Travellers' Checks | How Hong Kong welcomed three intrepid British aviators attempting to become the first to fly around the globe
The adventurous trio were pipped to the post by a team of American adventurers. Ninety-five years later, British adventurer James Ketchell is following in their footsteps, albeit this time by gyrocopter
“Just after six p.m. yesterday,” announced The Hongkong Daily Press on July 1, 1924, “three men, stalwart and sunburned, in weather-stained khaki shirts and shorts, and whose unshaved cheeks and unkempt hair told the tale of arduous travel, walked off Blake Pier and along the Praya to the Hongkong Club.” Some weeks behind schedule, these celebrated airmen, led by Squadron Leader Archibald Stuart-MacLaren, were attempting the first flight around the globe, and their arrival in Hong Kong from Indochina had been keenly anticipated.
Eager spectators had looked on as what an awestruck reporter for The China Mail described as “a mere speck that was soon to assume the semblance of a bird and later to take shape as a great plane with the form of men clearly visible” landed in the harbour between Stonecutters Island and Lai Chi Kok. A three-aircraft team of Americans attempting the same feat, though from east to west, had landed their floatplanes in the same spot and left again more than three weeks earlier. Hoping to meet them here, the British fliers’ first plane had crashed in Burma, and a replacement had had to be shipped over from Japan. After a rousing send off (complete with firecrackers), they proceeded to Japan and the eastern Soviet Union, but ditched in the Bering Sea on August 4, and were rescued by their Royal Canadian Navy support ship. Two of the American planes completed their round-the-world flight in Seattle in late September.
Currently attempting a feat similar to that of his compatriots of 95 years ago – though on a more northerly course – British adventurer James Ketchell is aiming to be the first person to fly around the world in a gyrocopter. Like their Vickers Vulture, his aircraft also has an open cockpit with a pusher propeller located just behind it. A lack of wings and floats, however, makes the gyrocopter more vulnerable to the elements.
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