ion of Orville Wright. The second
initial here stands for Havilland, as the DH was designed by Geoffrey de
Havilland, a British inventor.

The year 1919 saw the first transatlantic flights. The NC4, with
Lieutenant Commander Albert Cushing Read and crew, left Trepassey,
Newfoundland, on the 16th of May and in twelve hours arrived at Horta,
the Azores, more than a thousand miles away. All along the course the
navy had strung a chain of destroyers, with signaling apparatus and
searchlights to guide the aviators. On the twenty-seventh, NC4 took off
from San Miguel, Azores, and in nine hours made Lisbon--Lisbon, capital
of Portugal, which sent out the first bold mariners to explore the
Sea of Darkness, prior to Columbus. On the thirtieth, NC4 took off for
Plymouth, England, and arrived in ten hours and twenty minutes. Perhaps
a phantom ship, with sails set and flags blowing, the name Mayflower on
her hull, rode in Plymouth Harbor that day to greet a New England pilot.

On the 14th of June the Vickers-Vimy Rolls-Royce biplane, piloted by
John Alcock and with Arthur Whitten Brown as observer-navigator, left
St. John's, Newfoundland, and arrived at Clifden, Ireland, in sixteen
hours twelve minutes, having made the first non-stop transatlantic
flight. Hawker and Grieve meanwhile had made the same gallant attempt in
a single-engined Sopwith machine; and had come down in mid-ocean, after
flying fourteen and a half hours, owing to the failure of their water
circulation. Their rescue by slow Danish Mary completed a fascinating
tale of heroic adventure. The British dirigible R34, with Major G. H.
Scott in command, left East Fortune, Scotland, on the 2d of July, and
arrived at Mineola, New York, on the sixth. The R34 made the return
voyage in seventy-five hours. In November, 1919, Captain Sir Ross Smith
set off from England in a biplane to win a prize of ten thousand pounds
offered by the Australian Commonwealth to the first Australian aviator
to fly from England to Australia in thirty days. Over France, Italy,
Greece, over the Holy Land, perhaps over the Garden of Eden, whence the
winged cherubim drove Adam and Eve, over Persia, India, Siam, the Dutch
East Indies to Port Darwin in northern Australia; and then southeastward
across Australia itself to Sydney, the biplane flew without mishap.
The time from Hounslow, England, to Port Darwin was twenty-seven days,
twenty hours, and twenty minutes. Early in 1920 the Boer airman Captain
V