1913 The First Aeroplane In Alaska - Steve Remington....
James V. Martin organized the first competitive air meet in America at Squantum, Mass. for the Harvard Aeronautical Society in 1910; he traveled to England in Jan. 1911 for flight training and returned with Certificate #55 and a new wife, Lilly Irvine, the first English woman aviator. Martin owned a Martin-Gage Tractor used for exhibitions. Some businessmen promoters from Fairbanks, Alaska engaged Martin in 1913 to fly at Fairbanks which entailed a circuitous steamship/rail/steamboat shipment of the crated Gage. Martin flew low over Fairbanks for 3 days; with no sale, the airplane was shipped back to San Francisco but history was made as the flights were the first airplane to fly in Alaska. Martin later owned an aircraft company, was an inventor and produced a 3-wheel microcar.
1913 Roland Garros At Monaco - Steve Remington....
Roland Garros, a French sportsman, flew in the U. S. with the Moisant International Aviators before returning to France and becoming the test pilot for Morane-Saulnier at Villacoublay. He entered a M-S G model on floats for the inaugural Schneider Cup Race, the Coupe Internationale des Aero-Marins, which was run in April 1913 as part of the Grand Prix de Monaco, the second Monaco waterplane meet. Terrible weather and crashes clouded the results - contemporary reporting differs greatly from current popular history. Garros is credited with a dubious second place. Aero and Hydro noted that prior to the meet, Garros "..went out and did hair-raising performances over Monte Carlo and Cap Martin, making spiral dives apparently onto the Tir-au-Pigeons and into the harbor," the subject of this painting.Stretched canvas size 15" x 30".Garros later made the first solo flight across the Mediterranean in September in a M-S H Model. He served in World War I and invented a rather crude device to allow shooting through the propeller which was tested on a M-S L Parasol. Shot down, escaped and returned to combat, Garros was killed on October 5, 1918 near Vouziers. An excellent tennis player with Stade Français club, a new stadium was dedicated the Roland-Garros Stadium in 1928 where the French Internationals are still held.
1913 Robert Fowler challenges Culebra Cut - Steve Remington....
Robert G. Fowler made the first U.S. East to West transcontinental flight, completed on February 8, 1912, in a Wright Model B. He purchased a tractor biplane from Jay Gage of Griffith Park in September 1912; he flew some exhibition flights and replaced the original engine with an 80 h.p. Hall-Scott engine and equipped the Gage with floats and an extra seat. Jay Gage designed the wings so that they could be cut apart for crating in anticipation of shipment to Panama for the goal of flying non-stop across the Isthmus of Panama. Fowler contracted with a French movie firm to take a cameraman, Ray Duhem, along to film the flight. Fowler and his support crew sailed for Panama on April 1, 1913. He departed Panama City on the Pacific side on April 27, 1913 and landed in Limon Bay one hour and forty-five minutes later, being the first to make a non-stop, coast-to-coast flight. He encountered "treacherous winds" while circling over the Culebra Cut area of the Panama Canal, then under construction, and reported that the airplane had dived out of control temporarily. This painting captures that moment over the Culebra Cut. Ray Duhem continued his photography regardless. Fowler then flew in a drenching rain squall at Gamboa. Fowler and Duhem sailed for New York on the Ancon on May 2nd.
1913 Sopwith Bat-Boat....
n March 1913 the Sopwith Bat-Boat made its first flight from the River Medina having been assembled and launched from Sam Saunders works, the "Folly Sheds" on the east bank of the River Medina south of the Folly Inn. The Sopwith Bat-Boat was designed by aviation pioneer T. O. M. Sopwith's company Sopwith Aviation Ltd based at Kingston-upon-Thames.The Bat-Boat gained its name from a mythical flying machine that was mentioned in one of Rudyard Kipling's short stories. Its design featured a flying boat hull based on one of Sam Saunders' light and powerful high speed boats and used his patented "Consuta" plywood type construction which gave excellent lightness and strength that suited an aircraft application. Sopwith Aviation Ltd was responsible for the overall design of the Bat-Boat and construction of the bi-plane wing and tail assembly.
1912 First to Avalon - Glenn L Martin....
Glenn L. Martin began his aviation career by manufacturing Curtiss knock-offs in an old Santa Ana cannery in 1911; selling airplanes and flying on the exhibition circuit called for promotion which came with his successful attempt to fly to Catalina Island from Balboa. He built several Model 12s, one of which he equipped with a pontoon and other modifications to make the record setting, over water distance flight of over thirty miles, besting Bleriot's Channel flight record. Flying at noon above an overcast sky, Martin luckily found Avalon Bay.This painting features Glenn L. Martin making that first flight to Avalon, Catalina in his aircraft #12 which was for the most part patterned after a Curtiss. Fortunately there are several photos taken at Avalon on that grey May day in 1912; interestingly, photos appearing of #12 prior to the event, and afterwards, show significant differences from the configuration used for that record setting flight. The old airplanes allow little use of color in their depiction which doesn't exactly delight an artist's soul. Very few machines were painted with anything but clear dope or varnish; many airplanes used Goodyear rubberized fabric, with no descriptive color but "blah", which was applied to the structure with no dope or paint required. No bright color schemes, no nose art, no insignia, no camouflage but occasionally some advertising signage and even that was usually in black. Paint just added weight and complexity when fixing the inevitable and frequent damage.Holly Hill House and the Island Incline Railway funicular are lee shore structures illuminated by the dull grey, spring marine layer. The Hill House remains today in a somewhat updated form; the bluff is still there, mostly unchanged by time, although the shoreline is now developed with numerous piers.