Landing
When the Bremen made a forced landing on Greenley Island in 1928, the first Canadian aircraft to reach the scene was piloted by Duke Schiller and the second machine was flown by the Canadian Transcontinental Airways Company's Chief Pilot - Romeo Vachon who arrived two days later with a group of media representatives. Both Schiller and Vachon were flying Fairchild FC-2W machines; G-CAIQ (Schiller) and G-CAIP (Vachon). Gretta May Ferris, a nurse from Saint John, New Brunswick who was posted at nearby Forteau's Grennfell Medical Station, travelled by dogsled some fifteen miles to attend to the crew's medical needs; she was the first to write the story that was picked up by the international media saying that the Bremen had landed and that the crew were safe.
The clock in the lighthouse was remembered (by the family of the lighthouse keeper) as indicating 2 p.m. Atlantic Time when the Bremen was first sighted from the ground. Captain Köhl and Baron von Hünefeld said that they were in the air 36½ hours. If their statements of elapsed time had an accuracy of better than one minute (unlikely), then the time of touchdown was 18:08 GMT or 13:08 EST or 14:08 Atlantic Time.
Alfred Cormier of Long Point (Lourdes-de-Blanc-Sablon), who operated the local telegraph office from his home, made contact with Marconi station VCL at Point Amour in Labrador—18 miles (29 km) east of Long Point. From there, his message went through St. John's, Newfoundland (at 6:30 p.m.), and Louisbourg, Nova Scotia. It was forwarded by land lines across Canada and via Radio Corporation of America station WCC at Chatham, Massachusetts, for transmission to New York City.
The first message read: "German plane at Greenly Island, wind southeast, thick."
A short time later, a second message was sent: "German plane Bremen landed Greenly Island, noon, slightly damaged, crew well."
By 7:15 p.m., the story was in all the newsrooms of the eastern seaboard.
Read more about this topic: Bremen (aircraft)
Famous quotes containing the word landing:
“I foresee the time when the painter will paint that scene, no longer going to Rome for a subject; the poet will sing it; the historian record it; and, with the Landing of the Pilgrims and the Declaration of Independence, it will be the ornament of some future national gallery, when at least the present form of slavery shall be no more here. We shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown. Then, and not till then, we will take our revenge.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)