Great Britain,
removed their factory, and Eastchurch very quickly became the scientific
centre of British aviation. Early in 1911 the Admiralty were persuaded
to allow four naval officers to learn to fly. The machines on which they
learned were supplied free of cost by Mr. McClean, and another member
of the Aero Club, Mr. G. B. Cockburn, who was the solitary
representative of Great Britain at the Rheims meeting of 1909, supplied
the tuition, also free of cost. The instructor naturally marked out for
this purpose, says Mr. Cockburn, was Mr. Cecil Grace, a fine pilot, a
great sportsman, and a man quite untouched by the spirit of
commercialism, but only a few weeks earlier he had been lost while
flying over the Channel from France to England. So Mr. Cockburn
undertook the task, and for about six weeks took up his residence at
Eastchurch. The four naval officers were Lieutenants C. R. Samson, R.
Gregory, and A. M. Longmore, of the Royal Navy; and Captain E. L.
Gerrard, of the Royal Marine Light Infantry. They were keen and apt
pupils, as they needs must have been to qualify for their certificates
in six weeks of bad weather, which included one considerable snow-storm.
Instruction in those days was no easy matter; the machines were pushers;
the pilot sat in front with the control on his right hand, the pupil sat
huddled up behind the instructor, catching hold of the control by
stretching his arm over the instructor's shoulder, and getting
occasional jabs in the forearm from the instructor's elbows as a hint to
let go. Mr. Cockburn weighed over fourteen stone, and Captain Gerrard
only a little less, so the old fifty horse-power Gnome engine had all it
could do to get the machine off the ground. In a straight flight along
the aerodrome the height attained was often no more than from twenty to
thirty feet; then the machine had to make a turn at that dangerously
small elevation, or fly into the trees at the end. Fortunately the
aerodrome was clear except for a few week-end pilots who practised on
Saturdays and Sundays; the instructor and his pupils were energetic,
flying at dawn and at dusk to avoid the high winds; and the training was
completed with only two crashes, neither of them very serious. The navy
pupils were encouraged throughout by frequent visits from their senior
officer at Sheerness, Captain Godfrey Paine, who befriended aviation
from the first. Eastchurch soon became the recognized centre for the
training of naval