officers in the use of aeroplanes, and when, upon the
death of Mr. Horace Short, in 1917, the Short brothers vacated
Eastchurch, and concentrated at their Rochester works, Eastchurch passed
wholly under naval control. No honour or reward that could be given to
the members of the Royal Aero Club, and especially to Mr. McClean and
Mr. Cockburn, can possibly equal this, that they were part founders of
the Naval Air Service.

If Eastchurch was the earliest centre of scientific experiment and
practical training in aviation, it was at the great Brooklands aerodrome
that flying first became popular. Mr. Roe had been allowed to use a shed
in the paddock for his first aeroplane, and had made his first flight
there, at a very humble elevation, but the conversion of the centre of
the track into an aerodrome was not effected till late in 1909. The
motor-racing track, about three and a half miles in length, enclosed a
piece of land which was partly farmland and partly wilderness, watered
by the river Wey. On the west side of it there was the Weybridge sewage
farm, which, when flying began, added new terrors to a forced descent.
When Mr. Henri Farman visited England, in January 1908, he inspected
Brooklands and expressed an unfavourable opinion of its fitness as a
site for an aerodrome. So nothing was done until the visit of M. Louis
Paulhan, late in 1909. The performances of M. Paulhan at the Rheims
meeting, and later at the Blackpool meeting, excited much admiration,
and Mr. G. Holt Thomas, who had long studied aviation, and never grew
tired of advocating its claims, determined to engage popular interest
and, if possible, official support by bringing Paulhan to London, there
to display his powers. By arrangement with Mr. Locke King, the
proprietor of Brooklands, and Major Lindsay Lloyd, the new manager, one
of the fields of the farm was cleared of obstacles and was mowed and
rolled, as a landing ground for Paulhan. There in the closing days of
October 1909 Paulhan gave many exhibition flights on a Farman biplane.
The longest of these, which lasted nearly three hours and covered
ninety-six miles, was made on the 1st of November and was witnessed by
Lord Roberts. The exhibition was not a financial success; thousands of
spectators watched the flying from outside the ground, without
contributing to the expenses; but it impressed the committee of the
Brooklands Automobile Racing Club, and they resolved to turn the
interior of their tra