, the flying centre for members of the Royal Aero Club, but in
1909 they moved their sheds to Eastchurch in the Isle of Sheppey, which
thereafter became the flying centre of the navy. It was here that the
first four naval aviators were taught to fly. The tale of the successes
of the various Short machines would make something not unlike a complete
history of early naval aviation. The first landing on the water by an
aeroplane fitted with airbags, the first flight from the deck of a ship,
the first flight up the Thames, not to mention many other incidents in
the progress of record-making, must all be credited to the Short
factory. The brothers held that the right way to advance aviation was to
strengthen the resources of the aeroplane-designing firms, so that they
might carry out their ideas without being dependent on Government
demands, and the extraordinary success of the Short designs for
aeroplanes and seaplanes did much to promote that creed.

At the factory the work with airships was continued, though it
languished somewhat as interest in aviation grew. England had shown the
way in the use of gold-beater's skin, which is greatly superior in
endurance and impermeability to any other fabric, but the knowledge
leaked through to Germany, and when the price of the skin, always high,
suddenly rose higher from heavy German buying, England fell back on
rubbered cotton. The _Baby_, altered and enlarged, was rechristened the
_Beta_, and a new ship, called the _Gamma_, made of rubbered fabric, was
added in 1910. The _Gamma_, though twice reconstructed and altered, was
never satisfactory. In 1912 _Beta_ No. 2, built in streamline shape,
about a hundred feet long, stiffened at the nose with ribs like
umbrella-ribs, and driven by a forty-five horse-power Clerget engine,
was more of a success. Other airships, the _Delta_ and _Epsilon_, of
increased size and engine-power, were designed between 1911 and 1913. In
this latter year the Air Committee, a body appointed in 1912 by the
Committee of Imperial Defence, advised that the navy, that is to say,
the Naval Wing of the newly-formed Royal Flying Corps, should take over
the development of all lighter-than-air craft. This advice, which was
carried into effect by the end of the year, put an end to military
experiments with airships, and supplied the navy with the nucleus of
that airship force which during the war did so much good service, in
convoy, in scouting for submarines, and in pa