The Big Hop. Landing soon.

St. John’s, Newfoundland. June 14th, 1919.

  • "A hurried line before I start."

    They struggle into their heated flying suits and clamber into the cramped open cockpit of their converted bomber biplane. As the pilot checks the two powerful Rolls Royce engines, his navigator prepares the instruments and charts in readiness for their flight.

    Behind them is stowed a bag of mail, including a letter quickly scribbled by the pilot on hotel notepaper to his younger sister.

    “Just a hurried line before I start. This letter will travel with me in the official mail bag, the first mail to be carried over the Atlantic. Love to all. Your Loving Brother.”

  • "Contact!"

    For such a pioneering flight, the Newfoundland field is light on spectators. Many have stayed away thinking the day’s strong winds would postpone the take-off once again. But after weeks of delays, the pair will wait no longer.

    Pointing the fragile craft into the squall, the pilot shouts to his mechanics the long-awaited instruction: “Contact!”

  • Into the future.

    The engines roar into life. Calling for the chocks to be pulled away, the pilot opens the throttles and the aircraft advances, slowly at first but with ever increasing speed, up the bumpy field into the westerly wind.

    Cross-gusts threaten to tip the unwieldy craft over, and the rough ground slams and jolts the undercarriage as the machine lumbers forward. At the final second, the wheels lift. The pilot, sweat running down his face, wrestles the aeroplane into the air. They are off.

    Their destination? Ireland, and their mission: the first ever non-stop flight over the Atlantic.

The first non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean and into the future.

In 1919, in Newfoundland, four teams of aviators came from Britain to compete in the world’s most audacious competition: to be the first to fly, non-stop, across the Atlantic Ocean. It was known as the Big Hop.

One team got half-way but was forced to ditch. One crashed and another never made it into the air. But one team made it to Ireland after a death-defying sixteen-hour flight.

The aeroplane flown across the Atlantic in 1919 is part of my life. During my twenty-year career at the London Science Museum, where it is now displayed, I must have walked thousands of times beneath its huge wings. I know the feel of its canvas. I can conjure the smell of its protective lacquer and engine oil. But its occupants, and their stories, have become hidden along the way.

The Atlantic flights of Charles Lindbergh in 1927 and Amelia Earhart in 1932 pushed 1919 into the shadows. But this is an injustice. The first transatlantic crossing is a remarkable event not simply because it was the first of its kind. The story of the voyage itself is truly thrilling.

The Big Hop will reveal this deeply moving adventure and the tale of friendship, rivalry, danger, love, and loss therein. It will also help answer a wider question: why did we take to the skies, and how did this single transatlantic flight change the world?

The Big Hop: The First Non-Stop Flight Across the Atlantic Ocean and Into the Future will be published in the UK by Chatto & Windus and in the USA by W. W. Norton. Due June 2025.