gner and manufacturer, it was on a
Howard Wright biplane that he flew from Eastchurch to a point in
Belgium, thus winning Baron de Forest's prize for the longest flight
into the continent of Europe. After a time Mr. Howard Wright joined the
Coventry Ordnance Works, where he built a machine for the Military
Trials of 1912, and he subsequently took charge of the aviation
department of the torpedo-boat firm of Messrs. J. S. White and Co. of
Cowes.

The Short brothers followed suit. After seeing Wilbur Wright fly at Le
Mans, in 1908, Mr. Eustace Short engaged the help of his brother, Mr.
Horace Short, who was an expert in steam-turbines, and they established
a primitive aerodrome at Shellness, on the marshes of the Isle of
Sheppey, near the terminus of the Sheppey Railway. Here the more
enthusiastic of the members of the Aero Club set to work with
aeroplanes. The leading pioneers were Mr. Frank McClean, Mr. Alec
Ogilvie, Mr. Moore-Brabazon, and Mr. Percy Grace, all of whom at a later
date held commissions in one or other of the national air services; and
two more, who held no such commissions, because before the Flying Corps
was in being they had given their lives to the cause--Mr. Cecil Grace
and the Hon. Charles Rolls. None of these men was in the business for
profit, they were sportsmen and something more than sportsmen; they
loved the new adventure and they spent their own money freely, but
pleasure was not their goal; they understood what flying meant for the
welfare of their country, and they worked for the safety and progress of
the British Empire. It was at Shellness in October 1909 that Mr.
Moore-Brabazon, on a machine designed and built by Mr. Horace Short and
fitted with a Green engine, flew the first circular mile ever flown on a
British aeroplane. There were many other experiments and achievements at
Shellness. These were the days, says Mr. C. G. Grey (to whose knowledge
of early aviation this book is much indebted), when the watchers lay
flat on the ground in order to be sure that the aeroplane had really
left it. At the close of 1909, Mr. Frank McClean, who devoted his whole
fortune to the cause of aviation, purchased a large tract of ground,
level and free from ditches, in the middle of the Isle of Sheppey, close
to the railway station at Eastchurch, and gave the use of it free to the
Aero Club. To this ground the Short brothers, who, besides building
their own machines, had taken over the Wright patents for