Letter dropped over N.S. on historic 1919 airship flight unearthed

One hundred years ago, a letter fluttered down from the sky over Selmah, N.S.

It was dropped by the airship R34 as it made its historic flight over the province on its way from Scotland to New York.

The airship would break a number of records on that flight: the first east-to-west transatlantic crossing by air, the first human arrival by air in the U.S. — when someone on board parachuted from the ship to the ground — and the first human and feline transatlantic stowaways.

It would also make the first-ever return flight across the Atlantic when it returned to England a few days later.

The letter, though, remained undiscovered for four months.

On Nov. 8, 1919, one Milton Weldon found it in what was then called Selmah in Hants County (now Selma). He posted it to Halifax, where it was sent on to its destination in Bournemouth, England.

Now, that letter is on display at the National Museum of Flight in East Fortune, Scotland.

"It's a particularly important part of our history," said Ian Brown, the assistant curator of aviation at National Museums Scotland.

"We knew that they'd carried letters on the flight, but we didn't have an example in our collection. So when this came up for auction, we were delighted to have the chance to bid on it and ultimately successfully acquire it for the nation."

Penned by Royal Air Force chaplain George Davys Jones for his sister, the letter describes the great anticipation of the airship's impending flight: "We are all agog," he writes. "It is the greatest event in the history of the Station and all are praying for success…. 

"It will be an historic coup if it succeeds. I shouldn't mind going a bit but they didn't want a chaplain. They are not even taking a doctor."

Ironically, the packets of mail were dropped by parachute over land in Newfoundland and then Nova Scotia because the crew thought they would arrive at their destinations faster than if they waited to post them when they arrived in New York.

"If they'd carried on to New York and posted it from there, it would have got home probably within a week or two," said Brown.

The museum also possesses Jones's sister's reply, in which she complains about having to pay threepence to receive the letter because her brother forgot to put a stamp on it.

Brown said he doesn't know where the letter was for the last 100 years before it was auctioned off in March. He would not say how much the museum paid for it.

The airship, dubbed "Tiny," was anything but: it was nearly 200 metres long and 25 metres at its widest. The intestines of 600,000 oxen were used to make the hydrogen-filled gas bags that carried its crew of 30 across the Atlantic.

The R34 left the airbase in East Fortune, east of Edinburgh, on July 2, 1919, and reached Mineola, N.Y., 108 hours later, on July 6.

The flight was made even more nail-biting than it perhaps already was by electrical storms and dwindling fuel supplies. When the airship arrived at its destination, it only had enough fuel for two more hours of flight.

"Considering it took them 108 hours to get there, it really was … just making it by the skin of the teeth almost," said Brown.

Stress may have peaked when part of one of the engines broke during the flight. But the engineer concocted a makeshift plan to fix it — with chewing gum.

"The engineer and half the crew were rapidly chewing all the chewing gum that they had on board to basically produce enough adhesive to stick this part back together," Brown said.

When the airship finally arrived, the crew was wined and dined in New York before departing on July 10 and arriving in Pulham, England, on July 13.

Airships were used to patrol the coast, protect convoys and target submarines during the First World War, and many believed they would one day become the future of air travel.

The R34, alas, did not survive to meet that fate. It was scrapped in 1921 after it flew into a hillside and lost two propellers.

The letter will be on display until Oct. 31 at the museum, along with a piece of the linen fabric from the airship's cover, part of one of the gas bags and a bottle of brandy taken on board for medicinal reasons.