It was 6.45 am when Francis turned out of the Wellington harbour entrance and headed north. It would be sunset at Norfolk Island at 6.45 pm, so he had twelve hours of daylight with ten hours’ flying to do. First he had a three-hour flight to the northern tip of New Zealand, where he would fill up with petrol for the sea crossing.
Almost immediately Francis noticed the first of the day’s problems: although the heavily laden Madame Elijah had taken off sprightly enough, with the new floats she was harder to trim than she had been. Previously he only had to tilt his head backwards to start her climbing, but now he could not leave her for more than a few seconds without her going into a steep dive or climb. He put it down to the unusual weight distribution as well as the floats and lack of practice flying her so fully laden. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been warned.
After three hours of dead reckoning he splashed down on Parengarenga Harbour, the refuelling spot. Spot on! Maddeningly, the Maoris there were not only not expecting him but had no fuel anyway. Then Madame Elijah’s anchor began to drag and Francis couldn’t persuade the Maoris to help him with theirs. The miscommunications between the time-crazed Tasman solo flyer and time plenished natives only made time stretch further. As Francis said, ‘My request for them to get the petrol in a hurry was strongly worded. The Maori is a devilish fine fellow, friendly, good-natured, sporting and with perfect manners.’ It’s just any sense of urgency isn’t immediately forthcoming.
Launches crossed the harbour this way and that. Every time Francis was sure it was bringing his precious petrol, but none of them did. By now it was 11 am; he should have left at 10 am. He was tearing his hair out. At 11.23 am the petrol arrived but by then Francis had already decided that he’d better wait until tomorrow. Then a launch appeared ‘with a white man waving a telegram’. ‘Forecast from Dr Kidson’, he read out. ‘Weather expected fine; fresh to strong south-easterly breeze; seas moderate, becoming rough.’ Francis’s reason told him to delay until the morrow; his instinct said ride the wave now. Francis was an instinctive person.
But now more problems. Whereas Madame Elijah had taken off enthusiastically at dawn, by now at noon she was decidedly sluggish. Francis was baffled; what he didn’t not know yet was that one of the floats was leaking, a problem that was to dog the Tasman adventure and later to dog him all the way to Japan. After three attempts she caught a wave just right, the wings bit the air and they were off. Francis was back in heaven:
All my miserable anxieties and worries dropped away, and I was thrilled through and through. Over my left shoulder, the last of New Zealand receded rapidly. Ahead stretched the ocean, sparkling under the eye of the sun: no sport could touch this, it was worth almost any price. I seemed to expand with vitality and power and zest.
Now here was his plan:
I estimated the time when I should arrive and I computed the distance of the island from the sun position an hour before that time. Then I marked a spot on the chart 90 miles to the left of the island, which would be the same distance from the sun position at that time. This was my first target. By the height of the sun a sextant shot at the time would then tell me if I had reached the spot or not. As soon as I reached the spot I would turn and keep the sun abeam, which would bring me to the island. I had to aim well to one side of the island in case an error in the dead reckoning caused by a faulty compass reading or undetected wind effect should put me on the wrong side of the island. Above all, the island being out of sight, I must be certain that when I turned to the right I was turning towards it and not away from it.
He flew his tightest dead reckoning to give his astro the best shot. It was easy to see how at 80 mph an unexpected 30 mph wind from the north-east would cause him to drift 24 miles to the side of its route in an hour, and every hour. Over time he had developed what other pilots said was impossible: a method of determining the angle of drift over the sea. He explains it in Tasman Alone; I can’t understand it, so won’t try to explain it. What can be understood is this:
The work required extraordinary concentration. It had been easy enough in a car driven at 50 mph by someone else; in the seaplane it was at first difficult to concentrate enough while attending to the five instrument readings, maintaining a compass course, reducing the sun sight, and solving the spherical triangle involved. The 90 to 100 mph wind of the propeller slipstream, which struck the top of my head just above the windshield, made concentrating difficult; so did the pulsating roar from the open exhausts.
In the cockpit the passage was being marked off on a chart in a device he had invented himself to save space. It looked like a scroll roller with a knob to turn the chart at one end and a roll holder at the other. He did not use log tables for working out a sight, as trying to transfer the six figures accurately while glancing across the instruments and flying the plane was impossible. Instead he used a Bygrave triple circle slide rule, just small enough to squeeze into the cockpit.
On he pressed, into the blue above and the blue below.
The refuelling flap before starting had now disappeared, and my brain was ticking over coolly and steadily. I knew that everything depended solely on accurate work. Conditions were perfect; the sun shone in the cloudless light blue sky, the wind astern and brisk. The exhaust gave off a steady rolling note. The needle of the revolution indicator might have been cast in metal, it was so steady.
All the time he was working his dead reckoning and taking sights. At half distance he noticed the wind had shifted to the south-east 15 degrees; he compensated by heading north-west but found that this projected him 200 miles to the west of Norfolk Island. Half of him wanted to believe it could not be right, the wiser half that he had to trust his instruments and calculations. He visualised Madame Elijah crabbing her way across the ocean and held his new course. To take a sight he would descend to near sea level, undo his seat belt, put his thickest manual, Rayners Harbour Guides, under his bum, sit on that for extra height – and added wind blast – and try to trim her steady to take a sight of the sun and horizon in one sitting. But with her new trimming quirks he found this not only impossible, but terrifying:
I trimmed the tail as delicately as I could to balance the plane, but she would not stabilise, and I had to use the control-stick the whole time while adjusting the sextant. To be quite sure that I was using a piece of horizon vertically below the sun, I had to wipe out the plane’s balance from my mind, and concentrate only on the sextant. I had just got the sun and horizon together in the sextant, when terrific acceleration pressing my back made me drop the sextant. I grabbed the stick and eased the seaplane from its vertical nosedive into a normal dive, and then flattened it out. I reset the tail trimmer till the seaplane was bound to climb as soon as I left the control-stick alone. I tried again, and this time managed well enough, easing the control-stick forward with my left elbow whenever the seaplane climbed so steeply that the wing cut off the sun from view.
More miraculous flying/navigating was to come. Again, best let Francis tell the tale:
A few minutes before the end of the half hour I realised that there would be no sun available for a shot. The clouds ahead were darker, and I could see no opening. Could I rely on the previous sight? No, I must have another. The whole enterprise depended on turning at the right moment. The clouds looked whiter away to the left. Close to the half hour I turned left, away from the island instead of towards it, and opened up the throttle. After 3 or 4 miles I spotted a round patch of sunlight on the sea ahead, and slightly to the right. I opened the throttle wider still. I was so impatient that time seemed to stop while I raced for that sun-patch, yet it could not have been more than 5 miles away. The area of sunlight was small, and I set the seaplane circling in a steep bank. I used my feet on the rudder to fly it while I worked the sextant with both hands. After each shot I straightened out the seaplane, and flew out of the patch while reading the instrument. I got four shots in this way, while the seaplane was chasing its tail in a tight circle. I corrected them for the lapse of time since
4.30, and compared them with the figure already computed. They agreed. I was on the line! I had expected to be, and yet it was a great surprise, and immense relief. I turned round and headed for where the island should lie 85 miles away.
And so for the run in to Norfolk Island. Of course there were dramas, such as the engine changing note and the building seas below on which to land – payback for that lusty tailwind. The exhausting effects of four and a half hours of non-stop mental calculations, difficulties with handling the seaplane, worry about the engine and the sea – all concentrated by the near-certainty of death if the calculations should be out or the plane deficient – were offset by the excitement of landfall. But landfall was there none. His right brain was telling him it must be there, his left brain now full of doubt and dread imagination. At 5.08 pm it should have been in view; it wasn’t. At 5.12 pm, still no land. Each cloud looked like a hill. He relaxed, telling himself there was nothing he could do; and there was nothing he could do. The island was either there or in one hour the fuel would be gone and he’d die in short order. Then the clouds parted and he saw an island. It was the only one for 500 miles in all directions. It had to be the one. Norfolk Island. He had made it, albeit less elated at being alive than with the fact that ‘my navigational system had proved right. I doubt if Captain Cook was as delighted to find Norfolk Island by sea as I was by air’. As it turned out I was more worried about him not finding it eighty-five years later than he was at the time.
He swept low over Cascade Bay and saw some men on the jetty. His luck was holding: they did not know he was coming and just happened to be on the pier. Now, as then, the pier is used for offloading all the supplies for the island. A freighter anchors off and a team of longboats ferries the goods onto the jetty, to be hauled off with a pulley crane. If they need to import something large and heavy, like a bulldozer, they tie two longboats together to make a catamaran. The only concessions to doing it today’s way are the engines in the longboats and the crane; in Francis’s time they rowed in an out through the swell and hauled on the pulley crane’s chain.
The Norfolk Islanders who had never left the island may not have seen a plane before; Madame Elijah was the first to fly there and the island was served just once a month by steamer from Sydney. Quite what they made of Francis’s spindly biplane landing on the water we can only imagine. But soon they were rowing a longboat over to meet him. A giant of a man was steering with a rudder oar.
‘Stand off, you’re going to ram me!’, Francis shouted.
‘All right, skipper, all right,’ sang out the helmsman, ‘don’t get excited, we won’t hurt you.’
Cascade Bay, Norfolk Island today. The jetty and crane are still the only way to bring goods to the island
Francis considered that ‘they were very patient, considering that they must be some of the best boatmen in the world’. They still are, diesel engines in the longboats notwithstanding.
Francis intended a quick in-and-out overnight stay in Norfolk Island. In the event he spent three nights there. Various degrees of disaster followed one after the other.
Government House, Norfolk Island
As he had arrived unannounced and literally out of the blue, the islanders were not prepared to receive him. Nevertheless, they soon arranged for him to stay at Government House, in a converted cell from the days when Norfolk Island had been a British prison colony for the most recalcitrant of prisoners, a kind of Alcatraz lost in the Pacific Ocean. Today the island is a more or less self-governing territory under the auspices of Australia in general and New South Wales in particular. Government House is occupied by the Chief Administrator, elected by nine independent councillors, themselves elected by the 2,000-strong adult population. The cell where Francis stayed is still used for the occasional guest, although in greater comfort.
Madame Elijah being hauled out, Cascade Bay, Norfolk Island. Most islanders had never seen a plane before.
Francis was soon being looked after by Gussie Martin, whose family owned Martin’s Agency, a general stores trading company until 1970. Gussie organised Madame Elijah’s aeronautical and Francis’s personal top-ups and was his host for the next two nights. That first morning, after the usual island breakfast of bacon and eggs and whisky and soda, they re-launched Madame Elijah and stood back to watch her take off across Cascade Bay for Lord Howe Island. Francis immediately noticed that she was mysteriously sluggish. The same reluctance to take off that he had noticed leaving Parengarenga Harbour was now even worse. He tried three runs, including one across the waves, which broke every rule in the seaplane pilots’ handbook.
Gussie and the boys soon had Madame Elijah hauled up onto the jetty and inspected the floats. Sure enough, one compartment on the starboard float was full of sea water. It must have filled overnight as she lay to anchor. Francis found a tube in the cockpit and began sucking to syphon it out. It was horrid work; after half an hour he had syphon-sucked and spat out four gallons of sea water, yet still some remained. Francis felt sick, his jaw was cramped and his mouth rotten with sea water and metal filings. Not ideal so soon after bacon and eggs and whisky and soda, presumably. It was also way past the take-off time to make Lord Howe Island; even Francis had to call it a day.
Brent on the case, Francis on left looks on
While Madame Elijah was on the jetty one of the islanders, Brent, whisked off her cylinder head. He soon pronounced Francis lucky to be alive: one of the valves was about to disappear into the works and blow it all up – and no engine, no Francis. Even he acknowledged that after all, his survival had less to do with his navigation than with his fate.
The next morning was groundhog: more bacon and eggs and whisky and soda, more aborted take-off runs, more head-scratching about the problems. They had replaced every screw in the floats and assumed that they had fixed the problem. They hadn’t. Meanwhile, Francis was becoming more and more foolhardy in trying to make Madame Elijah lift off, the propeller frequently splashing the waves and covering her and him with salt water. Lastly, in one last desperate attack on the waves, he heard a loud twang and saw an inter-float wire snap.
Limping back to Cascade Bay, he was dive-bombed by an irate flock of seabirds as he taxied past Bird Island. Desperate to keep them out of the propeller, he speeded up, which made the prop even less visible; then he slowed down, which made him even more of a sitting target. Eventually they bored of him and squawked off back to the cliffs. I can report that their ancestors are still very much in evidence, squawking and dive-bombing off the cliffs as they see fit. Twitchers are among Norfolk Island’s most enthusiastic tourists and apart from them I spot white terns, sooty terns, red-tailed tropicbirds, masked boobies, white-capped noddies, black-winged petrels, wedge-tailed shearwaters (known locally as ‘muttonbirds’), as well as unidentified flying feathered friends wheeling and dealing and flying around just for the hell of it.
Another night of hospitality with the Martin family, another morning of bacon and eggs and whisky and soda. The islanders liked Francis and Francis liked the islanders. He liked the romance and revolt of their Mutiny on the Bounty, Pitcairn Island backstory. They threw all their hospitality and assistance onto him then as they do onto me now. Gussie’s daughter Odette was too young to remember anything about Francis’s visit then, and anyway too old to remember anything about much now, bless her. Her daughter and Gussie’s granddaughter, Jackie Pye, still lives here. Francis’s flying visit is fondly recalled with displays at the Norfolk Island Museum, the Bounty Folk Museum and at Norfolk Island Airport; he remains very much part of the island’s history and up until a generation ago everyone knew someone who remembered Francis’s flying visit.
Norfolk Island Commemorative Stamp
Brent repaired the wires, emptied the float and wiped off the salt. They then lightened Madame Elijah of everything except enough petrol to fly her round to what seemed a smoother bay, Emily Bay, which runs along the old prison colony ruins. Here, lighter and in calmer waters Madame Elijah was happier, but st
ill not her usual self. They drained the floats again and reloaded her up with the minimum weight needed to make the almost 600-mile crossing to Lord Howe Island. Everything not essential was sacrificed, even, amazingly, the rubber dinghy, its oar and sails, and Francis’s survival rations.
Francis would leave at first light; this time his life really would be on the line.
After a final early breakfast of eggs and bacon and whisky and soda, Francis finally left Norfolk Island. The newly lightened Madame Elijah took off easily and he immediately regretted not having stowed the rubber dinghy. He could have turned back there and then but that would not been his style, so instead he dived back to Emily Bay and saluted the well-wishers with his wings and, with a last cheery wave to them from the cockpit, headed west 600 miles out to sea, 500 miles to Lord Howe Island plus the 100 extra miles to the turn-off waypoint.
Emily Bay, Norfolk Island, Francis’s taxi- and runway
Almost from the start something didn’t feel right. Although the sea water was dripping out of the float, it was also sloshing about within it and upsetting the balance. Not only was it hard work constantly having to fight the controls, the effort also told him that something was wrong with the set-up. Something, but what? Nagging doubts ensued and consumed him.
Worse than poor balance was to come: an hour later Madame Elijah started vibrating, slightly at first but within another hour more violently. Francis suspected that it was damage done by crashing into the waves repeatedly as he was trying to take off. Soon there was evidence of problems in the cockpit: the vibration had caused the compass housing screws to loosen and now the altimeter and air speed indicator needles started swinging freely. If these were the loosenings he could see, what about all the hidden fastenings vibrating free? Francis noted that a few months earlier he would not have flown over the safest land in the world in such an unsafe plane, never mind miles out at sea without a dinghy. Yet the curious thing is he was only two hours out, with easily enough fuel to turn back, repair the seaplane and start again. The thought never seemed to have occurred to him. Once more, the fear gene seemed to have bypassed him.
Never Fear Page 11
