Before Amelia (21 page)

Being a handy young woman, with patience and skill, she drew designs, assembled materials, and went to work. In a December 1910 issue of
Flight,
Lilian described the slow process of building first a glider that evolved into an aeroplane. Using a variety of woods, she built wings of ash, the ends steamed to bend, like those on the gulls she had studied. The ribs and stanchions were spruce; the skids, ash; the outriggers, bamboo; and the engine bed, American elm. The engine bed sat on the lower wing, the whole of it fastened by wires to the upper and lower wings so the engine could not shift unless the whole machine were wrecked. This wiring added extra strength to the wings. The wings were covered with a strong material coated with photographic solution to make them waterproof. The chassis carried the gas tank and the pilot's seat, which was enclosed on all sides, so falling out was impossible. The whole chassis was removable in one piece, with or without the engine, which was held in place by four bolts.

The controls consisted of a bicycle handlebar, which rocked and turned. Turning to the right raised the right elevator and depressed the left—the connecting wires being crossed. The elevators were connected to the horizontal tail planes, which worked in the opposite direction to the elevators. All controls were double-wire and strong waterproofed whipcord. The balancing planes hinged to the rear stanchions were controlled by the back of the seat. Leaning to the right pulled down the right hand balancer, and vice versa. The vertical rudder worked by pedals. The engine controls were a butterfly valve, to regulate the gasoline supply; an air throttle; and a lever to the magneto, one cylinder of which was cut when starting. The controls sounded complicated, but Lilian assured readers that in practice they were “quite simple to work.” Built in sections, the machine gradually outgrew the house and was finished in the coach house. By early 1910, the glider, spanning twenty-seven feet, seven inches, was ready for testing. During its construction, Lilian corresponded with
Flight
to apprise its editors of her progress, with drawings to illustrate each step.
Flight
was always ready to print her reports.

Christened the
Mayfly,
a joining of two words showing there was some doubt about its ability in the air, the structure minus an engine was carried to the top of Carnmoney Hill to test its gliding ability. The glider soared well in the wind, but breakage and repairs were necessary as weak spots developed. To test the weight-lifting ability of the glider, four six-foot members of the Royal Irish Constabulary were enlisted to hold on to the wings together with Joe Blain, the garden boy who acted as Lilian's assistant. With this load aboard, the
Mayfly
rose into the air, to the surprise of the policemen who let go at once and dropped off, leaving Joe to hang on and bring the glider out of the wind. Lilian estimated that, if five men could be lifted, the glider would carry an engine.

Lilian Bland, a member of one of Belfast's most prominent families, about to take off in the Mayfly
.
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE OF NORTHERN IRELAND

She wrote to Alliott V. Roe in England to ask if he could produce a light engine. His reply was positive; he could make a two-stroke aircooled unit, which Lilian accepted at once. There were delays, however, and it was sometime in June before the engine was ready and Lilian crossed to England. At the first demonstration of the twenty-horsepower Avro engine, with Lilian an excited spectator, the connected propeller shattered into bits on the first roar of the motor. Luckily no one was hurt. A new six-foot, 6-inch adjustable-pitch Avro propeller was supplied, and early in July Lilian returned to Ireland with the treasured engine, resting beside her in the railway compartment in her bag.

On arrival in Belfast, Lilian couldn't wait; the engine, seated on a strong wooden stand behind the pilot's canvas seat, was tested that night in a pouring rain. The gas tank was not ready yet, but, ever resourceful, Lilian substituted a whiskey bottle and used her aunt's ear trumpet to feed the engine. It worked! As soon as the gas tank was in place, testing began in earnest. The motor was not easy to start and, when it was running, vibration snapped most of the wires between the struts and loosened most of the nuts on their bolts. There were more adjustments—all the fastenings were strengthened, heavier wheels and tires were fitted— before the
Mayfly
was deemed ready to fly.

Lord O'Neill loaned his park at Randalstown, eight hundred acres of open space with but one drawback—a loose bull and cattle. On good-weather days, Lilian and Joe Blain bicycled twelve miles to the field to see if the machine would go up under its own power. It did, but continuous storms for the next five weeks forced the builders to postpone any flying attempts. Finally in September, Lilian Bland was flying Ireland's first powered aeroplane, taking off about thirty feet for its first hops before sailing slowly along in the air. “I have flown!” the ecstatic pilot wrote to
Flight.
She could hardly believe she was off the ground and ran back each time to see where the wheel tracks stopped in the grass. The hops lengthened until the
Mayfly
was sailing along for short distances, bobbing up and down like a boat, despite the curious catt le. Lilian's pr ide was evident: “I am naturally awfully pleased, having made and designed her myself. It is a very small, but promising start anyway.”

Modifications continued, particularly preventing rust on the wires in the dampness of Northern Ireland. Lilian found that paint corrected the problem, a good black enamel; the woodwork was varnished with copal to protect it. The gas tank and carburetor float were placed crosswise to keep the fore and aft tilt from interfering with the gas supply when the tank was near empty. Lilian thought that starting on one cylinder let the motor pick up slowly, causing less strain.

Lilian did not claim any expertise for her flying ability, admitting she was not yet a good-enough pilot “to give much advice.” She believed much could be learned from watching good pilots, although there were none in Ireland in 1910. She was fortunate to have seen Farman, Louis Paulhan, and Latham fly, whom she considered “masters of the art.”

Would she do it again? Certainly. Her enthusiasm remained intact; aviation was the “finest sport in the world.” Her experiment had been hard work, requiring time and money, said Lilian, not only for the initial construction but for the inevitable repairs. The
Mayfly
had been practically rebuilt with two propellers, several pairs of skids, three different tails, countless nuts and bolts, and yards of unbleached calico.

Lilian offered to fill orders either for gliders or full-size machines using her own designs; she guaranteed they would glide or fly and the work and quality would be of the best. She stipulated that the engine and propeller must be reasonably efficient, otherwise “it is only waste of time.” She knew from her experience that a strong engine was essential for successful flight, that her fragile machine was too delicate to hold together with a stronger motor, that her machine was really more of a grasshopper than an aeroplane that could fly anywhere.

This realization and the lack of offers to buy one of her machines convinced her to give up flying to please her father, who, worried by his daughter's dangerous hobby, offered her a motorcar in exchange. Lilian accepted gracefully. She had made her point—a woman could build and fly an aeroplane—and silenced the scoffers. Lilian advertised in
Flight
for people interested in acquiring the
Mayfly.
Eventually the motor was sold and ended up at the Science Museum in London, and the biplane frame was presented to the Dublin Flying Club.

Aeroplanes played no further role in Lilian's life. She taught herself to drive and was soon running a Ford agency in Belfast. When she received a proposal of marriage from a Canadian gentleman who admired her spunk, she accepted and went to British Columbia in 1912, where she and her husband farmed on Galiano Island near Vancouver. She returned to Britain in 1935 and retired eventually in Cornwall, where she lived into old age, an original among a collection of unusual women.

There were other Britons mentioned in the journals of the early years: Dorothy Prentice, whose brother started an aero club in Surrey, was learning to fly at Hendon; Lily Irvine was taught by her husband, James V. Martin, at Hendon, but before she earned a license, she returned with him to the United States, where both Martins flew exhibitions. According to
Flight,
the day she sailed for America, Lily circled the Hendon Aerodrome twelve times on the school Farman. A Mrs. Palmer was mentioned as training on a Martin Handasyde, and Miss Edith Meeze was studying at the Valkyrie school. None of these women earned a license, but their mention indicates that more English women were becoming interested in aviation despite the barriers.

An article in the
New York Evening World
of May 20, 1911, said that a Mrs. Gavin could rightfully claim to be the first English woman to fly, a claim open to debate. Mrs. Gavin, also an excellent golfer, attended the Charles Lane Gliding School at Brooklands, the first school at the raceway in the spring of 1910. The biplane glider, similar to a Farman, took off from a starting rail lane installed on the hillside below the grandstand. By July 1910, Mrs. Gavin was making solo glider flights, an experience that led her to cross to France, where she was reported flying on a powered machine at Issy-les-Moulineaux. According to the newspaper article, she made flights of forty-five minutes' duration, but there is no record of her earning a pilot's license.

Two other women received regular mentions in the journals, but only as passengers. The ubiquitous Eleanor Trehawke Davies bought two Blériot machines and picked good pilots to fly her about, notably Gustav Hamel, a leading winner in English meets; B. C. Hucks; and James Valentine. On one such jaunt, she went along with Hamel when he crossed the Channel to Paris. Harriet Quimby, the American aviatrix who was readying her Channel flight on the south coast, thought it unsporting of Hamel to steal her thunder by taking Eleanor along, because Miss Trehawke Davies then qualified as “the first woman to cross the Channel in an aeroplane.” (Eleanor enjoyed collecting labels.) Another flight took her as far as Germany.

When looping the loop became popular, Eleanor decided she must be the first woman to experience a loop. When Hamel did a loop on Boxing Day in his Morane Saulnier, a determined Eleanor climbed out of her sickbed against doctor's orders and went to Hendon on January 2. Hamel and Eleanor took off as dusk gathered, climbed to one thousand feet, and looped the loop, followed by a half roll, the aeroplane on its back, before diving out to return to normal flight. Dallas Brett's
History of British Aviation
describes a satisfied Eleanor as “the first passenger of either sex to loop with an English pilot” and “the first woman in the world to loop-the-loop.” She returned to bed contentedly and “underwent a minor operation.” One can only wonder what a woman of such unusual spirit and determination might have accomplished had she become a pilot.

The Princess Lowenstein-Wertheim, a wealthy English woman married to a German prince, was an avid aviation fan, but she was content to be piloted about in whatever machine was considered the latest and best. She flew across the Channel in 1914, and in 1927, at age sixty-three, her single-engine Fokker monoplane, christened the
St. Raphael,
took off from Salisbury, in spite of her family's objections, to attempt a crossing of the Atlantic with two pilots aboard. Seated in a wicker chair in the cabin, surrounded by eight hundred gallons of gasoline, she waved gaily at takeoff. The aeroplane was sighted as it crossed Ireland and left the coast of Galway, and once more by a Dutch boat midway across the ocean, before disappearing forever.

Women like the princess and Trehawke Davies, not aviators themselves, were important for arousing interest in aviation and demonstrating its potential. Money allowed them to pursue aerial adventures in aeroplanes, marvelous toys for them, but machines that would transform modern life.

Gertrude Bacon, a member of the Aero Club at Sheppey, off the Kentish coast, and the Women's Aerial League, is mentioned among aviation enthusiasts because of her writings on aeronautics. As a young woman she made numerous balloon voyages with her father and was the first woman to make a “right away” voyage in an airship. In 1909 she arranged to have her first aeroplane flight with Roger Sommer at the first Rheims Aviation Meet, a landmark event of early aviation. The surprising lift as the ground dropped away was pure delight for Gertrude: “that glorious, gliding sense that the sea-bird has known this million years.” Later, at Brooklands, she flew with Douglas Gilmour. Her journal articles and lectures gave enthusiastic support to the fledgling aviation development in England. Keenly aware that England lagged behind advances on the Continent, where Germany and France were funding aviation development, she argued that England must do the same.