A little piece of aeronautical history will be offered in Purcell’s of Birr upcoming Collectables and Rarities live online sale. A dynamo propeller from Alcock and Brown’s Vickers bomber airplane, which was damaged on takeoff from St John’s in Newfoundland, when the two Mancunian pilots made aviation history in June 1919, will form part of the sale on March 22nd.
In the successful attempt at the first transatlantic crossing, the dynamo, a wind-driven electrical generator which sat to the left hand side of the main propeller, provided energy for heating their electric suits and radio communication. The plane took off from a rough field at 13.45 on June 14th, barely missing the tops of trees, and at 17.20 the dynamo failed – which also disabled their intercom.
It wasn’t the only trouble the pair had as they had to contend with thick fog, which meant that Brown could not use his sextant for astral navigation. They were also caught in a snowstorm, where their instruments iced up and later sat drenched by rain in the open cockpit with basic electric suits that had failed because of damage to the dynamo propeller.
Flying blind in fog, frozen, and after losing control of the aircraft on two occasions, while also having to contend with a broken trim control, making the plane very noisy as the 865 gallons of fuel on board was consumed, by the time the pair landed in the west of Ireland they were exhausted.
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After their 16-hour ordeal traversing the Atlantic they saw what they thought was a smooth green field despite it being a sodden bog at Derrygimleigh, 7km south of the market town of Clifden, Co Galway.
“After making their way to the Marconi wireless station they met station master Mr Teigue, to whom they presented the broken dynamo propeller,” says auctioneer Conor Purcell. It was then passed to the current owner in the 1950s, who has listed the propeller, mounted with a handwritten inscription, for sale at €1,000-€2,000 through the Birr-based auctioneer.
It’s a scarce enough relic from the airplane as in 2008 Wales Online reported that the main propeller, which hung as a reminder to the bravery and endeavour of the two men, was missing. It initially hung on the wall of an electric light bulb factory run by Vickers where Sir Arthur Whitten Brown was engaged as manager (Alcock died six months after the transatlantic crossing aged just 27). It was later given to a military museum, where it hung at the RAF’s Holborn offices until it disappeared during a 1990s renovation, never to be seen again.
Secondly, in what has been described as “pure luck” by Purcell, is a bronze bull by acclaimed Irish sculptor John Behan. “It was found in the shed of a parish priest in north Tipperary, and could have easily ended up in a skip.” It is accompanied by paperwork from Kennys in Galway where it featured in an exhibition catalogue when it was purchased by the priest in the Galway bookshop and gallery in 1975 (€800-€1,200). purcellauctioneers.ie
