barely enough time to scramble back into the cabin before gunning the engines and taxiing out onto the harbor. Three times Stultz tried and failed to raise the heavy craft. Twice they dumped auxiliary fuel tins overboard. On the fourth attempt, the Fokker plowed through the water for two miles, rose slowly, dipped, steadied, and rose again, wobbling up through the fog, one water-drenched engine sputtering. They were on their way.
The captain of the
Friendship
retired amidships where she started the log with the time of departure—11:40 A.M . Not long after she spied a whiskey bottle lodged between a rib of the fuselage and Gordon’s tool kit. Her impulse was to open the hatch and throw it out just as she hadonce poured her father’s hidden supply down the sink, but she left the bottle where it was. Stultz might need it later.
Three hundred miles out of Trepassey the plane was enveloped by fog. Searching for a clearing, Stultz climbed into a snow squall. Without de-icing equipment, he was forced to take the ship down again, so quickly that Amelia slid across the deck and into the oil drums stored behind the seat. Regaining her place amidships Amelia watched him struggle to stay awake for the next one hundred miles until the weather cleared when he signaled forGordon to take over, then fell asleep in his seat.
Seven hours out Amelia wrote in the log, “I am … kneeling here at the [chart] table gulping beauty. Radio contact.
Rexmore
, Britisher bound for New York.” It was thelast radio contact. Amelia dozed off after midnight until she was awakened by Gordon’s voice calling for ships to “come in.” None did. The radio was dead. They would have to depend on Stultz’s navigational skills. They had been flying for sixteen hours and had four, possibly five, hours of fuel left.
At dawn Stultz came down through the clouds searching the cold, grey waters for a ship. At 6:30 they sighted the S.S.
America
, which Stultz circled while Amelia tied a message to two oranges and dropped it. She missed. Now on the emergency tank with about one hour’s fuel remaining, Stultz sighted a fleet of fishing boats. Minutes later Amelia saw land, then a smokestack less than a mile off. Stultz circled what seemed to be a factory town on the coast and brought the ship in for a perfect landing. The
Friendship
’sflight across the international time zones of the Atlantic ended at Burry Port, Wales, where it was one o’clock in the afternoon of June 18, twenty hours and forty minutes after their departure from Trepassey. Its crew was 3,000 miles from Boston and 140 miles from Southhampton, where a vast crowd had gathered to see the first woman to cross the Atlantic in an airplane.
CHAPTER SIX
The Circus
O ne hour after the
Friendship
landed off the Welsh coast, Norman Fisher, the High Sheriff of Carmanthenshire, pulled his small dinghy alongside the big plane.
“Do ye be wanting something?” he asked the young woman in the fur-lined coverall who leaned out from the open hatch.
“We’ve come from America,” she said. “Where are we?”
“Have ye now?” Fisher said. “Well, I’m sure we wish you welcome toBurry Port, Wales. I’ll go see about getting ye mooring space for the flying machine and getting ye ashore.”
Until the sheriff rowed out to them, no one in Burry Port seemed overly curious about the flying machine. Amelia had waved at a group of longshoremen loading coal on a freighter by the quay but, after waving back, they went back to work. The exhausted, short-tempered Stultz was threatening to run the
Friendship
right into the quay when Fisher arrived and offered to take one of the crew back to shore. Stultz went, leaving Amelia and Gordon on the plane.
From Burry Port, Stultz telephoned Hilton Railey in Southampton where he had been standing by for two weeks. Stultz called at 2:45. Three hours later Railey and Allen Raymond of the
New York Times
arrived in Burry Port. By then two thousand people—almost the
The captain of the
Friendship
retired amidships where she started the log with the time of departure—11:40 A.M . Not long after she spied a whiskey bottle lodged between a rib of the fuselage and Gordon’s tool kit. Her impulse was to open the hatch and throw it out just as she hadonce poured her father’s hidden supply down the sink, but she left the bottle where it was. Stultz might need it later.
Three hundred miles out of Trepassey the plane was enveloped by fog. Searching for a clearing, Stultz climbed into a snow squall. Without de-icing equipment, he was forced to take the ship down again, so quickly that Amelia slid across the deck and into the oil drums stored behind the seat. Regaining her place amidships Amelia watched him struggle to stay awake for the next one hundred miles until the weather cleared when he signaled forGordon to take over, then fell asleep in his seat.
Seven hours out Amelia wrote in the log, “I am … kneeling here at the [chart] table gulping beauty. Radio contact.
Rexmore
, Britisher bound for New York.” It was thelast radio contact. Amelia dozed off after midnight until she was awakened by Gordon’s voice calling for ships to “come in.” None did. The radio was dead. They would have to depend on Stultz’s navigational skills. They had been flying for sixteen hours and had four, possibly five, hours of fuel left.
At dawn Stultz came down through the clouds searching the cold, grey waters for a ship. At 6:30 they sighted the S.S.
America
, which Stultz circled while Amelia tied a message to two oranges and dropped it. She missed. Now on the emergency tank with about one hour’s fuel remaining, Stultz sighted a fleet of fishing boats. Minutes later Amelia saw land, then a smokestack less than a mile off. Stultz circled what seemed to be a factory town on the coast and brought the ship in for a perfect landing. The
Friendship
’sflight across the international time zones of the Atlantic ended at Burry Port, Wales, where it was one o’clock in the afternoon of June 18, twenty hours and forty minutes after their departure from Trepassey. Its crew was 3,000 miles from Boston and 140 miles from Southhampton, where a vast crowd had gathered to see the first woman to cross the Atlantic in an airplane.
CHAPTER SIX
The Circus
O ne hour after the
Friendship
landed off the Welsh coast, Norman Fisher, the High Sheriff of Carmanthenshire, pulled his small dinghy alongside the big plane.
“Do ye be wanting something?” he asked the young woman in the fur-lined coverall who leaned out from the open hatch.
“We’ve come from America,” she said. “Where are we?”
“Have ye now?” Fisher said. “Well, I’m sure we wish you welcome toBurry Port, Wales. I’ll go see about getting ye mooring space for the flying machine and getting ye ashore.”
Until the sheriff rowed out to them, no one in Burry Port seemed overly curious about the flying machine. Amelia had waved at a group of longshoremen loading coal on a freighter by the quay but, after waving back, they went back to work. The exhausted, short-tempered Stultz was threatening to run the
Friendship
right into the quay when Fisher arrived and offered to take one of the crew back to shore. Stultz went, leaving Amelia and Gordon on the plane.
From Burry Port, Stultz telephoned Hilton Railey in Southampton where he had been standing by for two weeks. Stultz called at 2:45. Three hours later Railey and Allen Raymond of the
New York Times
arrived in Burry Port. By then two thousand people—almost the
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