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Flying High
the life of Beryl Markham, 1902-1986
by Michele Jin
Excerpts:
On a foggy September morning in 1936, Beryl Markham’s turquoise and silver Vera Gull airplane crash-landed in a peat bog in Nova Scotia, and she became the first pilot to fly west across the Atlantic from England to Canada.
For the long journey into the wind, the plane had to be fitted with extra fuel tanks on the wings and in the cabin, where they formed a wall around the pilot’s seat. The plane was so overloaded that Markham had to choose between warm clothing and a life vest — she could not wear both for fear of adding too much bulk.
In her autobiography West with the Night, Markham describes the moment she took off on the daring flight: “I felt the craft refuse its burden and strain toward the earth in sullen rebellion, only to listen at last to the persuasion of stick and elevators, the dogmatic argument of blueprints that said she had to fly because the figures proved it.”
Markham flew into a storm in the dark, with no radio equipment on board the aircraft. She was utterly alone. A few hours into the flight, the engine died and the plane dove toward the sea. Markham assumed that her fuel tank must have run out sooner than expected and groped in the dark to find the latch on a second tank. She finally got the tank open, but the motor did not restart. When her altimeter wound down below 300 feet, Markham began to wonder how high waves can reach in a storm. After a few more terrifying seconds, the engine finally sprang back to life.
Toward the end of the flight, the engine began to cough and sputter before cutting out once again. Markham dove toward the sea; then the engine caught and she climbed as high as she could, only to have the engine die again. Sputter, halt, dive, catch, climb . . . the plane continued to struggle until it reached the coast of Nova Scotia. Then the engine finally died for good and Markham was forced to land. Ice had lodged in the plane’s air intake, choking off the fuel flow to the carburetor.
When the plane hit the ground, it sank nose first into the bog. Markham stumbled out of the cabin, blood pouring from her head, and glanced at her watch. “Twenty-one hours and twenty-five minutes. Atlantic flight. Abingdon, England, to a nameless swamp —nonstop.”
Markham viewed the flight as a failure because she hadn’t reached her intended destination, New York. But the rest of the world celebrated her record-breaking flight, and she received a hero’s welcome when she arrived in Manhattan. There was talk of a Hollywood movie about her life.
While that particular movie project never got off the ground, Markham’s life contained more than ample drama for a screenplay . . .
