The Lonely Sea and the Sky

by Sir Francis Chichester

  During the night I wondered if I could mend that propeller in some way. The difficulty was that I knew nothing about propeller construction, and I had been told that an unbalanced propeller would vibrate the engine clean out of the fuselage. Then I had an inspiration: why not try mending it with a piece of petrol tin? With that I went to sleep so soundly that I must have fed all the mosquitoes of Masbate. The net I had was too small to cover both my head and my feet. I had covered my head to keep the buzz away, and left my feet under the sheet. The mosquitoes must have bitten through this, because in the morning my flesh felt solid with bites.

  After pumping the float dry, simple enough when I knew where to pump, I started work on removing the propeller. To do this I had to stand on the tip of one float and lean away from the seaplane, holding on to the propeller-boss with one hand, to keep myself from falling while I unscrewed the bolts with the other. Each bolt was held by a lock washer, and there were about a dozen bolts. I soon lost one spanner, and when a Filipino dived for it, he could not find it. I tied a second one to my wrist, and I tied a handkerchief round my forehead to keep the sweat out of my eyes. There was no breeze, and with the sun striking up from the water as well as down from above, it was like working before an open furnace.

  When I had the propeller on shore I cut a piece out of a petrol tin and worked it into a sheath for the tip. I asked the Governor to buy some shoe tacks for me. He produced some drawing-pins, which I thought hardly the thing for an aeroplane propeller, so he went off again and returned with tacks. After I had finished the damaged blade I bound insulation tape round the other blade, partly because it had been damaged too, partly to balance the tin, and partly out of curiosity. It was more difficult to put on the propeller, because one blade must exactly track the other. I replaced the cover of the float hatch; the leak had been making a third of a gallon an hour. I swung the propeller, the engine started, and the propeller seemed all right. I was delighted, and opened the throttle wide. The Gipsy Moth took off like a bird. Suddenly there was a terrific din, flap! flap! flap! flap! I thought a blade had broken off, switched off instantly, and alighted on the spot. But it was only the tape that had started to unwind, and was whipping the float at each revolution. What I could not understand was that the tape, which had been thrashing round at 400 or 500 miles an hour, was quite undamaged. I took it off altogether. As soon as I opened up, the whole seaplane vibrated violently, and I could hardly hold the throttle. I expected the engine to be wrenched from its bed, and though I closed the throttle instantly, it seemed an age before the engine stopped.

  This time I took the propeller to the Governor's house, sheathed the other tip with tin, and then threaded the propeller on my walking stick between two chairs and drove in tacks until it balanced, exactly horizontal. When I tried it out again the seaplane flew perfectly. The Governor had been such a willing helper that I offered him a flight. I fitted him into the front cockpit among the gear. I knew that the seaplane would not rise from the glassy surface of the harbour with the extra weight, so I taxied out to the open sea. There I found a good breeze and just the right sea running. We were about to take off, and I could see the Governor laughing with exhilaration (there was no windshield to his cockpit, so the 100mph slipstream driving straight into his face produced a sensation of great speed), when I felt a jar; the port float had struck. Looking straight down I saw to my dismay that we were in the middle of a coral reef. I switched off at once, and alternately looked at the float to see if it was filling up and at the reef astern of us. The seaplane was drifting sternwards fast before the breeze. The coral was alive, and the many-branched shrubs of it had varying tints of red. Suddenly I noticed a broad clump of seaweed on the surface straight in our line of drift. I jumped out of the cockpit, landed on the float, slid into the water up to my waist, and held on waiting for my feet to touch. The seaplane was drifting fast, and at first its weight ran me off my feet. But I could feel the coral harsh and jagged through my rubber soles, and at last I secured a good footing, stopped the seaplane, and fended her off sideways. Then I went on, feeling for a foothold under water at each step, sometimes finding no bottom and falling in before pulling myself back on to the float, but every now and then getting a good push at what seemed a running pace under water until I had passed the seaplane round the outside of the clump. Then I jumped for the float and landed with my body across it. Next moment my feet touched again, and so I jumped from clump to clump with wild scrambles back on to the float until I had guided the seaplane back into the channel. From down in the water I could see the Governor still bubbling with glee, wrapped up in his own experience. He seemed to think it was all part of the game for me in my soft shoes to be pushing him round a coral reef in a seaplane. When we were safe, I told him about the float having struck the coral, and that I must get back as soon as possible to inspect it. He was quite satisfied, wanting no more thrill than that of taxiing at 40 or 50mph I was surprised and delighted to find the port float intact; it showed how sensitive I had become about anything touching the floats, because it must have been the lightest of scratches not to have ripped open the thin duralumin shell.

  Next day, I took off for Manila and was met by three United States Army fighters, 50 miles south of the city. They flew above me in formation and I was excited; I had reached Manila and it was thrilling to look up in the hot sunlight to see those fighter pilots above my head in formation, and sometimes waving at me. When I alighted at Cavite outside Manila, they swooped like three roaring hawks before zooming off.

  At Manila I ran into terrific hospitality. After satisfying the US quarantine officer, I was driven to the Manila Hotel by Bagtas, the President of the Governor's Aviation Committee and led to a man in a large wicker chair close to the entrance archway. This was Nicol Williamson, to whom I had a letter of introduction from someone in Sydney. He invited me to stay with him; it would have been hard to come across a more efficiently hospitable man.

  Manila's society gave me a good time: lunch with the Governor-General's Aviation Committee, out to dinner, to a boxing match, to the English Club, to the swimming pool where I watched the attractive women and girls bathing. The more functions and parties I went to, the more lonely I felt. I realised that I was little more than an abstract idea; I was the character responsible for a seaplane's having flown up from New Zealand to Manila. The more people I met, and the more friendliness, the more I longed for intimacy, the sharing of thoughts and feelings with one sympathetic person. Sometimes I daydreamed bastion of good behaviour. If I was madly attracted by someone, it was better to avoid her, because I would have to leave in a day or two. I became profoundly depressed. A company owning a seaplane had lent me shelter in their hangar for my Gipsy Moth, which had been wheeled in on an axle. The floats were in a bad way; I could see daylight through the keel of the starboard one, and the port float had a bad bump. Long scores could be seen inside, caused by the coral reef. The first thing to do was to detach the floats. This company had two pilots, and the one on duty that morning was a bony-faced German with a sloping forehead and thin hair brushed back from it, who talked abrupt sentences of run-together words. I thought the obvious way to remove the floats was to sling the seaplane from the principal beam of the triangulated framework supporting the roof. The German came out of his office and refused to let me do it. I suggested something else, but he would not have that, either. I decided that he just plainly loathed the sight of me, and I could understand his viewpoint; why should an amateur be the spoilt pet of Manila when there were far more deserving veterans of aviation? I went into his office to talk to him and was astounded at his flying experience; he had flown nearly every type of machine, had flown right through the First World War. 'What squadron was he with?' I asked. 'Was it the American Lafayette?'

  'I wasn't fighting for you, I was fighting against you,' he said. I was full of interest and wonder at his experiences. What he did not know about aeroplanes was not worth knowing. I asked what he thought would be the best
way to lift my seaplane: he suggested tilting it up on to one wing tip. I observed that perhaps the Gipsy Moth was flimsy compared with the important types he was used to handling, but he retorted briskly that he had handled dozens of them in China. We talked on without actually doing anything, and it was a depressed and baffled amateur pilot whom Williamson's boy fetched for lunch. After lunch the company's other pilot, MacIlroy, an American, was on duty. We had the seaplane suspended from the roof in about thirty minutes, and both the floats and the propeller off soon afterwards.

  The floats were in a bad way; in places only Roley Wilson's paint was keeping the water out. I decided that my only hope was the US Air Corps. But had their offer of assistance been merely a conventional politeness? I rang up Nichol's Field, and it was at once clear that the US Air Corps meant what it said. Major Duty, the officer in charge of Ordnance, came round at once. He was extremely efficient, and next morning at 7 a.m. an army lorry took the floats away. I set to work on the engine, wearing overalls only (I found them cooler than shorts) and a handkerchief round my eyebrows. An English engineer lent me an excellent mechanic to grind the valves, a job I detested. The exhaust valve in No. 3 cylinder was so pitted that we threw it out.

  Major Duty invited me out to Nichol's Field. They had made a splendid job of the propeller by splicing in a piece of wood, and then sheathing the tips in copper. This made the propeller heavier, but by now it was obvious that only metal would stand up to the constant slashing through spray and wave crests. The propeller was on a spindle, and it was so well balanced that when I breathed on one tip it began to revolve. I was delighted. The floats would take some days; on their turning a hose into one, the water had gone straight through. The riveter wanted to cut a hatch in the top of the float in order to drive home the last rivets, but to avoid this it was finally agreed that he should screw the last plates home to a block inside the float, instead of riveting it. If only I could have foreseen the consequences of this petty detail!

  CHAPTER 19

  JAPANESE ENCOUNTERS

  It was five and a half months since I left Wellington, if I included the time spent at Auckland. I wrote, 'Five and a half months alone on a ship would be less lonely than this flying game. On a ship one would at least become used to the craft and all the parts of it, the sails, the ropes, the cabin, the decks, but with flying one is no sooner acquainted with any place or person than one must leave them and fly on again.' These were ground thoughts; life in the plane, in the air, was a life apart, strange, secret and thrilling, not to be thought of in the midst of materialism. I was a third of the way to England, with another 12,800 miles to fly.

  One Sunday Mrs McCoy invited me to dinner. Her husband had commanded an American regiment at the capture of Manila in the Spanish-American war of 1898. My uncle had commanded the British ships sent to Manila to watch our interests. The Germans, who were looking for chances of colonial expansion, had sent a squadron under Admiral Von Diedrich. Uncle Edward moved his ship between the American and German fleets, and indicated to Von Diedrich that he would be up against the British if he made any move. The American Governor-General Davis was at the dinner; his name is widely known because he presented the Davis Cup for tennis.

  I was fretting to leave. The charming Father Miguel Selga, Director of the Weather Bureau, used to visit me every day while I was working on the seaplane, to tell me with a kind of satisfaction how a depression was slowly forming east of the Philippines which he considered would turn into a typhoon. One day it had formed, and the next it was intensifying. Finally, on 30 July, he called it a typhoon. On 31 July he handed me a typewritten notice: 'Typhoon warning. The Pacific depression or typhoon was situated at 10 a.m. today to the east of Northern Luzon, 17° N., 126° E. moving probably north-west.' That day began my strange race with the typhoon which, a few days later, was to destroy 2,000 homes in the Ryukyu Islands near Formosa, and which the Asahi Mainichi was to describe as the worst typhoon of the century. Ever since I had arrived in Manila people had been asking, 'When is the typhoon coming?' This was not so that they could flee from it; they were complaining because there was no typhoon. The sultry heat was more oppressive every day, and the typhoon would clear the air. Typhoons rarely hit Manila itself, but were diverted north or south by the mountains, which typhoons usually preferred to go round rather than to climb. The Manila people had not long to wait; within a fortnight three-quarters of Manila City would be under water, and the only transport along the main streets would be bankas and canoes paddling.

  A typhoon would be more dangerous for a seaplane than for a ship, but I was not seriously worried at that time because I thought that I could easily turn round and flee from a typhoon if I could not fly ahead of it. However, I had to reach Formosa before the typhoon got there. Formosa was my only possible route from the Philippines, and Father Selga was almost certain that this typhoon would make for Formosa.

  The day the floats and propeller were returned, everything seemed to go wrong; spanners slipped, nuts cross-threaded, and people interrupted me continually. I was driven nearly mad by prickly heat, I had a wretched cold as well, and my decapitated finger throbbed. The climax came when the motor refused to start; I swung the propeller until I could not see for sweat in my eyes, and I felt like seizing a sledge hammer and smashing the whole machine. Suddenly I saw myself as a stupid little insect making infinitesimally small struggles. I laughed, returned to the house and went to sleep for a few minutes. When I got back to the seaplane I found that it was child's play to take all the electrical connections to pieces, clean them with petrol and replace them. The engine started at once. The whole seaplane and the floats were in excellent condition; the sun shone, and the sea sparkled. The motor had a harsh, full-throated bark that was music to my ears. The seaplane rose as lightly as a snipe, and skimmed to and fro over the surface trying out her paces.

  Next morning there was no breeze whatever, and the seaplane was heavily loaded. I tried to take off two or three times without success, but the sea gradually calmed my angry impatience – I felt that I might be worse off. I took my kapok jacket, intended to keep a pilot afloat for three days, made a pillow of it on the wing and went to sleep. I woke to find a 10-mile breeze blowing. I tried twice more and then pumped forward some of the petrol in the back tank. The seaplane seemed nearer taking off, so I opened the cock and ran off petrol till the back tank was empty. This left me with only five hours and twenty minutes fuel supply for a five hours and twenty minutes' flight, but I thought that there would probably be some place where I could come down if I did run out of petrol. I got off at the next attempt. I flew back to Williamson's house and he waved to me from between two of his typhoon shutters. That cost me 20 miles, but I could not have left without doing it. Exactly five hours and twenty minutes later I came down on the Aparri River, which was my next stop. When I came to take off in the morning I stepped on to the float and it went straight under water; it was the same old bilge. I pumped for ten minutes, but the water was gaining, so I had the plane towed to shallow water close inshore. Slithering about on slime an inch thick, and standing up to my waist in water, I removed the manhole; the float compartment was about two-thirds full. I baled it out with the largest tin that I could pass through the hole at the top – a tobacco tin. When only a few inches of water remained I could see more water flowing in like a welling spring, but an A-shaped girder laid at the bottom of the float made it impossible to see the actual leak. I tried to think of some way to stop a leak, which I could neither see nor feel, and which was under water. With some kindly helpers, I pulled the seaplane up the slimy bank and rocked the floats on to a bedding of coconut husks, but when I washed the mud off the keel bottom there was no sign of any hole underneath. I filled the float with water, and there was no sign of any leak. Finally we slid the seaplane off the mud into the river, and I peered into the float; there was no sign of any leak. It then was too late for me to start that day, so I took one of my helpers for a short flight up the river, and af
terwards there was still no sign of any leak. Next morning, when I stepped on the float, it sank again, exactly as it had done the day before. Again I tried to find the hole, and failed. 'For heaven's sake,' I thought, 'I must do something.' But all that I could think of doing was to stuff a rag under the girder above the leak. With that I clapped on the hatch cover and took off for Formosa.

  Flying north, I passed over Babuyan Island, and over Autau Su, the first Japanese island, which was 40 miles east of the south end of Formosa. The Japanese had forbidden me to come near the coast of Formosa for another 65 miles, and when I did reach my permitted bit of the Formosan coast I found rock cliffs sheer enough for a stone to be thrown into the sea from 2,000 feet up. The Japanese had marked a big area at the north end of the island where I was prohibited from flying. I had no map of the land, only a chart which showed nothing from coast to coast except a few spot heights. These were of 11,490 feet south-west of my route, 8,887 feet to the west of it, and another of 3,480 feet just to the north, but this one was in the prohibited area.