The Dangerous Book of Heroes (45 page)

Copyright © 2009 by Graeme Neil Reid

The aircraft bounced over the tufted grass, slowing down, when suddenly the undercarriage wheels dug in, the tail flew up, the nose tipped forward, and they came to a sudden halt. In a land of many bogs they had very carefully selected and landed on one of the flattest. The waving people had actually been waving them away.

The two men clambered out of their cockpit, now at ground level, Brown with a bump to his nose. They pushed their goggles up and grinned tiredly at each other. They had been in the air for sixteen hours and twenty-seven minutes. They had flown 1,890 nautical miles. They had crossed the Atlantic Ocean nonstop.

“What do you think of that for fancy navigation?” navigator asked pilot.

“Very good!” pilot replied. Beside the Vimy, Alcock and Brown shook hands.

Soldiers from the wireless station arrived, feeling that an unidentified aircraft landing near a military installation was possibly in their jurisdiction. “Where're you from?” asked one.

“Saint John's,” replied Alcock. No one knew Saint John's. Was that Scotland?

Copyright © 2009 by Graeme Neil Reid

“Newfoundland,” Alcock explained. No recognition.

“North America?” he tried.

“Get away!” the soldiers said, laughing, thinking it was a joke. It took a while for the truth to sink in: they'd witnessed the completion of the greatest flight ever made. The flyers' hands were shaken, their backs were slapped, their shoulders gripped, their hands wrung again. “North America, eh?”

In Newfoundland the news of Alcock and Brown's safe arrival on the other side of the Atlantic was greeted with rapture. Lester's Field was indeed the first transatlantic airfield. North America to Europe, nonstop, in sixteen and a half hours.

Telegrams announcing their amazing feat flashed around the world. It was a sensation. In the year 1919, the achievement was almost unbelievable. Only ten years after the first airplane had struggled across the English Channel, Jackie Alcock and Teddie Brown had flown the vast Atlantic Ocean. They'd blazed the trail. Others would surely follow in the years ahead, but they were the first.

They were driven to Dublin, where a telegram from the king awaited them. From Dublin they traveled to Liverpool by ferry, from Liverpool to London by train. Alcock and Brown made a triumphant journey and were fêted wherever they stopped. These were the men who had conquered the Atlantic. Occasionally, Vickers and Rolls-Royce were mentioned.

The Times
reported: “In Crewe station there was yet another crowd which insisted on the airmen leaving the train during the halt. Suddenly an Australian soldier called to a porter ‘Up with him' and Lieutenant Brown was lifted shoulder-high so that all the people could see and cheer him. Another soldier with assistance hoisted up Captain Alcock.”

Waiting crowds in London cheered them through the streets, where they were driven in an open Rolls-Royce limousine. The Royal Aero Club (the Royal Aeronautical Society) honored them with a reception and officially validated the flight. They successfully delivered to the post office the first transatlantic airmail. At a grand lun
cheon at the Savoy Hotel the minister for war and air, Winston Churchill, presented them with the
Daily Mail
prize of ten thousand pounds, which was shared with the Vickers team.

They were summoned to Windsor Castle. There King George V knighted the two airmen with the same sword with which Queen Elizabeth had knighted Francis Drake in 1581. Alcock and Brown, their surnames forever joined, were national and international heroes.

Significantly, they had flown the Atlantic in a production airplane with production engines. The Vimy hadn't been redesigned for the flight; it was the standard model. The weight reduction achieved by removing the bomb racks and machine guns was replaced by the weight of the extra fuel tanks. It was the thirteenth built, it had cost three thousand pounds, and it had crossed the Atlantic nonstop. There was the future of aviation.

Barely three weeks later, on July 2, airship
R34
of the RAF took off from East Fortune, east of Edinburgh, and flew westward to North America against the prevailing winds. Under the command of Major George H. Scott,
R34
reached New Jersey through terrible weather in a nonstop flight of four and a half days. Airships were new to America, so Major Pritchard parachuted down to organize the landing.
R34
then flew back to Britain to land at Pulham in Norfolk. Major Scott and his crew became the first to fly the Atlantic Ocean east to west nonstop and the first to fly both ways nonstop. Alcock and Brown had certainly started something.

Their 1919 conquest of the Atlantic remains the greatest pioneering flight of all. It was the first nonstop ocean crossing and the first long-distance flight. It encountered bad weather and overcame it. It convinced the skeptics that airplanes were for civilian use as well as for war, and it carried the first oceanic airmail. Intercontinental air travel had begun.

Outside the Queen's Building at Heathrow Airport there is a statue carved in stone of Alcock and Brown. The Vickers Vimy they flew is on permanent display at the Science Museum in London.

In December 1919, Sir Jackie Alcock delivered a Vickers Viking to France. Landing in thick fog, his wing tip snared a tree and he crashed and struck his head. He died a few hours later without regaining consciousness. Sir Teddie Brown married that October, decided he wouldn't fly again, and died in England in 1948.

Recommended

Flying the Atlantic in Sixteen Hours
by Sir Arthur Whitten Brown

Our Transatlantic Flight
by Sir John Alcock and Sir Arthur Whitten Brown

The Vickers Vimy
by Paul St. John Turner

Queen's Building, Heathrow Airport, London

The Science Museum, London

T
he Elizabethan age was a time of extraordinary optimism in England. Queen Elizabeth I's reign lasted from 1558 to 1603, and during that period, the Renaissance flowered in literature, music, art, and exploration. Shakespeare and Marlowe were at the peak of their powers, the wealth of the world was brought home and the bedrock laid for the British Empire. In many ways, it is still considered a golden era.

It was also a time of relative peace when compared with the upheavals of the seventeenth century. The monarch held absolute power, and Parliament did not challenge the divine right to rule. As a queen, Elizabeth was a skillful mistress and dominated the court for decades, surrounding herself with the best men of the age. The great leaps in science that would mark the next three centuries had their beginnings in her reign, but the foundation stone of power and wealth lay with men like Sir Walter Ralegh and Sir Francis Drake, as they discovered new lands and brought riches to England. At the same time, the natural resources of timber, coal, wood, wool, and iron were exploited on a massive scale in the beginnings of what would eventually become the Industrial Revolution.

The great enemy of the period was Spain. By the time Elizabeth reached the throne, the Spanish had established settlements in Central and South America, a cultural influence that continues today in countries as far apart as Mexico, Peru, Argentina, and Nicaragua. Great wealth flowed back to Spain from those colonies, and their ships were dominant in that part of the world. Inevitably, the fleets of England and Spain would come into conflict, for the highest stakes.

 

Walter Ralegh was born in Devon in 1554. There are few surviving details of his early life before he attended Oriel College, Oxford, at
around the age of sixteen. From the first, he was possessed of restless energy and a desire for adventure. He spent only a year at Oxford before joining a unit of mounted volunteers in France, where he fought at the battle of Moncontour in 1569. Returning home, he trained as a lawyer for a time but took no special interest in his studies. He was tall and handsome, with a sharp wit and a furious temper. Around that time, he spent six days in Fleet Prison for a public brawl and on another occasion in a tavern grew so angry with a man that he sealed up his mouth with wax to stop him from talking.

His half-brother, Humphrey Gilbert, was a renowned sailor. When he was granted a patent to mount an expedition to the New World, or the Americas, Ralegh decided to join him. They sailed in November 1578 from Plymouth, with Ralegh in command of one of seven ships.

This first expedition ended in complete failure and would introduce Ralegh to the dangers of Spain. As well as violent squalls, Gilbert's small fleet met a squadron of Spanish warships off the west coast of Africa. They fought and lost, and the battered and damaged ships returned to Plymouth. There was no official war with Spain at the time, but both countries were capable of that sort of action if the odds were right. With sufficient force and enough wealth at stake, there was simply no law at sea. At that time, the Spanish Inquisition was at its most powerful and captured English sailors were sometimes handed over to the torturers as enemies of the pope.

After that chastening experience, Ralegh used Gilbert's connections to secure a commission to put down an uprising in Ireland. Catholicism made Ireland the natural ally of Spain and France, right on the doorstep of Elizabeth's court. It was Ralegh's first opportunity to show his abilities. English forces marched across Ireland, attacking castles and strongholds and massacring garrisons much as Cromwell's men would do in the following century. Ralegh became known as a captain of particular dash and ruthlessness. He took the castle of Lord Roche by talking his way in to discuss peace, then gradually brought more men in as he ate dinner with the host. When he had enough men, he threatened to destroy the castle if Roche refused to
surrender. Some sources say Ralegh held a knife to his throat as he made his offer.

A force of a hundred mainly Italian mercenaries authorized by Spain landed to support the rebellion, but they were pinned down on land in the Bay of Smerwick. Ralegh and another captain went in after their surrender and hanged or slaughtered everyone except for twenty officers held for ransom. It is perhaps worth pointing out that it was a perfectly normal action by the standards of the day. The threat of Spanish invasion was a constant danger, and both sides were utterly ruthless in a struggle to the death. Ralegh was unmoved by horrors, though he wrote letters of complaint about the inept decisions of his military superiors. It was an early example of his complete lack of subtlety in political matters. He never learned to guard his tongue.

Ralegh's unit was disbanded in 1581, and he returned to London with a growing reputation for both gallantry and courage. He prepared to meet Queen Elizabeth with great care, spending almost everything he owned on ostentatious clothing. She was extremely taken with the young soldier from Devon. She enjoyed his accent as much as his forceful manner, grand apparel, and good looks. It was not long before he was regularly called to court, and it was around that time that one of the most famous incidents of his life took place.

Elizabeth and Ralegh were walking in Greenwich when they came to a marshy patch of ground. Ralegh whipped off his jeweled cloak and placed it over the wet ground. That act of conspicuous gallantry was completely in character and cannot have failed to impress the queen. It is too cynical to suggest that he saw her simply as a way to gain power and wealth. Elizabeth was in her late forties at the time, and there was genuine affection for her among the dashing young blades of the day. A female monarch was a rarity in England, and her relationship with men at court was often one of adoration, almost reverence. There was also an element of flirtation that would not have gone down well with Henry VIII. Ralegh, for example, was a gifted poet. He scratched a line on a window for Elizabeth to see: “Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.” With a diamond ring, she added another line: “If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all.”

Queen Elizabeth favored Ralegh with a house in the Strand and the right to export woolen cloth, a hugely lucrative license. He had arrived at the highest levels of society and quickly became very wealthy. Like the equally famous Francis Drake, he came from a minor Devon family, but with royal favor, he rose quickly.

 

Francis Drake was born around 1540, to a very poor family. In later years, the motto on his coat of arms would be
“Sic parvis magna”
—“great things from small beginnings.” His sailing career began at the age of fourteen in a merchant ship carrying grain. On that small vessel, he began to learn the skills of navigation that would play such a part in his later life. When the owner of the ship died, he left it to Drake, which shows the respect he had earned in just a few years. Like Ralegh, he was a staunchly Protestant, restless young man, always keeping his eye out for ways to make his fortune.

In 1564 he sold the ship he had inherited to join Captain John Lovell on a trading expedition to Spain. It was his first experience of ocean navigation and his first encounter with the Spanish. In a Spanish port, Drake saw his cargo confiscated. After that, he hated them with a passion.

Copyright © 2009 by Graeme Neil Reid

In 1567, Drake joined his cousin John Hawkins in a fleet sponsored by Queen Elizabeth to capture Spanish treasure ships. Drake and Hawkins sailed to Africa, then the Spanish
Main—the coasts of Central and South America. Storms forced them to make landfall in Mexico, just as the annual Spanish treasure ship was about to set sail. Drake and Hawkins were vulnerable after the storm and needed repairs and supplies. They anchored by a small island, but that night the Spanish struck them in force. English sailors on shore were slaughtered and Spanish ships sailed out to attack Hawkins's battered fleet. Only two of the ten ships—the pair commanded by Hawkins and Drake—escaped. They limped home to Plymouth, and from then on it was a very personal war for both men.

In 1572–3, Drake raided Spanish settlements on the coast of Panama, seeking the gold and silver that came from the slave mines of Peru. In February 1573, he heard of a mountain where it was possible to see the Pacific on one side and the Atlantic on the other. When he reached the top, he was overcome with excitement and made a vow to navigate and explore the new world that had opened up to him. At the same time, he ambushed a Spanish mule train heavy with silver and captured two Spanish ships before returning to Plymouth a very wealthy man. However, Queen Elizabeth could not publicly acknowledge his success while she negotiated with the Spanish king.

By 1577, the talk in London was of finding the fabled Northwest Passage that would allow ships to reach the Pacific without having to go around South America, a lengthy and extremely dangerous journey. Hawkins was one of those who organized an expedition to seek out new territories, and Drake was given command. He met the queen in secret to discuss the plans and understood that Elizabeth wanted revenge on the Spanish king. Drake was certainly the man for that. He sailed with five ships in December of that year and crossed the Atlantic to land on the Brazilian coast. By August, Drake reached the Strait of Magellan, a notoriously difficult passage through the tip of South America. To mark the event, he renamed his ship the
Golden Hind.
It took sixteen days to navigate through the strait. Drake and his crew were the first Englishmen ever to make the trip and reach the Pacific by that route. Storms battered them in the Pacific, driving the ships south and east so that Drake realized he had not crossed a continent, only the southernmost tip of it in modern-day Chile.

With a better idea of the geography, Drake raided Chile and Peru for silver, fresh fruit, and water. At Lima, Peru, he discovered twelve merchant ships and took their cargoes before sailing on a rumor of a treasure ship, the
Cacafuego,
which was heading for Panama. Drake used all his sailing skill to catch the
Cacafuego
and captured her easily, breaking her mast with his third shot. It took
days
to transfer the vast cargo of pearls, jewels, silver, and gold. His ships stuffed with treasure, he set sail for home. He suspected the Magellan Strait would be blockaded by the Spanish, and he ran north, looking for the legendary passage through to the Atlantic.

He landed for a time on the coast of what is now California. Drake named the area New Albion, and while he was there Native Americans crowned him as a king. From there, he sailed west across the largest ocean on earth, looking for a path through to circumnavigate back to England. He reached the Spice Islands (the Moluccas), off Indonesia, then ran aground on a hidden reef and almost lost the
Golden Hind.
The damage was not too great, however, and he made landfall at Java, a thousand miles northwest of Australia. From there he crossed the Indian Ocean, rounded South Africa's Cape of Good Hope, and eventually returned to Plymouth on September 27, 1580, three years after he had set out—making him the first man to return alive from a circumnavigation of the world. Magellan had managed it earlier, but died before reaching home. When he landed in England, Drake asked if the queen still lived.

In that voyage, Drake had demonstrated to the world the new English power on the seas. He was summoned to meet the queen and, like Ralegh, had the sense to take gifts of jewels. She ordered him to bring the
Golden Hind
from Plymouth to London, and she knighted him on the ship's quarterdeck in 1581. Both Ralegh and Drake were high in royal favor, and Elizabeth allowed Drake to remove ten thousand pounds from the treasure before the official tally was taken. The queen used the riches Drake brought back to found what would one day be known as the British East India Company.

 

At home, Sir Walter Ralegh had become an MP for Devon. He remained a favorite at court, and the the queen also made him Captain
of the Yeoman of the Guard, the men responsible for her personal safety. She adored the dashing young courtier and made him a gift of vast estates in Ireland. In his London house, he invited poets and friends such as Christopher Marlowe and Edmund Spenser. At the same time, he prevailed on Elizabeth to grant him a patent to explore the New World and claim territories for her. Drake's success was the talk of the country, and as a fellow Devonian, Ralegh was hungry for similar adventures. It was not enough for him to wear jeweled clothes and have the queen hang on his words. He was too vital and energetic for that sort of life.

Ralegh was no professional sailor, like Drake or Hawkins. In a sense, he was a talented amateur when he sailed with Sir Humphrey Gilbert to America in 1583 in command of five ships. That voyage was a disaster, as four ships were lost and only one managed to make it back to Plymouth. Gilbert's own ship went down in a storm. Ralegh had failed, but he showed his mettle in organizing another expedition the following year. In 1584 he reached America and named an area Virginia after England's virgin queen. It was an inspired name that survives today. Ralegh was knighted on his return, four years after Drake received the same honor.