Bermuda usually feels pleasantly remote
from such polar nastiness. Balminess has, in
fact, been the touchstone of its appeal to visitors as a mid-Atlantic refuge from the scourge
of winter. But in this epic storm, Bermuda had
a hostage to fortune, vulnerable to winter’s
power—a gleaming, silver, two-storey-high
flying boat of Britain’s Imperial Airways, one
that since 1937 had been wafting well-heeled
visitors and locals from Port Washington,
New York, to and from a seaplane base on
Darrell’s Island in Hamilton Harbour. The
flying boat service was a milestone: the first
scheduled commercial air service in the
history of the island colony. In the 1930s,
transoceanic air service was in its infancy and
Bermuda, as it had in so many touristic ways,
was in the forefront of progress.
The flying boat that made headlines that
winter January, jauntily christened Cavalier,
Moreover, flying boat passengers enjoyed
comfortable carpeted cabins and reclined in
deep-cushioned chairs complete with lace
antimacassars. Some even luxuriated in private
compartments. All passengers enjoyed the
attention of solicitous stewards in crisp white
tunics who served three-course meals, with
silver service and china, in the deep-bellied
bird of the air as it soared over the Atlantic.
Up on the flight deck, Cavalier was flown by
a three-man crew of Captain M.J.R. “Roly”
Alderson, first officer Patrick Chapman and
navigator Neil Richardson.
Tucked in the cargo holds of the flying
boat were not only monogrammed luggage
and expensive leather-bagged golf clubs but
also sacks of precious air mail destined for
Bermuda—yet another reason the colonial
government had enthusiastically embraced the
inauguration of regular air service to Bermuda.
Two airlines—Imperial Airways (an antecedent
of British Airways) and Juan Trippe’s globetrotting Pan American Airlines—offered
service from Darrell’s Island, snugly sheltered
in Bermuda’s Great Sound, to the US east
coast, each vying to outdo the other in service
and reliability, pampering glamorous tourists
and well-off Bermudians alike.
On that January 21st, all started out
well—the Imperial Airways flying boat, with
a passenger load of 10, taxied uneventfully
from the seaplane base of Port Washington
at 10: 42 a.m. Weather reports made Captain
Alderson—flying Cavalier as he was in the
infancy of both commercial air travel and
reliable weather forecasting—mindful of a
cold front out over the Atlantic which could
potentially move between Cavalier and the
warm waters of the Gulf Stream which bathes
Bermuda. The passengers that winter day were
a varied but prosperous lot—privileged upper-middle-class Americans with a sprinkling of
well-off white Bermudians. The passenger
roster included Donald W. Miller, a mid-west-ern department-store owner from Lincoln,
Nebraska, and his wife. Gordon Noakes, head
of a New York auction house was, like Miller,
a seasoned business travel veteran with hundreds of hours in the air. But, for Noakes, this
was a flight with a romantic difference: he and
his wife were flying to Bermuda to celebrate
their 40th wedding anniversary in high style.
Mrs. Noakes was especially excited because she
had never flown before.
Another American passenger, Charles Talbot, a dashing, athletic Harvard graduate from
tony Brookline, Massachusetts, was travelling
with his arm in a cast—he was going to the
“Isles of Rest” to recuperate from a skiing
accident on the icy slopes. For her part, Edna
Watson, a red-haired, Canadian-born physiotherapist and guest-house owner, was flying
home to Bermuda after spending the holidays
22 January 1939: American newspaper headlines
trumpeted the ravages of a terrible winter storm
blanketing the American northeast as two cold
fronts collided. The temperature sank to minus
30 degrees F in the Adirondack Mountains in
upstate New York even as an appalling mix of
rain, hail and snow fell on the eastern seaboard.
Forty-mile-an-hour winds roared down the frigid
streets of Manhattan and buffeted the shores of
Long Island Sound. A succession of storms agitated
the icy Atlantic in what we would today label a
“weather bomb.”
