Greene County herald. (Leakesville, Miss.) 1898-current, 1913-01-17

FG&1 ! will risk my skill against the ele
Il ments and win / viii take to mysel
- the swiftness of the meteor and the
sureness of the seagull / will defy
time the wind the weather the trackless wastes
of the sky and the ocean. / will make real the
dream of the dreamer
But Grahame White is true Briton and as sucl
has hearty dislike for the grandiloquent. He i:
quite content with 'Ill cross the Atlantic il
thirty hours"-as If the feat were the most matter
of,fact performance in the world-and the chances
that he regards 1t a good deal in that light
At first hearing, it sounds like an idle boast
but those who have followed the career of this
eminently shrewd. clear-headed and capable air
know that he is neither boaster nor Wis
ionary If he says he will do a thing it is certain
that he believes firmly that he can-and believes
it because he has studied his facts and tested his
theories.
1t is but short look back to the beginnings of
the aeroplane and in the brief time that that
wonderful machine has been in the hands of
men it has performed the very things that skep-
tics have declared impossible. It seems almost
certain that at time not remote someone will
make the perilous trip overseas. And why not
Grahame-White?
To the average earth-man who is satisfied
never to rise above the top stories of Office
building the attempt. even under the best of con-
ditions, appears reckless to the point OF fool
hardness Not to the aviator. "Give me the
kind of a machine I'm thinking Of" he remarks,
and the transatlantic trip would be just so mucn
duration lying-plain sailing"
Just there lies the nub of the question of air
navigation from Europe to American the
chimes They must first of all have speed great
speed: they must have lifting capacity enough
to carry the required amount of fuel. they must
have motors capable of standing the strain Of
terrific and stupendous distance. they must have
instruments that will locate the with
curacy.
All those elements must have been considered
long and carefully by Grahame-White before he
made his recent announcement. He must be
satisfied that he has an aeroplane that fulfls all
the conditions. So far little detail has leaked
out to the manner of equipment he will use.
It is known only that he is building machine
which will carry four engines, arranged in indie
pendent pairs and each rated at $50 horsepower.
He has said that he is convinced that he
show enough lifting capacity to carry the re-
CURED fuel and enough speed to rush him to
these shores in thirty hours
That may seem simple to the unthnking, but
consider Roughly speaking, it is 5000 miles
from coast to coast and at Grahame-Whites reck-
oning OF thirty hours that means that he has
machine which he trusts for at least one hundred
miles an hour minute after minute without In
terruction
What course he will choose has not yet de-
veloped He has the whole great ocean to choose
from. 1t has been limited that the steamship
lanes are the natural path for the adventurer
to give some measure of protection in case of
accidents. II he chooses that from Queenstown
to Sandy Hook lightship he must traverse $500
miles; IL from Plymouth to Sandy Hook 2.962
miles; II from Southampton to Sandy Hook,
300; II from Havre to Sandy Hook. $40 miles;
and If from Cherbourg. 1874. The Mauretania
has made the passage in four days ten hours and
forty-one minutes The aviator proposes to clip
at one swoop e,S41 minutes from that record.
To be sure there other roads which
said to be safer There is that which leads from
- ao porTr one that all for
two relatively short hops and long one from
mainland to mainland. Then there is that other
one favored by those who have planned out the
course not for an aeroplane but for power
dirigible.
This second course is practically the same over
which Columbus waited across by the kindly
trade winds centuries ago. From meteoro-
logical standpoint it is said to be the best 1t
lies from GadiZ to Tenerife. distance Of 807
miles: from TeneriHe to Porto Rico a distance
OF 3.21e miles; from Porto Rico to Havana dis
tance OF 1924 miles; and thence to the main
land. The course lies in varying little
from twenty degrees north latitude and in the
winter and spring offers fair weather and wind
with velocity of fourteen to sixteen miles an
hour
troubled Grahame-W White little. 1t is probable
that he will select one of the northerly courses
and it is probable that he may fly even as far
north as Labrador. BY choosing that as point
of landing and Ireland point Of starting he
might reduce his distance by hundreds of miles
Whatever his course, however. he must have
speed. Even at his own estimate OF thirty hours,
the nervous strain Of guiding aeroplane for
that length of lime without slsep would be ter
rife and would increase immensely with every
added hour.
Grahame-W White has always been a believer in
the speed possibilities OF his air crafts. Some
time ago be held that 100 miles an hour was no