by Susan Butler
In spite of the fact that neither Amelia nor anyone else mentions his presence at this juncture, Sam Chapman was still an important part of Amelia’s life. She gave him the intimate, delicate job of telling her mother, the type of task a fiance would undertake. There is no doubt they still considered themselves engaged; he, like she, expected her to return to Denison House in two or at the most three weeks.
Amelia’s actual preparation for the flight was minimal since she was going to wear her everyday flying outfit (which she had been donning for her photos for weeks). In addition to the breeks, boots, goggles, helmet, and leather jacket, she would be taking (and wearing) a light brown sweater, a blouse, a red necktie, fur-lined boots, and, “a single elegance,” practically a trademark for pilots of the day, a silk scarf—hers was brown and white. As protection against the cold that they would meet flying at high altitudes, Amelia and the men took fur-lined flying suits, hers borrowed from a friend, Major Charles L. Wooley, commander of the Massachusetts National Guard Air Force, a fellow member of the Boston NAA (she didn’t divulge where it was going). The few things she took—a toothbrush, a comb, fresh linen handkerchiefs, a tube of cold cream, a camera borrowed from Layman, field glasses borrowed from Putnam—all fitted into the small knapsack she bought for the occasion at a local army-navy store. She didn’t own a watch; Mrs. Layman lent her one, and David Layman loaned her his camera.
She wrote a will of sorts. She itemized her debts that, all told, amounted to slightly over one thousand dollars, most of it owed to a bank, but as a marker of the complexity of her character, it included a $140 debt to Filene’s for a fur coat. She suggested that her car be sold to cover the bills and directed that her interest in the Kinner Airplane and Motor Corporation and the ten shares of stock she owned in the Dennison Aircraft Corporation go to her mother. (“I hope they will pay and think they will,” she added.) She concluded, “My regret is that I leave just now. In a few years I feel I could have laid by something substantial, for so many new things were opening for me.... Selah.”
She left letters for her mother and father at Denison House, identifying them, for the unnamed person who would find them (undoubtedly Marion Perkins), with a penciled note clipped to the envelopes, as “popping off” letters that should be sent out. Her letter to Amy is carefully upbeat:
Even though I have lost, the adventure was worth while. Our family tends to be too secure. My life has really been very happy, and I didn’t mind contemplating its end in the midst of it.
But her note to her father, dated Friday, June 1, is even more exuberant and affectionate. She used her childhood name and indulged herself in deliberate misspellings.
Dearest Dad:
Hooray for the last grand adventure! I wish I had won, but it was worthwhile, anyway. You know that. I have no faith we’ll meet anywhere again, but I wish we might.
Anyway, good-by and good luck to you.
Affectionately, your doter, Mill
She wrote a letter to Muriel, which she mailed, writing carefully and honestly, explaining why she had kept her in the dark.
I have tried to play for a large stake, and if I succeed all will be well. If I don’t, I shall be happy to pop off in the midst of such an adventure. My only regret would be leaving you and mother stranded for a while.
I haven’t told you about the affair as I didn’t want to worry mother, and she would suspect (she may now) if I told you. The whole thing came so unexpectedly that few knew about it. Sam will tell you the whole story. Please explain all to mother. I couldn’t stand the added strain of telling mother and you personally.
If reporters talk to you say you knew, if you like.
She added a postscript, explaining that she had taken care of her affairs. “I have made my will and placed my house in order. I have appointed a girlfriend at Denison House to act as administrator in case of my death.”
She had taken care of everything: her job was covered, her will written, farewell letters to her parents in place in case she didn’t come back, and Sam delegated to tell her mother. It would have seemed inconceivable to her that Sam could fail to reach Amy before the evening papers were on the streets with the news, but that is what happened.
Clearly she was very much in control of herself. But she couldn’t do anything about the plane. The Friendship was moored off the Jeffrey Yacht Club in East Boston. The first predawn attempt to take off was a failure. There was not enough wind, and as Elmer had said, the pontoons acted like a dime stuck to the table. The second attempt was aborted because of fog. Amelia loved poetry and had an ingrained habit of retreating into it to handle difficult situations. At Columbia, when she could not answer questions in the weekly physics quiz, she had inserted a little French poetry. Now she quoted Carl Sandburg.
The fog comes on little cat feet and sits on
its haunches
Overlooking city and harbor
And then moves on.
According to Phil Coolidge, with whom Amelia had become friends, both George Putnam and Bill Stultz were beginning to show signs of strain. George “grew irascible,” and Bill Stultz so edgy that Phil kept trying to calm him down so that he wouldn’t start drinking. There was a disquieting article in The Boston Globe on Friday, June 1. The paper reported that more than a thousand gallons of aviation gas and 150 gallons of oil had arrived at Old Orchard Beach, Maine, in anticipation of the arrival of Thea Rasche, who planned to hop off from there on a transatlantic flight. Their two failures to take off took on an ominous meaning.
On Saturday came more inspiring news—the Southern Cross, also a trimotored Fokker, had taken off from Oakland, California, and safely landed at Wheeler field in Honolulu after a flight of 27 hours, 28 minutes.
By that time all the support group were staying at the Copley Plaza. That night Mrs. Layman, in the room next to Amelia, heard her padding about late into the night. She knocked and asked if there was anything she could do. “It’s like being left waiting at the church. I’ll be all right, thanks,” fretted Amelia. It was the only display of tension Mrs. Layman noticed. After the long wait was over, Mrs. Layman would take away the indelible memory that of all the participants, Amelia had been the most controlled. As she told Janet Mabie, a great deal of the time Amelia had hardly talked at all: “But you got the feeling, whatever was going through her mind, that she wasn’t afraid.”
As they awoke on Sunday, June 3, at three thirty, to make a third attempt, the routine was familiar to participants and watchers alike. They breakfasted at an all-night restaurant, drove in the darkness to T wharf, boarded the tug Sadie Ross, fat and tidy and bobbing gently just beyond the Eastern Steamship Company docks, and headed out for the big orange and gold plane. If anyone asked what they were up to, they planned to say they were on a fishing expedition. Besides George Putnam, the Laymans, Lou Gordon’s fiancée, Gower’s wife, Stultz’s wife, and the Elmers were there, plus Jake Coolidge of Paramount News and his son. Besides their personal belongings, they had with them a copy of Byrd’s book Skyward (weighing in at one pound), which the commander had inscribed for Amy Guest, and an American flag. Five hundred gallons of gasoline had already been loaded into the wing tanks and into the elliptical gas tanks in the fuselage, and in addition there were eight auxiliary five-gallon cans in the cabin, making a grand total of 545 gallons. (Amelia alternated sitting on one of the cans and on the bag of flying suits.) The day dawned warm and clear. The sun, she noticed, was just coming over the rim of the harbor, and a few dawn clouds hung about in the pink glow.
The four of them got into the plane, and stowed their gear and supplies. Just before they closed the door, according to Jake Coolidge, they decided to discard Amelia’s fur-lined boots and the rubber life raft and oars. “I’ll make you a present of the rubber boat,” Amelia called out cheerily to Jake, who remembered grinning, a grin tinged with anxiety. As they left, Stultz checked out the instruments, then they saw Slim Gordon hop out onto the pontoons, crank first the starboard, then the port, then
the center engine, all of which turned over perfectly, and with a roar the big plane taxied down the bay. Behind the Sadie Ross appeared another smaller boat. In it were Amelia’s four faithful friends—Sam Chapman, George Ludlam (manager of Denison House), Marian Perkins, and an unidentified woman friend, all of whom Amelia had invited to attend the two earlier abortive dawn liftoffs. This time she had told them not to bother getting out of bed again. They hadn’t listened but had gone down to Lewis Wharf the night before and hired a boat for five A.M.
Amelia wondered whether “this day too would ... flatten out into failure.” Off the Squantum Naval Air Station the Friendship turned into the light southwest breeze. Stultz gunned the engines; they started accelerating. The huge monoplane had to achieve a speed of fifty miles an hour to become airborne. It raced over the water. Failure. The water wouldn’t let them go.
Gasoline is heavy; each gallon weighs over 6.12 pounds. They threw out six of the eight five-gallon cans. Forty-two pounds lighter, they tried again. And again failed. Amelia and Slim Gordon were in the rear of the plane. Now, joined by Lou Gower, they retreated as far back as possible into the hold in an effort to lighten the nose as much as possible. Yet a fourth time they failed. The problem, they all began to realize, was weight. The solution was to remove even more weight. Since they couldn’t remove any more gasoline and still reach their goal, the only expendable poundage was the auxiliary pilot. As they turned back preparatory to making yet another run down the harbor, Lou Gower pulled his flying suit from the bag, Slim motioned a boat over, and Lou quietly said good-bye and stepped out of the plane.
Although Gower was thin—Amelia described all the men as having “distinctly Gothic” builds—his 150 pounds made the difference. On the next run the wind freshened, and the Fokker shook free, lifted, soared, made a brief turn over the Sadie Ross, and disappeared into the rising sun. Exultantly, Amelia wrote that the difference in weight turned the Friendship into a bird. Still, it took the bird a long time—67 seconds—to become airborne. It was 6:31 when the pontoons shook loose from the water and the Friendship headed east into the dawn, destination Trepassey, Newfoundland. The summer before, Byrd’s Fokker America, identical except that it had wheels, had taken off carrying a full load of gasoline, 800 pounds of extra equipment, and four men. The Friendship had not been able to take off with half a load of gasoline, no extra equipment, three men plus 118-pound Amelia. But none of the fliers had time to dwell on that ominous fact because a few minutes into the flight, still in sight of Boston Harbor, Slim Gordon somehow managed to fall against the cabin door in such a way that he broke the spring lock that held it closed. Almost falling out, he tied the door to one of the gas cans with a piece of string. But the gas can was not heavy enough for the job. It began to slide toward the gradually opening door. Amelia dove for it, almost falling out herself, after which, in a joint effort, they tied the door to a brace inside the cabin.
After that, the trip up the New England coast was uneventful. They averaged ninety-six miles an hour. It was hazy; they reached the southern tip of Nova Scotia. Amelia dozed as they headed up its eastern coast, and when she awoke, the clouds beneath them had thickened into fog. She had leisure time to notice what her traveling companions were wearing and discovered, much to her surprise, that though she was in flying clothes, they were not: they had dressed up in city clothes—undoubtedly in her honor.
Land disappeared. Stultz cautiously, figuring they were about fifty miles beyond Halifax, probably over Tangier, decided to turn back and wait it out in Halifax until visibility improved. The trick was to find Halifax, and as Bill Stultz admitted later, it wasn’t that easy. He was lost for a while; the Friendship dove through the clouds for several hours before finally sighting Halifax Harbor through a rift in the clouds. When he did, he set the Friendship down in the Eastern Passage, the easternmost part of the harbor, tying up at the Canadian seaplane station, which he had spotted as he was coming in. Dories came out to greet them, and Stultz and Gordon went ashore to the officers’ mess to ask for bearings and a weather report. Amelia meanwhile, to avoid being discovered, stayed out of sight in the plane.
They came back with the news that although the station had not yet received the weather report, it was thought that there was rain and fog ahead; the flight sergeant had told them that if they started out, they might have to return. But Stultz was impatient—they were halfway to their destination—so, Amelia wrote, “Bill says he’ll try to make T.” Slim cranked up the engines, and they took off without any problem, but within minutes they were again enveloped in fog and forced to turn back. A half hour later they were again taxiing to the seaplane station, tying up behind a Canadian Fairchild seaplane. This time when the flight sergeant came out to help anchor the Friendship, they invited him in to discuss the housing situation. The problem was Amelia. They wanted to keep her under wraps, for since midmorning, every flying office at Boston airport and at Dennison airport had been under siege by reporters seeking information. There had been rumors spreading since the day before that Amelia was to make the flight; now newspapers had the story, and reporters were working their way up the coast.
Stultz and Gordon went ashore with the flight sergeant to see if he could arrange for Amelia to stay with a government official, leaving Amelia again in the plane; again, because of circling boats, forced to stay away from the windows. They had no luck with private lodgings, however. They all set out for the Thorndyke Hotel in the town of Dartmouth, located across the harbor from Halifax, where they were booked into adjoining rooms on the third floor. Amelia immediately went up to her room and stayed there to avoid the reporters, although she found it little to her liking: the straw was coming out of the mattress, the window wouldn’t stay open, and both the single bedsheet and the pillowcase were dirty. Slim and Bill repaired to a Chinese restaurant, only to be spotted by reporters and photographers who followed them back to their room at the hotel. Amelia heard the newsmen trying to persuade the fliers to get dressed and have their picture taken. She was furious at the inconsiderateness (it was midnight) but said nothing for fear they would discover her next. They arose early, at five thirty A.M., but by the time they breakfasted at the hotel, they were surrounded by newsmen.
All the morning papers had the story and were going wild. The New York Times proclaimed on its front page in a four-column-wide head that dominated the page, “Boston Girl Starts for Atlantic Hop, Reaches Halifax, May Go On Today,” followed by reams of copy and photos of the three of them. The Herald Tribune was more optimistic: “Girl and Stultz on Atlantic Flight Halt at Halifax; Going On Today.” “Girl Hops from Boston to London, Forced Down at Halifax on First Leg” ran the headline in the Boston Herald.
They finally took off at nine thirty. The liftoff took just sixty seconds “in a perfectly calm sea”—a very good sign. It was a sparkling clear cool day, 52 degrees outside, 58 degrees inside the cabin. They flew along the coast at 1,800 feet and by 11:55 they were over Cape Canso, the northeasternmost point of mainland Nova Scotia. Stultz relinquished the controls to Gordon, and Slim headed northeast across the open sea. They climbed to 3,200 feet, and the temperature inside the cabin dropped to 53 degrees. “The sea,” Amelia wrote, “looks like the back of an elephant, the same kind of wrinkles.” At 12:50 they nosed down and sighted Newfoundland, the Burin Peninsula, to the left. Amelia set her watch ahead an hour. It was hazy, they were just under a cloud bank, flying at 3,000 feet, when they saw land—Peter’s River at the entrance to St. Mary’s Bay, which meant they were on target. Their destination, Trepassey, lay on the other side of Cape Pine, ten miles to the east.
10
Trepassey
• • • • The Friendship circled Trepassey twice before putting down in the choppy water of the harbor after a flight of 4 hours, 24 minutes. As the big monoplane taxied slowly toward the small cluster of houses on the eastern shore that was the town of Trepassey, dories full of men whirling ropes (Amelia called them maritime cowboys), each evidently hop
ing to guide them in, surrounded the Friendship. Slim Gordon, standing out on one of the pontoons as they came in toward the shore, was almost knocked into the water by one of their lines. It was only after Paramount News cameraman Andy Fulgoni circled the plane in his launch and urged the townspeople to stand clear that Stultz could head for the mooring arranged for them, a few hundred yards from the Trepassey town dock.
The town magistrate, Fred Gill, and his two sons, waiting near the monoplane in a dory, secured the honor of giving Amelia and Bill Stultz a ride to the dock, where the fliers were officially greeted, photographed, and interviewed by members of the press; Slim Gordon came later, after tending to the plane. The children of Trepassey, who had been watching and waiting at the windows of the convent school facing the harbor, ran down to the shore en masse. Amelia “had a vision of many white pinafores and aprons on the dock,” and was under the impression that school had let out early so that the children could greet them. In fact, the children had simply fled without permission, for which they were made to stay late. (She went up and visited with the children later at the convent school; the nuns were scandalized at the sight of a woman in pants.)
It was arranged that the three fliers would spend the night at a small frame two-story house with attached general store belonging to Richard and Fanny Devereaux a few hundred feet from the water’s edge, just opposite where the Friendship was moored. Mrs. Devereaux too, at first sight of Amelia in her “breeks” and boots was “quite overcome, and felt me to be sure I was present in the flesh.” To make room for the visitors, the Devereauxes sent their children off to relatives.
