming
off at great velocity. But Janes Fluid and Toogoods condenser do the
beesiness."
"One moment," I broke in. "Back in 1919 the destroyers of the 'flotilla
leader' class had thirty-thousand horse turbines."
"Ay," said Munroe, "I've rattled roond in them."
"If I remember rightly, they were three hundred and fifty feet long
and did thirty-five knots," I continued. "They carried two hundred
and eighty tons of oil fuel. That was enough for eleven hours at full
speed, or three hundred and eighty-five miles. That is, they used
twenty-three tons of fuel an hour."
"Mon, your memory's fine," assented the Chief. "Ye'll well remember
they could dae fifteen knots for aboot a hunder and sixty hours on the
same fuel, using maybe less than twa tons an hour.
"But yon's better engines. The laddie that designed them did a
wairkmanlike job. For an Englishman they're no sae dusty. But we're
getting out a set on the Clyde that'll make him sit up.
"Fifteen tons of oil fuel an hour they eat developing full power.
She steps along at three hunder knots. Forby we tank seventy tons,
it's enough for four hours and a bit, and that'll be fourteen hundred
miles. But the Skipper dinna drive her at that, thank the Lord, for the
bed-plates are a bit light for my immediate liking. Twa hunder's our
cruising speed. That takes only three tons an hour and gies us maybe
four thousand six hunder miles."
He opened a door in a bulkhead and showed me a small room. It was
very bare. There was a small bucket-seat, a row of levers and a board
covered with indicators.
"Yon's whaur the fireman sits," explained the Chief. "He holds the
steam at six hunder poonds preesure and superheated to four hunder and
seventy degrees. That's aw there is tae it."
He poured into my entranced ears the way the steam was made. The fuel
tanks were below the second deck. The oil was pumped up to hot pipes
and vaporised, and was then blown under pressure from a row of nozzles
upon the generator tubes. The Janes Fluid flashed into steam somewhere
in the tube, nobody knew just where. It boiled at 20 degrees below
water and the super-heating gave it a tremendous expansion.
"Boilers?" continued Munroe, in answer to a question. "We dinna have
boilers to blow up and smash things to smithereens. The steam is made
just as fast as we need it. It's as flexible as an auld glove. If a
tube blaws out there's only a bit hiss and the body at the levers cuts
it out. It shows on an indicator. Twa-three years ago they put in a
thermostat to automatically control the pressure and temperature, but
the elements in the gadgets were always warping and ganging wrang, and
hand control is certain.
"But it's no' like the auld times, when a trained engineer was an
engineer. There's nae wairk tae be done. It's a drawing-room life. If
anything gaes wrang, it's--'Mister Munroe, the shore engineers are
coming aboord.'"
He unscrewed an engine-room hatch. It was beautifully fitted, so
that not a crack would show on the hull when it was closed. We stood
together, with our heads out, and could look fore and aft along the
hull and out on the snowy expanse of the lower plane. Immediately
behind the trailing edge of the lower wing were two stream-lined
funnels, protruding above the hull about a foot.
"She's twa hunder and forty feet from nose to tip of tail," Munroe
told me. "She's licensed to weigh twa hunder tons when fully loaded.
That's eleven and a half poonds a horse-power. Wing surface? Fifty-one
thousand square feet. That's maybe loaded to eight pounds a square foot.
"Four hunder and fifty feet she measures from wing-tip to wing-tip.
You'll notice there's no wires exposed. And you'll notice maybe that
each wing-spar gets smaller as it goes out. That's the advantage of
being big. Your small machine has a wing-spar big enough to take the
greatest load all the way out. Vara wasteful. But we're deesigned with
tapering wing-spars, steel girders they are, and so save weight and
head resistance. Cost more? Yara likely, but consider the speed.
"Weight? Ye'll have played aboot with hunder-ton steel ten years
ago, but we wairk with five-hunder-ton steel. Five times as light as
aluminium for the same strength, it is.
[Illustration:
_WHITE LINE_
_F·B "SWIFT" AND F·B "SWALLOW"_
_200 TONS._
_SIX PROPELLERS - 30.000 H.P. LENGTH 240 FEET._
_PLAN OF ACCOMMODATION._]
"You're looking at the props. There's six of them, driven by shaft and
gears, a smart job--the laddie that cut them was nae fule. No engines
out in the draught to make head reesistance. Murad steel they're made
of, wood never stood up to the rain. Low speed, high efficiency,
variable pitch, they are; absorbing five thousand horse-power each. I
remember reading in an old report where a big expert said one propeller
could only absorb twa thousand horse, but he was wrang.
"Getting off? I whack up the turbines with the blades of the propellers
neutral, and then shift them to the correct pitch, and she accelerates
on the water from nothing to seventy knots in less than forty seconds.
She takes to the air inside of three-quarters of a mile."
Here we were interrupted by the tinkle of a bell, and the Chief told me
the Skipper was on board in his cabin. If I went forward through the
saloon I would find the door on the right-hand side, below the control
cockpit.
I found Pank in his cabin, a roomy and comfortable place.
"Mail will be on board in ten minutes," he said, "and we'll push off at
six sharp. Come up to the control cockpit with me and see us take off.
We'll yarn about everything at dinner."
I followed Pank up a few shallow steps into the control cockpit. I
was all agog for marvels, and was rather disappointed. It was a small
place completely covered in with glass, following the stream-line
shape of the hull. There was a padded basket-seat for the pilot and a
control-wheel and yoke, very similar to what I remembered in the old
boats. The whole affair looked inadequate to handle the huge machine.
"Remember Queenie's servo-motor?" Pank asked, noting the direction of
my looks. "All the actual work of moving the control surfaces is done
by an adaptation of his patent. The pilot has no strain on him at all,
and yet has the feel of the machine."
Looking over the side, I saw a fast motor-launch racing towards us
across the harbour, piled high with mail-bags, and in another moment
the mail was being hoisted on board. A Quartermaster entered and
settled himself down in the padded seat.
"When we start," Pank warned me, "lean up against the back bulkhead.
We accelerate twice as quickly as a tube-train, and you may lose your
balance." And then to the Quartermaster: "Switch on all control
telephones." The Quartermaster shut down a switch, and Pank said in his
ordinary voice: "Purser, are all the passengers seated?"
"All correct, sir," said the voice of the Purser at my elbow, and
looking round I saw that it came from a large disk in the bulkhead.
"Engines?"
"Engines started, sir," said the voice of Angus Munroe.
Looking back at the planes I saw that the propellers had vanished.
There was a soft whirr, a soughing like a wind in trees, and a very
slight tremor through the structure of the boat.
Pank looked at the row of indicators on the wall. All had a white disk
down except in the spaces numbered two and three. "Seal doors two and
three," he ordered. The two white disks dropped in the indicators.
"Bow-man, stand by to let go."
"Aye, aye, sir."
"Engines. Stand by for four seconds half blade on port propellers."
"Standing by, sir."
"Bow-man, let go."
"All gone, sir."
The tide carried us clear of the buoy.
"Engines."
The bow of the _Swift_ swung round to starboard. She was heading for an
open stretch of water.
"Quartermaster, ready. Engines, full."
I was pushed back against the bulkhead as though by a heavy hand as the
boat leaped forward. The air speed indicator jumped to sixty knots, a
hundred, a hundred and fifty, two hundred. There was no noise such as I
had been accustomed to in a flying-boat. For an instant there had been
the crash of a breaking bow wave, but now there was only a rubbing,
rustling noise along the hull, and an increased soughing of the wind in
the tree-tops. I learned afterwards that this noise was made by the oil
vapour being forced through the nozzles in the generators.
"Level at six hundred," ordered Pank.
"Level, sir."
"Engines, two hundred knots."
"Twa hunder, sir."
On a square ground-glass sheet in front of the Quartermaster appeared
figures picked out in light.
"That's the wireless navigator," explained Pank. "He's on shore, but he
keeps in touch with us all the way across. He gives us our latitude
and longitude, the course to steer and the air speed to fly at. Simple,
isn't it?"
All this time I had a dissolving view, a wild impressionistic sketch,
of a sea snatched up in front of us and hurled behind. In six minutes,
having travelled south, we were off Start Point, and the numbers on the
wireless navigator, giving the course to steer, changed.
With a magnificent sweep of several miles and banking over slightly,
the Quartermaster brought the _Swift_ round on the new course and
steadied. I noticed that he steered by a large gyro compass.
"No spill-all turns for us," laughed Pank. "No spins, or loops, or
rolls."
At the height of six hundred feet our tremendous speed was apparent.
The sea appeared to be working on a roller, pulled up over the horizon
and passed back under us. Surface ships were in front, and then behind.
In nine minutes we had the Eddystone abeam and in another ten minutes
we passed the Lizard.
Every eighteen seconds, as steady as clockwork, a minute was added to
the longitude on the wireless navigator, showing we had gone westward
one mile. Every ninety seconds a minute was taken off the latitude,
showing we had made a mile of southing.
Pank glanced at the figures.
"There's a beam wind of about twenty knots from the north," he said.
"We are headed a bit north of our course to allow for the drift. It
doesn't alter our speed though. The wireless navigator ashore has all
the weather reports and adjusts our speed accordingly. With a following
wind he usually slows us down to save oil, and speeds us up when we run
into a head wind later on. Sometimes he shoves us through a region of
high head wind at top speed. What we lose on the swings we pick up on
the roundabout, and manage to get in on time."
"She's a bit nose heavy, sir," said the Quartermaster.
"Fireman, shift oil in forward tanks one and two," ordered Pank.
"When in the air," he explained, "we hold our fore-and-aft balance by
an auxiliary elevator worked by a gyro through a servo-motor. But if
the control surface has too much work to do it uses up power, so we
shift oil fuel until we are in good trim."
I expressed amazement at the small amount of noise.
"Remember that small station that was working on silencing aeroplanes
in 1918. It was washed out when the armistice was declared, but it had
already laid the foundations for getting results."
Mr Wemp, the First Mate, came into the control cockpit, and Pank
suggested I should look over the boat with him. He took me through her
from bow to stern.
She had two decks.
The first deck ran from the bow to the leading edge of the wings, and
from the trailing edge forty-five feet back. In the very bow, covered
in with glass shaped to the stream-line of the hull, was an observation
cabin for passengers, containing six easy-chairs. Passing aft, there
was the wireless room and captain's cabin on the starboard side, and
the officers' cabin on the port side.
In the wireless cabin were two lads, one on duty and the other taking
a busman's holiday. The latter showed me round. It all looked simple
enough; the valves, amplifiers, coils, and gear were boxed in, and
only the switches and plugs showed. The aerials were carried inside
the wings. I had expected a great display of all the mysterious
paraphernalia of the wireless wizard, but was disappointed.
I was shown the machine which sent out five dots every thirty seconds,
so that the wireless navigator on shore could plot out the position
of the boat. "The old Morse system of signals has been washed out,"
the lad explained, "and if you wish to speak to anybody in England or
America, we can plug you through on the wireless telephone."
Passing aft through the dining-saloon, with the ten double cabins, I
found the galley. Here a _chef_ was already active at an electric range
with aluminium utensils. The most delectable odours were floating about.
Then came the engine-room, and aft of this the smoke-room, and ten
double cabins, with an alleyway running athwartship. We passed down
a companion-ladder to the lower deck. This was a short deck, part
in front of the engine-room and part behind. It had just sufficient
accommodation for the crew.
"How many hands does this bus carry?" I asked.
[Illustration: 15-ton Porte Super Baby, 1800 horse-power.]
"Eighteen in all, counting the five officers," the First Mate replied.
Then he took me down below and showed me the great oil-tanks, which
were crowded as near to the centre of gravity as possible, under the
engine-room. I took a look at the lattice-work steel keel which ran
from the bow to the stern. It looked very light for the job it had to
do.
From here I went forward to Pank's cabin, and when the First Mate had
taken over in the control cockpit, Pank came down and asked, "Will you
dine outside with the millionaires and suchlike, or shall we dine here?"
"Here," I replied, for I wanted him to talk.
After dinner, at his ease in an arm-chair, and prompted now and then by
questions, he held forth.
"Remember in 1919," he began, "talking about a thirty thousand
horse-power flying-boat. She could have been built then, even with the
material and small engines available, but of course she would not have
had the speed and carrying capacity the _Swift_ has.
"In 1913, the Curtiss boat of sixty horse-power; in 1918, the
Felixstowe _Fury_ of eighteen hundred horse-power; in 1919, the first
crossing of the Atlantic by a Curtiss-built American flying-boat; in
1923, the first ten thousand horse-power steam turbine-boat; and now
the thirty thousand horse-power boat.
"Remember the land-machine ramp at the end of the Great War; how
they pranced on their hind legs and frothed about breaking the rails
and shipping companies; and the blokes that put their good cash into
companies that promised to carry mails and passengers by air over land
and sea. What happened to 'em? Got into flat spins and crashed, mostly.
"Went into an optimistic company as a joystick merchant; saw the whole
show from the inside. Tried to run mails in England. Weather conditions
and the competitions of the railways did us down.
"Speed and reliability are the essence of mail-carrying. It's the time
taken from the office boy licking the stamp until the presentation
paper-knife slits open the envelope at the other end that counts, and
the letter has always got to get there. The only letter-writers in a
tremendous hurry, excepting the mad people who are frantically in love,
are in the main centres of population, and they are connected by fast
train services. Also, the wireless telephone rather put a bend in the
show--talk to anybody anywhere at any time.
[Illustration: Erecting the 15-ton Felixstowe Fury.]
"We had to have our aerodromes well out from the centre of the
cities--land too hard to get inside. Had to whiz the mail out from
the post office to the bus, and tranship again at the other end. Took
a lot of time. But the jolly old mail-trains started from a point
near the post office, and the letters were sorted while the train was
travelling. Mist or fog, gales and snow, blew our time-tables sky-high.
You should have seen us tearing our hair in bad weather. Of course bad
weather sometimes interfered with the train service a bit, but not to
the same extent. There was nothing in it so far as time was concerned,
and they had us beaten four ways on reliability.
"We speeded up the faithful old sky-waggons. But that meant bigger
grounds to flop down into, so we had to go farther out from the
cities. That made the time taken to get mails out to us a bit longer.
We saved something at the receiving end by dropping the mails bang on
top of the post office building. But the trains were speeded up too;
they delivered special mails by motor-cycle straight from the railway
station. We had nothing on them.
"But with the increase of speed we had more crashes in fog and mist.
Rain was troublesome too. Summer wasn't so bad, but winter put us
down and out. Mails have got to be carried every day in the year.
Important mails were delayed and sometimes destroyed. That fed up the
men who wrote 'em. We tried putting up a kite-balloon above the mist,
and gliding down from that. Not good enough. The aerodromes were too
small, and the dashing aviators fetched up into houses, ditches, and
trees. And, of course, a forced landing on the way under bad weather
conditions was nearly always fatal. Insurance went higher than the
machines.
"We weren't reliable enough. No commercial firm could stand the
expense. The Government gave no assistance. The Treasury was squeezing
every penny until Britannia squealed. We tried for two years, and then
my little lot went phut.
"Yes, the mail-carriers had more success in less well-developed
countries. Better weather conditions, longer runs, slower trains. But
the money in it was nothing to write home about.
"Then passenger carrying.
"You remember the rather slow and clumsy four-engine aeroplanes they
made such a fuss about? Well, they proved to be about the limit in
size for a land-machine. Bigger ones were tried, but they were no go.
Landing wheel loads, landing speeds, surfaces of aerodromes, big sheds,
cost of crashes. The big slow aeroplanes could get into an aerodrome
that the ordinary fast scout merchant could get down into, but when
they speeded them up, so that they could get from one place to another
in a thirty-knot wind in a reasonable time, they took the most of a
county to land in.
"Then there was the weather. They had the same troubles as the
mail-carriers and a few more. Pilots were paid to take risks, but
passengers objected to being strewn over the countryside in a mixed lot
of metal and matchwood. Fly on half-power plant? Not when fully loaded.
Passengers didn't like to go above three thousand feet, it made some of
them ill. Couldn't sleep after being up high. With heavy low clouds the
aeroplanes had to go under them or over them. Below them, often at five
hundred feet, it was too dangerous over land, chimneys, and houses on
hills; and they couldn't get down any place like we can at sea.
"The only run that would have paid was from London to Paris,
joy-riders mostly, where you had to change from rail to boat and back
to rail again. But the Channel Tunnel and the cut-throat competition
between aeroplane companies left nothing in the bag.
"Yes, like the mail-carriers, they did a bit better in places with
decent climates, but the shareholders could never afford to travel by
air on the dividends paid.
"Everybody all at once got wise to the fact that it was the long
hauls over the water routes that were going to pay. Competitors,
comparatively slow steamers, fifteen to twenty-five knots. One or two
flying-boat companies had been working on the job and were not making
such a bad fist at it. But the land-machine people had a cut at it.
Couldn't get it into their heads that big flying-boats were just as
efficient as big land-machines, and a bit faster, as they hadn't to
carry landing wheels and under-carriage.
"What happened? They drowned a good many people, lost a lot of
mails and machines, and gave it up after about two years of bitter
experience. You see they were handicapped by having to land on
aerodromes in mist and fog, and couldn't get up to the same speed as
flying-boats.
"The airship people?
"They are not doing badly, but they're essentially fair-weather craft.
I don't mean mist and fog, for they can hover with engines shut down,
but wind.
"The two million cubic foot gas-bags produced in 1919--by the way, the
Germans had 'em that size at the end of 1917--had only a top speed of
sixty-seven knots when new. Head resistance and skin friction. Their
cruising speed was something like forty-five knots. They found there
was only about eighty days in the year they could cross the Atlantic
with safety, and they had to go south--about through the anti-cyclonic
weather. Their average time was three days, not much better than a
five-day surface boat. But they did carry on.
"They stuck to the job and built ten million cubic foot gas-bags--top
speed eighty-three knots. They were really too slow for Transatlantic
work. They were very very costly, and as they carried big loads the
companies had a hard time getting enough mails and passengers to pay
for operating them. Safe enough, much safer than travelling by surface
ships, but too dependent on the wind. Speed is what counts.
"In the meantime the big armament firms and steamship companies were
sitting on the fence, watching the other fellows spending money and
buying experience. They experimented a bit and gathered a lot of
valuable data. One of the steamship companies had flying decks put on
their liners, and when within three hundred miles of harbour launched
mail-carrying aeroplanes. It cut down the time tremendously.
"Flying-boats?
"Not much was done with them. The Air Ministry was starved for money,
and big boats were too costly for small firms to play with. Fortunately
some bright blokes in the Navy had experiments carried out in their own
yards. Somehow, even in the hardest of hard times after the Great War,
the Navy managed to get money. I suppose they knew that trouble was
coming.
"Remember the drawings of the fifty-ton flying-boat we looked at in
1919? Well, that was built, and proved more or less of a success.
It was found that a boat of that size could be built of steel, so
the steel merchants were got busy and finally succeeded in making
two-hundred-ton steel, and eventually got to five-hundred. It was a
costly business.
"There was really nothing screamingly successful until the ten thousand
horse-power turbine came along. Janes Fluid made them possible for
aircraft. Ordinary steam made from water is full of air, and that makes
condensing difficult: air-pumps and so on. Ammonia was tried a long
time ago and other true fluids, but the mechanical difficulties were
too great. Then Janes struck on a true fluid that answered the purpose.
"And then came war.
"You don't want to hear about it? Well, we had a Labour Government,
and the Army and the Air Force became less than nothing, and the
Navy was rather down at the heel, and the Empire was on the verge of
breaking up. So a pushing Island People made a snatch at Australia and
the islands in the Pacific. The League of Nations? That for practical
purposes was the British Empire and America, and the enemy tackled
both. Fortunately our Navy had about twenty ten-thousand horse-power
flying-boats. I joined up at once and saw the only fleet action.
"Remember the comic Russian with the aerial torpedo they were
experimenting with in 1917? Right idea, but wrong principle. Wouldn't
work. The gunnery sharks took the idea, pulled it about, worried it,
and produced the flying bomb. I believe Sperry tried it in 1915. They
produced ton bombs with wings. Each boat carried two.
"We ran into the enemy in force. While the warships were piling on the
heavy stuff we unloaded from ten thousand feet. The bombs glided a mile
and a half for every thousand feet we were up. They were balanced by a
gyroscope and steered by wireless. We nose-dived them into the lightly
protected decks and made rather a wreck of the enemy. What was left of
him was bottled up in his ports.
"Then we went after them. We'd let go from twenty miles out and the
bombs would sail over boom and harbour defences. The surface ships had
no chance. When we were finished you could have bought the Navies of
the world for a song.
"The enemy was a stiff-necked and brave people, so we had to smash up a
few of his coast towns before he surrendered. Aeroplanes? They hadn't
got our speed, and if they had got at us we could have settled them
with our one-inch quick-firers before they could have got close enough
to get home. Antiaircraft guns? We always unloaded too far away for
them to touch us. You see, we didn't have to pass over the target.
"And that was what put flying-boats on their feet. The whole of the
British Navy is now in the air. It's a fine sight to see a destroyer
flotilla.
"The bigger the boats got, the faster they were. Scale effect.
Stream-line 'em better and save weight in the hull. No trouble getting
off or on, there's lots of water. Fog? No more dangerous to us than it
is to surface ships. The Wireless Navigator tells us where we are to
within a mile. And if the fog is very thick in a harbour, or the clouds
are right down to the water, we land outside and taxi in, just as we
used to do.
"Remember Queenie's night-landing gadget? It put a boat down on the
water automatically. You let a lever hang down over the side, shut off
your engines, glided down, and when the tip of the lever touched the
water it pulled back the controls and the boat landed smoothly. We use
an adaptation of the gadget to-day.
"Cost? You may be surprised to know that our two boats running the U.S.
Mail just pay their way and no more--even with the Government subsidy.
Our company runs smaller boats, ten thousand horse-power, down through
the Mediterranean, to Australia, and in various places all over the
world. They pay, but the big ones don't make money yet. They will in
time.
"And now let us yarn about the old days."
So we yarned about Felixstowe, and the six-ton boats, and the pilots,
until he had to go to the control cockpit to relieve the First Mate.
"Like to come up before you turn in?" he asked.
We went up together. It was pitch dark outside. The control cockpit was
lit only by the light in the binnacle and the Wireless Navigator.
"What happens about looking out from your glass-house when it rains or
snows?" I asked.
"At our speed rain and snow won't stick to the stream-lined glass," he
replied. And then to the Quartermaster, a new man, for the first one
had been relieved: "Put me through to the Swallow."
When the Quartermaster shut down a switch, he said, "Hullo, Morrison.
Going strong. What's your position?"
A rich jovial voice at my elbow answered: "Good evening, Pank. Have
you come for the ashes?" This was evidently some obscure joke, for the
two Skippers laughed heartily together. And Pank asked: "How's the
Missis and kids?" Then Morrison gave his position.
"That's our sister ship, east-bound," Pank said to me. "Keep a sharp
look-out over our port bow and you'll see her lights. She'll pass in a
moment."
I looked out into the darkness and caught a momentary glimpse of a
bright white light and a red one. They were gone in a flash.
"That's her," said Pank.
I went below to my cabin and turned in. The next thing I remembered was
a steward standing at my elbow with a cup of tea.
"Where are we now?" I asked.
"We'll land in twenty minutes," he replied.
I scrambled into my clothes and went up into the control cockpit, where
I found Pank. The daylight was just beginning to creep over the water.
"On time to the minute," said the Skipper.
"There's the Statue of Liberty," I cried.
And then Pank: "Quartermaster, stand by. Engines, stand by. Engines,
cut off."
We glided down towards the grey water silently and flattened out. I
felt the great wings cushioning as we ran along above the surface. We
touched. The sharp keel began to drag the speed down. There was the
roar of a breaking bow wave. And then she settled in and stopped.
"Bow-man, smart with the line," ordered Pank, as a motor-launch ran
across our bows. We were in tow. "Unseal doors two, four, five, and
six," he continued. The disks in the indicator were lifted.
Looking across the harbour I saw a mail-boat boiling towards us and
an oiler standing by to pass us a filling hose when we were made fast
to the buoy. Another motor-boat was on its way out to collect the
passengers.
"I thought that crossing the Atlantic in a flying-boat was going to be
an adventure," I said.
"Not at all," replied Pank. "It's a business."
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.
* * * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Simple spelling, grammar, and typographical errors were silently corrected.
Anachronistic and non-standard spellings were retained as printed.