Their rescue by slow Danish Mary completed a
fascinating tale of heroic adventure. The British dirigible R34,
with Major G. H. Scott in command, left East Fortune, Scotland,
on the 2d of July, and arrived at Mineola, New York, on the
sixth. The R34 made the return voyage in seventy-five hours. In
November, 1919, Captain Sir Ross Smith set off from England in a
biplane to win a prize of ten thousand pounds offered by the
Australian Commonwealth to the first Australian aviator to fly
from England to Australia in thirty days. Over France, Italy,
Greece, over the Holy Land, perhaps over the Garden of Eden,
whence the winged cherubim drove Adam and Eve, over Persia,
India, Siam, the Dutch East Indies to Port Darwin in northern
Australia; and then southeastward across Australia itself to
Sydney, the biplane flew without mishap. The time from Hounslow,
England, to Port Darwin was twenty-seven days, twenty hours, and
twenty minutes. Early in 1920 the Boer airman Captain Van
Ryneveld made the flight from Cairo to the Cape.
Commercial development of the airplane and the airship commenced
after the war. The first air service for United States mails was,
in fact, inaugurated during the war, between New York and
Washington. The transcontinental service was established soon
afterwards, and a regular line between Key West and Havana.
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