Meanwhile, Henning and Callan, Ely's mechanics, worked at Piny Beach, where later the Hampton Roads Naval Base would be built.  Using bits shipped from Hammondspot and pieces salvaged in Baltimore, they built a plane.  Ely got there on a Sunday in foul weather.  He added cigar-shaped aluminum floats under the wings and splashboard on the landing gear.  Late in the day he saw the plane--without its engine--aboard the navy tug Alice, headed for the Navy yard.  The engine had been shipped; no one knew when it might arrive...

At the old Monticello Hotel in Norfolk, Ely told reporters, "Everything is ready.  If the weather is favorable, I might expect to make the flight tomorrow without difficulty."...

Callen and Henning had hoisted the plane aboard the Birmingham, pushed it to the after end of the platform, and secured it with its tail nearly over the ship's wheel.  Only reassured him.  "Old Gene can fly anywhere," he said.  Then Ely's chief mechanic Harrington arrived with the engine.  The three were getting it out of the crate when Ely and Chambers boarded the ship...

Going down river, Ely helped his men install the engine.  He wanted to double check everything to avoid another failure; besides, the familiar work eased his tensions.  He blew out the gas tank vents twice.  In spite of squalls, they had the plane ready before the ship rounded the last buoy off Piny Beach.  They had almost reached the destroyers Bailey and Stringham, waiting with Winthrop and the other Washington officials, when another squall closed in.  A quarter mile off Old Point Comfort, Captain Fletcher anchored the Birmingham.  Hail blotted out the Chamberlain Hotel.

It was nearly two 0'clock when that squall moved off to the north.  Ely climbed to his plane's seat.  Henning spun the propeller.  Under the bridge the wireless operator tapped out a play-by-play account of the engine testing.  When the warm-up came to an end, nobody liked the looks of the weather.  Black clouds scudded just above the topmast.  The cruiser Washington radioed that it was thick up the bay, the the Weather Bureau reported it would be worse the next day.  Chambers nodded toward the torpedo boats.  "If this weather hold till dark," he said, "a lot of those guys will go back to Washington shouting 'I told you so'."

By 2:30 the sky looked lighter to the south.  Captains Fletcher and Chambers decided to get under way.  Iowa-born Ely could not swim, feared the water, got seasick on ferryboats, and knew nothing about ships.  he thought the cruiser would get under way as quickly as a San Francisco Bay ferry.  he had no idea that the windlass he heard wheezing and clanking under the aeroplane platform might take half an hour to heave 90 fathoms of chain out of the mud.  So he paced first the bridge, then the launching platform.  Then he climbed into his seat and tried the controls.  Sixty fathoms of chain were still out.  Henning spun the propeller.  Ely opened the throttle and listened approvingly to the steady beat.  Under the plane's tail, the helmsman at the wheel took the full force of the blast.

Ely was ready.  He idled the engine and waited.  Then he gunned the engine to clear it, twisted the wheel for a feel of the rudder, rechecked the setting of the elevator, and looked back at the captains on the bridge wing.  They looked completely unhurried.

Captain Washington I. Chambers

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