The NC4, with
Lieutenant Commander Albert Cushing Read and crew, left
Trepassey, Newfoundland, on the 16th of May and in twelve hours
arrived at Horta, the Azores, more than a thousand miles away.
All along the course the navy had strung a chain of destroyers,
with signaling apparatus and searchlights to guide the aviators.
On the twenty-seventh, NC4 took off from San Miguel, Azores, and
in nine hours made Lisbon--Lisbon, capital of Portugal, which
sent out the first bold mariners to explore the Sea of Darkness,
prior to Columbus. On the thirtieth, NC4 took off for Plymouth,
England, and arrived in ten hours and twenty minutes. Perhaps a
phantom ship, with sails set and flags blowing, the name
Mayflower on her hull, rode in Plymouth Harbor that day to greet
a New England pilot.
On the 14th of June the Vickers-Vimy Rolls-Royce biplane, piloted
by John Alcock and with Arthur Whitten Brown as
observer-navigator, left St. John's, Newfoundland, and arrived at
Clifden, Ireland, in sixteen hours twelve minutes, having made
the first non-stop transatlantic flight. Hawker and Grieve
meanwhile had made the same gallant attempt in a single-engined
Sopwith machine; and had come down in mid-ocean, after flying
fourteen and a half hours, owing to the failure of their water
circulation.
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