August 21, 1935-Atlantic Ocean-Hopping Fad Dies and Old Orchard Is Sad
The Washington Daily News—Wednesday—August 21,—1935
Atlantic Ocean-Hopping Fad Dies and Old Orchard Is Sad
By Ernie Pyle
OLD ORCHARD BEACH, Me. — The beach is maybe 200 yards wide, sloping gently from the boardwalk to the water’s edge; it is straight as an arrow for miles and miles, and grayish white, and hard and smooth as a rock.
The beach is probably just like it was a thousand years ago, so to send word to any aspiring transatlantic fliers that it’s still a good take-off place, might be stating the too obvious. And anyhow, there probably aren’t any more aspiring transatlantic fliers.
As a telegraph editor who handled the stories, and as an aviation fan in the insane ocean-hopping days of 1927, ’28 and ’29, I had always wanted to see Old Orchard Beach. I had pictured it as a desolate strip of the Atlantic coast, hard to get to and hard to exist on, with a few board shacks and some trees that resembled orchards, but by circumstance of nature uniquely suited to airplane take-offs with heavy loads.
A romantic conception, but silly one, I assure you. For Old Orchard turns out to be the Coney Islandishest place on the eastern seaboard.
It is a regular resort city, extending back six or eight blocks from the shore. Thousands and thousands of people live there in the summer. On Sunday you can’t drive, you can’t park, you can’t even walk for the undulating mass of humanity.
And it is cheap. The Old Mill and the scenic railway and all the come-on games are going full blast; the barkers are barking and soda pop flows like water.
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Old Orchard is sorry the ocean-flying fever is over. It brought the city hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Mrs. Frances Grayson started it in the summer of ’27. She was here six weeks in “The Dawn,” made two abortive starts across the Atlantic, and was finally lost at sea on a flight from New York to Old Orchard on a third attempt.
A lot of good it did Mrs. Grayson, but just the same she kept the season open here an extra month, and brought the city $100,000, they say.
Old Orchard is gory with tradition, and with the memory of its dead ones, and its heroes.
From here Phil Payne, the editor, and Jim Hill and Lloyd Bertaud, the mail pilots, started their flight in August, ’27, which ended in death off Newfoundland. Here Williams and Yancey cracked up.
But from here also, went triumphs. Lotti, Assolant and LeFevre, The “Yellow Bird” Frenchmen, gave the war their gun here, and landed heroes in their native France. After their crack-up, Williams and Yancey achieved a sort of fame by reaching Europe alive on their second try. From here, Brock and Schlee started their flight around the world.
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All these are fond memories to Lewis M. Fowler, tall gaunt and aging captain of police. He was in charge of the start of every one of the flights; he was with the preparing aviators almost 24 hours a day; he knew them well, he has their signatures before they died, and letters of thanks from them after they landed.
He has a scrap book, with a lot of snapshots and signatures and letters in it, and if you show the proper interest he’ll take you back of the desk, among the guns and handcuffs, and let you see it.
“I knew ’em all,” he says. “They were all good. All those take-offs did Old Orchard a lot of good. They brought thousands of people here. Ocean flying was just a fad, and it’s gone now. But maybe it’ll come back, or maybe some fad will spring up to take its place. You can’t tell.”
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Down at the beach, a huge Curtiss Condor landed. Out came 15 passengers, and then the pilot. It was Clarence Chamberlin, who flew from New York to Germany, carrying Charles Levine, in 1927.
Chamberlin is up here hopping passengers. We had a little reunion. I knew him in the old days. And the two planes he has here—I knew them in the old days, too. For they were the first big ships to fly the airlines between New York and Atlanta, and I had ridden in them thousands of miles.
“How you doing, Clarence,” I asked of the man who missed a fortune because he was just a few days behind Lindbergh, instead of ahead.
“I’m doing $500 every weekday, and $1000 on Sundays.”
So at least there’s one aviator who has used Old Orchard Beach for more than a stepping stone to nothing.
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