#15196, Edward Maitland GEE (later MAITLAND)

Edward's father, Arthur Gee was one of the early pioneers to America, who bought a plot of land in Le Mars, Iowa.  Arthur had married Margaretta Maitland and for family reasons changed his family's name to Maitland.  They had five children of whom we only show two. (The other three being Margaret Emma (1884-1975); Kathleen (1886-1961) and Henry (1888-1918)).  Life amongst the native Indians is recorded as being pretty tough.  Margaretta became ill and the family returned to live in Cambridgeshire.  By the time Edward was 18 both his parents had died so he found himself in charge of the family.  They all adored him, as did everyone who knew him later.  He was a very charismatic character, kind, amusing and handsome.  His interest in aeronautics having developed early, he moved the young family to a home near Farnborough and having no chaperone they led a rather wild existance including the younger ones testing their homemade parachutes by jumping off the roof.

Edward made his first major balloon voyage leaving England on 18th November 1908 and flying 1,117 miles to Russia in thirty-six and a half hours.  The following year found him attached to the Balloon School at Farnborough Airfield and experimenting with powered aircraft but after a crash in which he broke both his legs he retricted his activities to airships and balloons.  He was awarded Royal Aero Club Airship Pilot Certificate No. 8 in September 1911 and in 1913 he carried out a parachute descent from the airship Delta.

In 1919 the Air Ministry required Edward to accompany the R 34 airship on the first such crossing of the Atlantic, captained by Major G H Scott.  The R 34 was 643 ft long (twice a football pitch) and 79 ft in diameter with a maximum speed of 62 mph.  She had 5 engines, each of 250 hp and her highly flammable Hydrogen capacity was 1,950, 000 cu ft.  At the time airships were thought to have enormous potential as a means of travel that was both faster and smoother than a ship at sea.  Air-Commodore Edward Maitland wrote a detailed account titled The Log of H.M.A. R34 Journey to America and Back of which the Trust holds a copy but the following description is abridged from the Airship Heritage Trust,

"THE ATLANTIC FLIGHT
On 1st July 1919 the ship was gassed to its limit and loaded to its full capacity, and by the end of the evening the ship was ready to go. The ships official departure time was set at 2.00am (GMT) on 2nd July in order to obtain the maximum lift from her gasbags. The ship was eased out of her shed slowly by 700 members of the handling party. The weather forecast was favourable and Major Scott decided not to wait any longer, and at 1.42 am (GMT) the signal to release was given and the R34 lifted slowly in to the misty night sky.

The engines were signalled to commence and the propellers roared into life. The ship was on the way to America, but was so loaded for the journey, that even with the forward momentum of the engines, she very slowly gained height. The R34 travelled along the Firth of Forth, then at a height of 1,300ft she cleared Rosyth, Glasgow, and down the Clyde by daybreak.

Life on board began to settle in to the agreed routine of scheduled watches, meals and rest times. Strains of jazz could be heard through the ship from the gramophone, which was carried on board for the entertainment of the crew. Crossing the ocean, the morning fog lifted and the crew saw that they were stuck between two cloud layers, the upper obscuring the sun.

The wireless operators were finding that these weather conditions were causing electrostatic shocks from the equipment. The clouds soon parted and the sun broke through. Major Scott was wary of the effect of superheating on the gasbags, and wanted to avoid at all costs the valving of hydrogen at this early stage of the flight, and so he bought the ship down low into the layer of fog, which protected the ship from the sunshine and soon cooled the gas. The ship carried on with her voyage at a steady pace, and standard routines.

The weather slowly worsened, and all the ships engines were engaged to full power as the wind speed increased and a storm began to approach. The next morning the R34 was halfway across the Atlantic but the weather was continuing to deteriorate. However throughout the day there were some breaks in the weather causing the ship to be able to view the transatlantic shipping traffic below, for some 50 miles in each direction.
By the evening the weather became increasing stormy and the wind turned head on to the ship. Coming up from the southeast, the winds were blowing at about 50mph causing the ship to fight her way forwards and sideways.

Throughout the night, Major Scott tried to move the ship up higher to avoid the wind, but if was found to be the same at each level. By morning the cloudbank had moved away and clear skies brought a sight of a 150ft iceberg below the ship, further behind it smaller bergs and pack ice was visible. The clouds soon returned as Newfoundland was not far off the ship, and fog enveloped her once more.

Concern was beginning to be shown by Major Scott as there were no gauges on the petrol tanks and use of the dipstick showed that there were only some 2,200 gallons of petrol left. With further strong headwinds expected down the coast, the thought of getting to New York without stopping was looking more unlikely every hour that drew on.

The ship flew over Labrador, and at 12.50 land was sighted for the first time. Now the ship had to follow the coast down and head for it's landing place at New York. With only 500 gallons of fuel left, the ship was bought down to 800ft to try and escape the worst of the headwinds. From this height, the crew had superb views of the North American forests and could see, smell and hear every detail.

The ship had been in the air for 4 days and the crew was beginning to tire. Emergency preparations were tentatively being made in Boston for an emergency landing there, but the ship continued on her voyage. Each fuel tank was inspected and whatever was left in the bottom of the tanks was collected and poured in to the main tanks to keep the engines running. The 12 British ground crew which had been sent on ahead by ship, to make arrangements for the landing, had heard from Scott about the critical fuel situation, and started up for Boston, and had already made preparations for a landing in Massachusetts.

However, it was decided that there was enough fuel left in the tanks, as John Shotter worked with many of the crew members to use jam jars or whatever they could find to carry any of the dregs of fuel from the tanks, to the engines. Major Scott made the decision that they did have enough fuel to continue onto the agreed landing area at Roosevelt Field, Mineola, Long Island, New York. In the last hour of the flight, the crew busied themselves in making themselves presentable.

By 9.00am Mineola came in to view. The landing field had been prepared with 20 tonne concrete mooring blocks. All the carparks were full and a huge grandstand had been erected for local and national dignitaries. Major Jack Pritchard donned a parachute and whilst the ship circled overhead, dropped to the ground and became the first man to arrive in America by air.

He hastily arranged the ground crews, and helped ease the ship to the ground. The R34 landed at 9.54am after 108 hours 12 minutes flying time. This became the world endurance record breaking that set previously by the British NS 11. There were 140 gallons of fuel left on board, which was sufficient only for another 2 hours flying at reduced power."

"LANDFALL

The ship was only in America for 3 days. During this time the crew were allowed to rest and have hot showers, they attended a constant series of events where they were saluted for their historic crossing. The people of New York lavished their generosity on the crew and they were bombarded with offers of invitations to formal functions during their stay. Many dinners and parties were provided for the crew member, many had never been entertained at this level of opulence.

The engineering crew stayed with the ship ready to give the engines a long-awaited overhaul and a full check over in preparation for their return voyage home. It was found that that no repairs were necessary and the engines had performed well. The propellers had accumulated a thick coating of engine oil and this was proudly removed by a local firm, free of charge and just happy to offer assistance to the crew and to the ship.

The R34 was in very good shape, and moored to a three-wire system at the bows, whose own lift kept the wires taut. However some of the guide wires caught and tore one of the pannels in the nose. This was hastily repaied with spare canvas covering. The crew returned to the ship and provisions were loaded back onto the ship for her return voyage. Some 25lb of mail was delivered to the ship, for it's return journey to England. The final preparation was to gas the ship, and this was carried out using thousands of cylinders of hydrogen."

"RETURN JOURNEY

As with the flight to America, the R34 would be gassed to capacity again, and await the coolest part of the day to depart, and so the ship was finally launched at 6 minutes to midnight on Wednesday July 10th. The great crowd which had always been around the R34 her entire time in America gave a huge cheer, and the ship was airborne.

The wind had picked up before the launch and was gusting at 30mph, which caused concern, but the ship cleared the landing field, and made her way eastwards. As a gesture of gratitude to the city, which had generously hosted her crews, the R34 flew towards the illuminated metropolis. The ship made her way up to a height of 2,000ft as Major Scott was unsure of the height of the skyscrapers. Searchlights illuminated the ship as she flew over the city and, despite it being 1.00am in the morning; thousands of well wishers took to the city streets and rooftops to wave. The ship then turned out to the sea and headed on towards home.

Very good progress was made during the night as the ship had the advantage of a strong tail wind, and her speed increased to 90mph as she flew in the prevailing air current. The forward engine was rested and still the ship was managing to race along at 90 mph. The crew was unprepared for the swiftness of their eastward crossing of the Atlantic.

It was considered that, as the R 34 was gaining time on her voyage and not expending much of her fuel compared to her outward journey, the ship change her flight route and fly over London before returning to East Fortune. The return home was uneventful, and the standard ship routine continued. The only problem occurred when an engineer fell against the clutch of an engine causing the engine to be freed and race until destruction because the connecting rods fractured.

The repairs could not be made in flight and so the engine was stopped, but this in no way impeded the speed of the ship. Due to this event and not having any spare power in case of emergencies, it was decided to cancel the voyage over London and head straight home.

It was not until the final evening at midnight when a message was received from the Air Ministry to divert the ship from landing at East Fortune, but go directly to Pulham. It was initially due to bad weather at East Fortune, but a few hours later a message from East Fortune confirmed the weather conditions had improved. A request was put in to the Air Ministry to have the ship return to East Fortune but this was turned down and the ship was ordered to Pulham.

No reason was ever given for this change in plan and no explanation can be found for it. The ship carried across the English countryside and came, rather quietly to Pulham Air Station at 6.57 GMT to be welcomed by the RAF personnel, which was rather quieter than that which greeted the ship at New York, and than expected at East Fortune.

The return journey had taken three days three hours and three minutes. The ship had travelled some 7,420 miles on this voyage at an average speed of 43 mph."

Edward had been commissioned a second-lieutenant in the Essex Regiment on 23 May 1900, and served with the 2nd battalion of his regiment in the Orange River Colony during the Second Boer War in South Africa. He was promoted to lieutenant on 26 January 1902, and returned home with his battalion in October that year, after the end of the war three months earlier.  

On 19 August 1911 he was attached to the Royal Engineers' Air Battalion and later that year he was appointed Officer Commanding No. 1 Company, Air Battalion. (No.1 Company, Air Battalion was subsequently renamed No.1 Squadron RFC and then No.1 Squadron RAF). In 1914, when the Army airships were transferred to the Navy, he transferred to the Royal Naval Air Service and in the early months of World War I served with the Dunkirk Squadron, operating captive balloons. Impressed by the kite-balloons being used by the French, he returned to Britain to promote their use to the War Office, and was appointed head of the kite balloon school which was established at Roehampton. Early in 1916 he became the head of the Air Operational Department at the Admiralty, but this post did not suit him and he was appointed the head of the naval airship station at Pulham. On 1 April 1918, with the merger of the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps, Edward transferred to the Royal Air Force. He was subsequently promoted to air commodore.

Just two years after his celebrated trans-Atlantic flight he was killed as a passenger on the R38 when it suffered a structural failure and broke up over the Humber.  He must have been one of the few men to bear the King's commision in all three services.  Thus the country lost one of its greatest pioneers of lighter-than-air flight.

Anthony Cobbold  

September 2024