ore
reaching Long Island, and mechanics were sent to Chatham and to
Boston to pick her up in case of trouble.

The big ship surprised everybody by appearing over Long Island about
nine o'clock Sunday morning. The officer in charge of the landing
party having gone to Boston, expecting her arrival there, Major John
Pritchard "stepped down" in a parachute from the airship, and, landing
lightly, took charge of the landing of the big machine.

An approaching cyclone, which would have made it almost impossible to
handle the airship at Mineola, was responsible for a rather hurried
start back at midnight of Wednesday, July 9th. She visited Broadway in
the midst of the midnight glare, turned over Forty-second Street a
little after one o'clock in the morning, and put out to sea and her
home airdrome. The voyage back was mostly with favoring winds, and she
landed at Pulham, the airship station in Norfolk, after 75 hours and 3
minutes of flight. The voyage back was practically without incident
except for the failure of one engine, which in no way held back the
airship. She was turned off her course to East Fortune by reports that
there were storms and head winds which might hold her back in case she
kept on her way.

The voyage was probably the most significant in the history of
flying. It brought home to the public the possibilities of the airship
for ocean commerce as nothing else could have done. The ship remained
in the air longer than any previous airship, and pointed the way clear
to commercial flying. It is, in fact, only considered a matter of time
before companies are started to carry passengers and mails across the
Atlantic at a price that would offer serious competition to the
fastest steamships.

The airship has been very much neglected by popular favor. Its
physical clumsiness, its lack of sporting competition in comparison
with the airplane which must fight to keep itself up in the air, its
lack of romance as contrasted with that of the airplane in war, have
all tended to cast somewhat of a shadow over the lighter-than-air
vessel and cause the public to pass it by without interest. It is a
very real fact, therefore, that very few people realize either the
services of the airship in the war or its possibilities for the
future.

During the war the airship was invaluable in the ceaseless vigil for
the submarine. England early stretched a cordon of airship guards all
about her coasts and crippled the U-boats' work