Eastward

Soon after 5 o'clock in the morning the three motors of the Trimotored Fokker monoplane Friendship, which Commander Richard Evelyn Byrd sold several weeks ago when he decided not to use it on his proposed South-Polar flight, began to hum. The ship taxied out from the boat-landing of the Jeffrey Yacht Club in East Boston. Further out in the harbor the Friendship made four attempts to leave the water; then one of the crew of four stepped off onto a tug nearby. This time when the plane slid over the misty water the spray faded suddenly under her pontoons and the Friendship climbed up slowly in a curving line into the early morning. A man in a small boat, one of the few witnesses, shouted, "Hey. . . . They're off for England."

The Friendship's departure had been shrouded in reticence by backers (principally Mrs. Frederick Guest, wife of a Britisher and daughter of Millionaire U. S. Senator Phipps of Colorado) and crew. Of the latter, the only well known professional aviator was Wilmer Stultz, who turned back rather than pilot Mrs. Grayson to almost certain mid-Atlantic destruction last autumn, and who has since flown about the Atlantic seaboard with Charles Levine and Mabel Boll. The other two were just the kind of people who would be likely to depart from a yacht club landing when they wanted to fly to England. One was slim Lou Gordon, mechanic, 26, in aviation since 1919. The third was a girl who looked exactly like Charles Augustus Lindbergh.

She was Amelia Earhart (pronounced airheart), who has studied medicine and science at Columbia University, who has flown 500 solo hours, who has owned two planes, who is a professional social worker when not an aviatrix. She planned to control the plane at least part of the time on "the way to England."

A few minutes before noon the Friendship swooped down into Halifax harbor, Nova Scotia. Her crew went to a hotel and early to bed. Miss Earhart refused to tell newsgatherers what kind of powder she used. Up early they were, and again eastward, only to land at Trepassey, Newfoundland, to fix a slight leak in the gasoline tank.