The Lonely Sea and the Sky (18 page)

  A chart showed Norfolk Island as a squat rock of 8,500 acres, the size of a New Zealand sheep farm, dumped in the Pacific. It had no sheltered anchorage. A seaplane would have to alight in the open Pacific on the rollers pounding the 300 feet cliffs. A chart of Lord Howe Island, however, was more thrilling; perhaps it was responsible for the saying, 'To a man of imagination, a map is a window to adventure'. The island was 3,200 acres all told, shaped like a bow, with a coral reef for the bow-string. This coral was the southernmost reef in the world. How romantic it all seemed – 'Sugarloaf Passage', 'Smooth Water Lagoon', 'Coral Reef Awash here', 'Heavy Surf here', and 'Boat Passage at High Water'. I knew that I must fly there. But here came another difficulty: how was I going to find these islands? Norfolk Island, approached from the northernmost tip of New Zealand, was a target only half a degree in width; there was no other land nearer than New Zealand, so that any shot at it must hit the bull's-eye. The smallest target of this sort so far aimed at was the Hawaii group from San Francisco, and that was seven degrees wide – fourteen times as wide as Norfolk Island. There were no radio aids then. Could a pin-point target of that size be found by dead reckoning? This would depend mainly on two things, the magnetic compass, and the drift caused by the wind. The compass was still an uncertain factor in a small aeroplane, and I had known a case of nine degrees of error developing in three weeks. As for wind, it turned out later that I could assess this accurately, but at the time it was not thought that a pilot flying alone could do so. What was known then was that a 40-mile wind, undetected, could put a Moth off course by thirty degrees. The only possible way of finding the island, I decided, was by using the sun. I should have to take shots at the sun with a sextant to measure the height of the sun above the horizon, and work out my position from that. 'Impossible,' said the experts, 'for a man flying a plane alone to use a sextant and work out sights.' 'If a sea navigator can navigate a steamer by the sun, I can navigate an aeroplane,' I said.

  I started to teach myself astronomical navigation. By the time I had learnt enough to navigate a ship I realised that it would not do for an aeroplane. A ship could get its longitude six hours before its latitude by observations of the sun. A plane, however, required both latitude and longitude within an hour of each other, and this could not be done by the sun. I was downhearted by this discovery, and felt that I must devise a new system of navigation to overcome the obstacle.

  The object in using a sextant is to measure the angle between the sun and the sea's horizon. I did not think a marine sextant would be suitable for this, because the plane might be too high, or clouds might intervene to hide the horizon. So I bought a sextant with an artificial horizon in the form of a built-in bubble level. I practised using this while motoring and running. I gained skill, but was worried to find silly mistakes creeping into my calculations, mistakes like writing down a number wrongly. About this time the Tasman Sea was flown solo from west to east by an Australian, Menzies, in the same plane in which Kingsford-Smith had just made his record flight from England to Australia. Menzies crashed in a flat swamp on the west coast of South Island, but he had flown the Tasman. At first this was a blow, but I soon got over it; I was firmly gripped by the idea of finding my island by my own system of navigation.

  Then a fresh obstacle cropped up; new floats would cost £500, the slump had stopped all our land selling; and there was no £500 available. Perhaps I could earn the money by joy-riding? I took up a few hundred passengers, but it was not a success. They preferred flying in other planes. I discovered that people thought my plane was held together by bits of string and wire. However, I had some fun, and I had some valuable flying experience in taking up passengers. I had a great friend, Pat Maunsell, who had a farm outside Masterton. He let me fly from one of his fields, and helped me with the ground work. One day I forgot the power lines on the edge of the field when I was coming in to land with a passenger. The Moth went through the three power cables, carrying 11,000 volts, with no trouble at all. They made a grand flash and put out the town's lights. I said it was an Act of God, but was told 'not so', and that I must pay for the repairs. I seemed to be plagued by wires and such like in the air. There was a racecourse bordering Pat's property, and one day I was checking the accuracy of my turns and banks by flying round it low down. I didn't notice that the starting ribbon was stretched across the track, and carried it away on one wing tip.

  My passenger flying failed to bring in enough money for new floats and I lost sleep trying to think of ways to get money. One day I noticed an old discarded pair of floats in a corner of the hangar at the air base. They were the relics of a Moth that had been accidentally dropped twenty feet on to the deck of a cruiser. I thought that they would do if patched up, and asked the Government if it would sell them to me cheap. But it wouldn't.

  About this time I had my first chance to try my hand with an ordinary sextant when flying alone. The result was 108 miles in error. I could hardly have been more depressed.

  I found that I was charging obstacles like a goaded bull, and that was no way to get things done. So I threw everything out of my mind and took to a tent on the hills of our Silverstream property for a fortnight's hard bush-felling in the scorching heat of midsummer. I sweated away the poison of worry until I was bursting with vitality, and felt that I could achieve anything, tackle anyone. This was the life I loved, the true life, to return to camp with the mist of fatigue creeping over the brain and veiling any cares. Glowing and tingling after a bathe in a mountain stream; to hear the dull pop of a red hot stone in a camp fire, and feel the acrid manuka smoke biting one's nostrils; God! Why go back to that other life, to the terrible fatigue at dawn, to nerves wearing thin through sixteen hours of strain a day, to wondering each morning how much longer one's luck could hold? I could get no floats, had no money, my navigation was shaky, my plane, people said, was only a toy. Why not accept the inevitable, and stay here, living a life I loved?

  But I felt that I had to make the flight, and could not escape it. I tried the Government again for a loan of the old floats, but the Ministry of Defence had just appointed a new official solely to seek economies in the slump. Autumn was drawing to a close, and soon the stormy westerlies would set in across the Tasman. The headwind would put Norfolk Island out of range. However, I felt that the flight would come off, and went back to Auckland.

  In the air, I tried out my new bubble sextant, and was 740 miles out. On hearing this, Grant-Dalton wrote me an official letter saying that I now ought to abandon the flight, that 'lost airman' publicity would set back aviation with the public, which still remembered Hood and Moncrieff, who had disappeared trying to fly the Tasman from Sydney. I wrote back that I was confident that I could make do with an ordinary sextant by flying lower, and using the sea horizon. Would the Government lend me the floats or, failing that, allow me to pay for them later? Grant Dalton replied that I was doing good experimental work in navigation, and that he would recommend that the floats should be lent to me.

  I became ill, and was sent to Auckland hospital. For some reason I could not walk, and I could cross a room only by crawling. The doctors could not find out what was wrong with me and after a week the illness passed, and I returned to the air base, where I found that the Government had relented, and was lending me the floats. I had such a strong presentiment that the flight would start on a certain day that I prepared navigation, working out the position of the sun for various times on that day. All this was at a time when the floats were still unmended, my Moth was still on wheels, had never been flown as a seaplane, and I would not know until she was launched whether she could carry enough petrol to reach Norfolk Island. I forgot all about the presentiment and was amazed when, two days before the date, a wireless message arrived from Dr Kidson, head of the Met. Office, to say that a favourable wind was likely for the next few days and was I going to start? I showed the message to Squadron-Leader, Isitt, the Commandant of the air base, and asked him if he would try to get me away to the extreme north of New Zealand on the Friday, ready for an early start on Saturday. Len Isitt, who was an experienced seaplane and flying-boat pilot said, 'I don't like this flight of yours. I doubt if you can find your way alone by sextant; even if you can, suppose there is no sun? If you reach Norfolk Island there is nowhere to put down a seaplane; if you succeed in getting down, you won't be able to take off again, because of the swell. If there should chance to be no swell, it would be impossible to take off a Moth loaded up like yours without a stiff wind.' Len had excellent judgement (as was shown by his becoming Chief of the New Zealand Air Staff in 1943 and Chairman of the New Zealand National Airways Corporation in 1963). But he was also a true sportsman, and having stated his official views he set to and made every possible effort to turn the Moth into a seaplane. He worked on the job himself, with the aircraftmen, until midnight on Thursday.

  The Moth was ready for the water on Friday afternoon. A wading party wheeled her down the slipway on a trolley; she took to the water like a duckling, and took off into the air like a wild swan. Was I proud of her? After 34,000 miles as a land-plane! But would she take the load: all my gear, boat, anchor, ropes, food, water, navigation instruments and books, besides fifty gallons of petrol? The experts said 'No'; the same model of plane and motor, with these same floats, had refused to leave the water at Samoa with only the pilot and petrol for 80 miles on board. My Moth thought nothing of the full load, and rose happily. I was jubilant.

  'Don't forget,' said the CO gloomily, 'that you have ideal conditions at the moment. Strong breeze against you, tide with you, and choppy sea to break the suction of the water of the floats. I'd like to see you carry out a forty-eight hours' mooring test to make sure the floats don't leak; and also some long flights, to test your navigation farther.' It would certainly have been wise to do all this, but probably I would have had no flight if I had.

  So we worked until midnight, stowing the gear, and fitting the tiny transmitting set which Partelow, the wireless operator, had built for me. Including the aerials stretching from wing tip to tail, it weighed only 23 lbs. It was not of much value to me because there were no ships on the Tasman Sea if I put out an SOS, but Partelow wanted to experiment, and I thought that with careful organisation of my work I could send a wireless message every hour. I could not receive any messages, but I liked the idea of doing a wireless operator's job as well as a pilot's and a navigator's.

  Going to the hangar near midnight I took a short cut down a bank, and fell heavily on the gravel in the dark. I lay still for a few moments, thinking how a Roman senator, if he stumbled on the way to the Senate, regarded it as a bad omen, and went home. I wondered if fate was against me. But that was nonsense; any man was master of his own fate. The senator did right to stay at home because stumbling showed that his brain, nerve and muscle were not properly working together. I had had a good hint to take extra care next day.

  I did not sleep well, seeming to wake every few minutes to hear the wind roaring about the house. Yet on being called at 4 o'clock I found it a calm and cloudless sky, with the planet Venus shining bright and steady. The hospitable Mrs Isitt cooked me some bacon and eggs to eat by candlelight, but they reminded me of my breakfast in the dark on the flight out from England, and weariness seemed to weigh down my spirits. I felt that I must be crazy to go through it all again voluntarily. I sat in the cockpit while the seaplane was moved about on the concrete pad, so that Sid Wallingford, Len's second-in-command, could check the compass error. Suddenly I noticed that the time was 6.15 by the dashboard clock, and I had fixed 6 o'clock as the time for starting. I shouted to Sid that there was no time for any more checking; then I remembered having altered the clock to Greenwich time, so that there was still a quarter of an hour to go; but I refused to spend time checking the compass error on any other bearing than that of Norfolk Island from New Zealand. I broke another bottle of brandy on the propeller, and then started the motor. I could get only 1,780 revs, forty less than I expected, and my spirits sank. I should never get off with a full load with a motor like that, but I said nothing to the CO about it. The seaplane was launched. I faced her into wind, and opened the throttle; to my surprise she left the water as easily as a sea bird. I climbed into the grey of dawn until I had enough height to turn. Then I fastened the wireless key to my leg with an elastic band, and began tapping out in Morse 'Can you hear me?' time after time. I circled the hangar, steeply banked in tight circles, watching the wireless operating-room while I kept on sending. No answer, the set must have failed. I ought to return, but no, I couldn't now. Suddenly a dazzling Aldis lamp flashed me 'OK'. I turned instantly towards the dawn, and made for the harbour entrance. The city of Auckland was sleeping in the cold grey light, with an occasional wisp of smoke slipping away from a chimney top. I thought of the people below lying comfortably in bed. It was 6.45 when I turned the harbour entrance and headed north. It would be sunset at Norfolk Island at 6.45 p.m., so I had roughly twelve hours of daylight, with ten hours flying to do. First I had three hours' flight to the northern tip of New Zealand, where I would fill up with petrol for the sea­crossing.

  As the Moth had been a seaplane only for seventeen hours, I had to make the best use possible of this first flight. The big fifteen-foot long floats instead of the landing wheels spoilt the Moth's stability; as a landplane, I could trim her so finely that only moving my head backwards was needed to start her climbing slightly; now, she continually yawed as well as pitched. I could not leave the controls for ten seconds without her starting a steep dive or climb. I watched the grey-green sea looking coldly inhospitable below, where a long swell from the south-east could be seen unrolling smoothly. I waited for Cape Brett, and anxiously studied its effect on the swell. The waves radiated from the Cape like the spokes of a wheel, changing direction, and breaking on the rocks in the lee of the Cape in jagged lines of white surf. That meant I could not expect protection from the swell behind Norfolk Island.