Then Ely noticed the horizon darkening with another squall and he began to wonder why the Birmingham did not start.  He looked at Chambers, and pointed at the approaching blackened.  The captain nodded.  he knew it would be close, but he could do nothing.  Thirty fathoms of chain were still in the water.

Gene Ely checked everything again, and stared at the squall ahead.  He seemed about to lose hic chance because the Navy was so slow.  At 3:16 he decided he would wait no longer for the ship to start steaming into the wind.  If ever he was going to fly off that ship, it had to be now.  he gave the release signal.

Harrington, who knew the plan, hesitated,  Ely emphatically repeated t his signal.  The mechanic yanked the toggle, watched the plane roll down the ramp and drop out of sight.  Water splashed high in front of the ship.  Then the plane came into sight, climbing slowly toward the dark clouds.  Men on the platform and bridge let out the breath they had held.  One of them spoke into a voice tube, and the wireless operator tapped out," Ely just gone."

In 1910, Curtiss pilots steered with their rudder, balanced with their ailerons and kept the elevator set, by marks on its bamboo pushrod, wither at a climb, level, or a glide position.  In order to dip and pick up a bit more speed, Ely took off with his elevator set for glide.  Off the bow he waited the fraction of an instant too long to shift to climb.  The machine pointer up, but squashed down through the air.

Gene felt a sudden drag.  Salt water whipped his face.  a rattle, like hail on a tin roof, was louder than his engine.  He tried to wipe the spray from his goggles but his glover hand only smeared them, so he was blinded.  Then the splashboard pulled the wheels free of the water.  The rattle stopped.  He snatched off his goggles and saw dirty, brown water just beyond his shoes.

The seat shook.  The engine seemed to be trying to jump out of the plane.  Ely's sense of direction left him.  There were no landmarks, only shadows in the midst, and that terrifying water below.  He swung left toward the darkest musty shadow.  He had to land quickly.  On the ground he might stop the vibration, take off again, and find the Navy Yard.  He wondered if the bulky life jacket that fouled his arms would keep him afloat if the plane splashed.

A strip of land bordered by gray, weathered beach houses loomed ahead.  Five minutes after the mechanic had pulled the toggle, Ely landed on the beach at Willoughby spit.  "Where am I?" he asked Julia smith, who had dashed out of the nearest house.

"Right between my house and the yacht club," she said.

It sounded funny but it wasn't.  He knew the splintered propeller would not take him to the Navy Yard.  He had failed.  He blamed himself bitterly for the split second delay in shifting the elevator.  now he knew how to do it without hitting the water, but would he ever get another chance?

Boats full of people converged on the yacht club dock.  Their enthusiastic congratulations confused him.  "I'm glad you did not head for the Navy Yard," Chambers told him.  "Nobody could find it in this weather."  Captain Fletcher agreed.  John Barry Ryan offered him $500 for the broken propeller.  "A souvenir of this historic flight," he explained.

Ely figured that in not making the Navy Yard, he had failed, and Chambers and Ryan spent the evening trying to convince him that he had succeeded.  His particular  landing place was unimportant.  It would soon be forgotten.  The world would remember that he had shown that a plane could fly from a ship, and that navies could no longer ignore aeroplanes.  Ely did not cheer up until Chambers promised to try to arrange a chance for him to do it again.  "I could land aboard, too," was Ely's comment.

The nest morning Ryan's valet wrapped the splintered propeller in a bathrobe and carried it into his pullman drawing room.  There Ryan gave a champagne party until train time, presented Ely with a check for the propeller, and made him a lieutenant in his U.S. Aeronautical Reserve.  After the train pulled out, Gene spent the check on a diamond for Mabel (1)

..Had Glenn Curtiss fully appreciated just how important Ely's flight would become, he might have preserved the Hudson Flyer.  Unfortunately he did not, and not too long after Ely's historic flight, the plane faded from public view.  Plans for the aircraft have long since vanished as well.  Only a small number of photographs remain to show how the airplane was designed and constructed.  Built by the Curtiss Aeroplane Company in Hammondsport, New York, it obtained its name, Hudson Flyer, when Glenn Curtiss personally piloted the airplane along the Hudson River from Albany to New York City in May of 1910...subsequently, Curtiss always billed it as the Hudson Flyer whenever it made exhibition appearances.  Eugene Ely, like the historic plane he flew, soon passed into history as well.  He was killed in a flying accident in Macon, Georgia on October 19, 1911.

Ely taking off from the Birmingham

The Hampton Roads Navel Museum [at Nauticus] includes an exhibit on Eugene Ely's history-making flight from the USS Birmingham.  Included is a scale model of the Hudson Flyer.  Many hours of research were devoted to reconstructing the design and construction of the plane, including the preparation of working drawings from which the model was made.  With a wing span of 26-¼ inches and an overall length of 30-½ inches, the model is large enough to show almost all of the detail found in the original aircraft.  The museum believes it to be the only scale model of the Hudson Flyer in existence today .(2)

(1)Wings for the Fleet: A Narrative of Naval Aviation's Early Development, 1910-1916.
George van Deurs.  1966. pp.15-21.
(2) The Daybook.  Volume 1 Issue 3:3.  March-April 1995.  Publication of the Hampton Roads Naval Museum.  "Ely and Hudson Flyer make historic flight off Birmingham" by Tom Hesse.

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