Straight on Till Morning (26 page)

Another attempt on the solo east–west crossing had been made successfully by a young Englishman, John Grierson, but his flight was not non-stop. Grierson never intended to fly non-stop. His original plan was to fly round the world in a series of hops, one of which was across the Atlantic stopping at the Orkneys, the Faroes, Iceland and Greenland. To do this he equipped his Gipsy Moth
Rouge et Noir
(aptly named because one side was painted red and the other black) with floats. No record-breaking was attempted, and the enterprise foundered when the little moth turned turtle in a heavy swell whilst taxiing at Reykjavik. Not disheartened, Grierson made a second and successful crossing in a De Havilland Fox Moth in 1934, again via Reykjavik, where he damaged a float and one wing and had to wait for spares to be dispatched to him. His crossing, which took six weeks, may well have set a record for being the longest east–west Atlantic flight ever made.
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In 1936 when Carberry made his offer, no one had made a successful solo non-stop crossing from England to America (the specific target was New York), and no woman had crossed the Atlantic from east to west in a solo night. Amelia Earhart was indeed the only woman to have flown the Atlantic solo at that time and she had done it ‘the easy way', landing in Ireland after a relatively short flight of just over fifteen hours. Several women had perished in the attempt.
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Beryl needed no time to consider the offer and accepted on the spot. The Vega Gull under construction for Carberry was expected to be ready by early August and Beryl agreed to undertake the flight in the second half of that month. The remainder of the evening was spent discussing who Beryl could get to sponsor the expenses of the flight.

Throughout the summer Beryl made almost daily flights to Gravesend to see the aircraft taking shape. At the end of July she gave up her job with Dupré ‘with great reluctance'. Dupré too was sorry to lose her. ‘She was an excellent pilot,' he was later reported to have said, ‘about the best I have ever employed.' An impressive compliment, for Beryl's successor was Amy Johnson.

Beryl had hoped to take delivery of the Vega Gull, which had already been christened
The Messenger
, in late July or early August (all aeroplanes involved in record-breaking flights were given names – it helped the image). But it was delivered late. During test flights several minor faults needed correction, and Beryl was in a fever of anticipation by the time she finally got her hands on the controls on 15 August for a ten-minute flight. More minor adjustments were needed: the Vega Gull was a brand-new type of aeroplane. It became clear that she could not hope to attempt the flight before early September, but this would still leave time to get
The Messenger
back to allow Carberry to compete in the Johannesburg Race.
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Designed as a four-seat cruiser, the standard model Vega Gull was fitted with a 200-hp De Havilland Gipsy Six engine enabling cruising speeds of up to 163 mph.
The Messenger
had a standard airframe and a standard engine fitted with one of the newly introduced French Ratier, variable-pitch propellers. There were two fuel tanks in the wings, two in the centre section and two more in the cabin, giving a total capacity of 255 gallons and extending the range to an estimated 3800 miles.
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No radio was fitted but there were some blind-flying instruments, though in the light of today's sophisticated satellite navigation the instrumentation was very basic: a Reid & Sigrist turn and slip indicator, a Sperry gyro ‘direction-finding' compass and an artificial horizon; finally an instrument which measured the rate of climb called, somewhat nautically, a ‘fore and aft reader'. There were in addition some Smith's instruments to give engine information, and one fuel gauge which gave a reading on the standard tank only. The auxiliary tanks had no gauges. As each tank became empty it was necessary to switch that tank off with a stop cock, and switch the next on. Percival gave Beryl a schedule of the order in which she should use up the fuel so as not to upset the balance of the aeroplane, and warned her that she must take care to switch the stopcock off, before turning on the next one, or an airlock would be created.

While the Vega Gull returned to the factory for adjustments Beryl was not idle. Tom had organized a gruelling training routine for her. There was to be no drinking, no smoking. He had already arranged a programme for himself at Heatherdon Country Club near Elstree where Len Harvey was in training for his fight with the American boxer John Henry Lewis. Tom worked with Harvey daily in the gymnasium and did long cross-country runs wearing thick white sweaters. Beryl, staying with Lord Aldenham (a friend she had met through Dupré) at his Elstree home, Aldenham House, joined them in the daily workouts of skipping, running, swimming and horseback riding.

She spent hours poring over maps with Tom and Jim Mollison, studying the routes and plans of the successful crossings – and the unsuccessful. Jim Mollison, whom she liked but whom Tom despised, was particularly helpful. His own strategy for crossing the Atlantic had paid off handsomely. In fact he had made the ocean crossing in only nineteen hours and it was only after he sighted land that he ran into trouble. Beryl listened carefully. To simplify navigation, Mollison had flown the whole way to Newfoundland on a constant magnetic track, which – with the changing magnetic variation across the ocean – conveniently took him along a line situated between the great circle track (the shortest route) and the rhumb line, or track of constant true bearing. He had allowed for drift by estimating the direction and strength of the wind by observing the drift of the long Atlantic waves, and movement of the cloud shadows. For the first four or five hours, flying at only fifty feet or so, he kept
Heart's Content
heading three or four degrees to starboard to counteract the effect of light northerly winds.
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Mollison was lucky; with good visibility for the first hours he had been able to check his position with several liners which were marked on his shipping chart. When darkness fell he had judged it wise to climb to 2000 feet, where he remained until he sighted the coast. Although it was cloudy, he had been able to get helpful glimpses of the moon and stars. Beryl's experience in night flying – she had flown over East Africa whenever the call came, day or night – enabled her to fly according to the same plan. She knew that if she could cope with effects of fatigue, and if the engine did not fail her, there was absolutely no reason why she couldn't make it.

In late July Tom received the awaited phone call from his Spanish contact. The supposedly secret trip to Spain, in which he flew the fascist rebel leader Marques Rivas de Linares to Franco's headquarters at Burgos, quickly received unwelcome publicity. Tom and his passenger were recognized at one of the airfields on the flight down through France, and the story ran ahead of him. Warned that his life was in danger, he escaped from the war-ravaged country by car. He suffered many delays, but was cool enough to test his theory that the guards at the numerous road blocks could not read, by presenting papers to them upside-down. Afterwards he returned to England where he wrote his story for the
News of the World
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and promised Dessie that he would lead a quiet life for a while. Now he had his sights fixed firmly on the race to Johannesburg and at last he had found a sponsor. He was to fly a Percival Mew Gull owned by Liverpool football pools millionaire John Moores.
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Did Beryl have any conception of the amount of interest that her flight would arouse? Possibly not. She said later that she ‘simply intended to slip away', but somehow the newspapers got wind of it. On 18 August an article accompanied by an impressive number of pictures appeared in the
Daily Express
under the banner headline

On the following day more headlines –
ATLANTIC HAS NO TERRORS FOR FLYING WOMAN
. A photograph of her running away from the camera is captioned: ‘To fly the Atlantic, but she flies from the camera.' In fact, on Tom's advice, she wrote a piece for the
Daily Express
for which she received a small payment.

By 1 September Beryl was ready to go.
The Messenger
had finished its tests and had been passed by its exacting designer Edgar Percival. Beryl flew the turquoise and silver aeroplane to Royal Air Force Abingdon. ‘I'm absolutely satisfied,' she said. ‘The machine is grand. If she doesn't get me over nothing will.' Originally she had planned to fly from Gravesend, but after consultation with Percival she sought and received permission from the Royal Air Force to use the long military runway at Abingdon, which was essential to get that enormous load of petrol off the ground. She had made a test run with only half a load of fuel, and the take-off run was far longer than Percival expected. The Air Ministry was opposed to the flight on principle, warning that it was already too late in the year to forecast a settled period of weather over the Atlantic. Indeed it looked as though their gloomy prognostications were to be proved correct, for from 28 August there was low cloud and scudding rain every day. If she had been able to get away only a week earlier she would have had that rarest occurrence, a favourable easterly wind over most of her route; but on 28 August the weather had deteriorated.

So Beryl waited, day after long day. All the preparations were made. With the exception of fuelling the aircraft, which Tom said should wait until the last moment, there was literally nothing to do except to wait for a good weather forecast. The delay was particularly annoying because she had originally planned her departure to coincide with a full moon which she hoped would light her way over the ocean. The press dogged her every move, and each morning brought a fresh spate of headlines. They were much of a muchness: ‘Young Mother Plans Flight Today'; ‘Daredevil Society Woman Leaves Today'; ‘Beauty to Fly Today'. These descriptions at first amused and later infuriated Beryl. She began to feel that they were presenting a frivolous image of her. Every day she waited for a call from the ministry with the weather report, and tried to hide from the press and the endless questions. ‘When do you expect to leave?' ‘What does your husband think of the flight?' ‘What does your little boy think of the flight?' Really, it was too bad! She tried to pass the time by working out at her gymnastic exercises, and she rode Lord Aldenham's thoroughbred horses around his estate.

There were several telephone calls from New York: one from John Carberry, ghoulishly checking that she had not ‘chickened out'; and one from Harry Bruno, a New York public relations man who owned the firm of ‘Personal Managers' whom Beryl had taken on at the suggestion of Mollison. If she was successful in her attempt, Jim cautioned, there'd be money to be made out of it – if everything were handled properly. The opportunity to capitalize on public acclaim would soon vanish, Mollison warned, but Harry Bruno would arrange appearances on radio, lecture tours, official welcomes, and if such a thing were possible, would control the press. Beryl, who never seemed to care whether she had any money or not, but simply spent the same amount whatever her situation, agreed wholeheartedly. Money was not a prime objective but if there was money to be made out of it, well and good.
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On 2 September after another long day of waiting Beryl dined with a few friends at the Mayfair. It was a small dinner party: Rose Cartwright, Sir Philip Sassoon, Tom, Beryl and Freddie Guest. ‘What I chiefly remember is that Beryl was totally unafraid,' said Rose Cartwright. Rose had known Beryl since she was Mrs Beryl Purves. ‘She was always fearless. I've only ever known two people like it in my life. Beryl was one of them. Some people are scared and they hide their fear, but Beryl never knew fear. Not when she rode the liveliest horse and not when she flew the Atlantic. She simply had no fear of anything. The night before her flight when we dined with her…we were all frightened for her, but she acted as though nothing special was happening. Almost as if she wasn't going. I remember one of the men teased her about her nose job. She'd recently had a small operation to straighten out the bump resulting from an accident some years earlier. She wasn't amused. That was the most response we got out of her.'
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