'Round-World Flyers Reach Prince Rupert -- April 6, 2024

San Francisco Examiner, 07-April-1924

100 years ago this month, teams from several countries were trying to make the first aerial circumnavigation of the earth. The US Army, with the close cooperation of the Navy, made it.

San Francisco Examiner, 07-April-1924

'ROUND-WORLD FLYERS REACH PRINCE RUPERT

FOUR PLANES
MAKE HOP OF
650 MILES

U.S. Squadron Darts From
Seattle on Important Leg
of Globe-Circling Expedition

Army Aviators Triumph Over
Meteorological and Mechanical
Obstacles After Long Delay

PRINCE RUPERT (B.C.), April 6 -- (By Associated Press.) -- Major Frederick L Martin, commander of the United States army air squadron encircling the earth, damaged his plan, the Seattle, on landing here at 4:54 o'clock this afternoon, according to word given out by him tonight. Two other world flight planes, the Chicago and the New Orleans, which arrived at the same time, landed safely. The Boston, fourth machine of the squadron, reached here at 5:26 o'clock.

Indications pointed tonight toward indefinite delay in the flight as spare parts might have to be shipped here from Sitka, Alaska according to Major Martin.

The fliers encountered rain from Vancouver B.C. to Prince Rupert. They flew at an average height of 300 feet, Major Martin said.

---

SEATTLE, April 6 -- (By the Associated Press.) -- Four planes of the United States army that left Santa Monica, Cal. on March 17 on a flight around the world and arrived here March 20, left the states today.

Three of them departed from here just before 9 o'clock a.m. the other an hour later. At 1:20 p.m. the first three were reported passing over Egg Island, about half-way to Prince Rupert, where the squadron expects to drop down into Seal Cove at 7 p.m. to rest before the next stage -- to Sitka, Alaska. Reports from along the British Columbia coast, which the adventurers were skirting, indicated that the fourth had made up 13 minutes of his lost time.

Along the north coast of Vancouver Island the planes, reports forwarded here by the Canadian Press showed, encountered thick mist and rain, with a southeast breeze at their backs.

The start was a triumph over meteorology and mechanics. The seventeen days' stay here was for installation of pontoons with which the flyers, led by Major Frederick L Martin, hoped to conquer the Pacific ocean over a coast and ocean course of 4,168 miles.

"Adieu," said Major Martin from his cockpit, as his associates pushed his machine, the flagplane Seattle, off gently from a barge at Sand Point Aviation Field, upon which it had lain since a broken propeller and a lagging motor had defeated a departure yesterday, after storms in the North had kept the expedition here Friday.

"We are going to go this time," he added.

Two minutes before he said this, Major Martin had stood beside the cockpit, no wise nonplussed by hard labor all yesterday, resumed at 5:30 a.m. today after a short night's sleep. All the night mechanics from a Seattle airplane factory had toiled to make the Seattle fit.

Just one hour before she left the dock she had been gently lifted from the barge and lowered onto the water by a giant crane on a dredge. Then came fueling, for which it was found necessary to row out and borrow a pump from the plane New Orleans, flown by Lieutenant Wade, Major Martin's having refused to work.

At 8:15 a.m. Major Martin, having smiled and spoken his farewell genially, began tacking from the dock. He went north on the quiet surface of the lake, under a struggling sun and with almost no breeze until he was almost out of sight.

Then he came back a way. Then, with a mighty rush, throwing a cloud of spray behind him, he rose at 8:34 a.m. He turned straight across the line of vision of a crowd of 150 persons on the little dock and the barge and went at once on a course north of two miles to see if everything was all right.

He turned again and went south, over the same course, his motor sounding with a clear roar.