Harry Hawker and Mackenzie-Grieve and the transatlantic attempt that ended in the North Atlantic on May nineteenth, nineteen nineteen

Harry Hawker and Lieutenant Commander Kenneth Mackenzie-Grieve attempted the first nonstop transatlantic flight on May 18-19, 1919, weeks before Alcock and Brown succeeded. Their Sopwith biplane ditched in the North Atlantic after engine cooling failure, and a small Danish steamer without radio rescued them — leaving the world to believe they were dead for six days.

Why Was Everyone Racing Across the Atlantic in 1919?

The Great War transformed aviation from a carnival novelty into a proven technology. By early 1919, thousands of surplus aircraft and trained pilots existed, and the question was what to do with them all.

The Daily Mail had posted a prize back in 1913: £10,000 (roughly £1.5 million today) for the first nonstop aerial crossing of the Atlantic. The war suspended the competition, but by spring 1919 it was back on, and every serious aviator wanted it.

Teams converged on Newfoundland — the logical departure point for the shortest great-circle distance to the British Isles, with prevailing westerlies at your back. The Americans had their Navy-Curtiss NC flying boats but were crossing in stages with support ships, disqualifying them from the Daily Mail prize. Handley Page and Martinsyde teams were still assembling their machines. Harry Hawker was ready to go.

Who Were Hawker and Mackenzie-Grieve?

Harry Hawker was Australian, born in 1889 in Melbourne. He emigrated to England, joined Sopwith Aviation, and quickly became their chief test pilot and one of the most famous aviators in the British Empire. At thirty years old, he was fearless and determined to be first across the Atlantic.

Kenneth Mackenzie-Grieve was a Royal Navy officer — serious, methodical, and exactly the navigator you’d want when your only tools were a sextant and dead reckoning across fifteen hundred miles of open ocean.

What Was the Sopwith Atlantic?

Their aircraft was a modified Sopwith biplane purpose-built for the crossing, powered by a single Rolls-Royce Eagle engine producing 360 horsepower. One engine. Two men. Fourteen hundred nautical miles of the coldest ocean on Earth.

The aircraft had one particularly clever and consequential design feature: jettisnable landing gear. After takeoff, the crew dropped the wheels into the sea to reduce drag and extend range. When they reached Ireland, they would belly-land on the fuselage’s boat-shaped hull.

The tradeoff was absolute. The moment those wheels hit the water off Newfoundland, there was no turning back.

How Did the Flight Unfold?

Hawker and Mackenzie-Grieve departed from a field near Mount Pearl, outside St. John’s, on the afternoon of May 18, 1919, around 5:45 PM local time. The weather was poor — heavy overcast, fog on the horizon — but Hawker had watched rival teams inching toward readiness for weeks and refused to wait longer.

The first several hours went reasonably well. The Eagle engine ran steady, Mackenzie-Grieve took star sights through gaps in cloud cover, and they worked through layers of cloud and rain searching for favorable winds. The open cockpit exposed them to freezing temperatures, rain, and a ninety-mile-per-hour slipstream.

Around 1:00 AM, roughly at the halfway point, the engine temperature began climbing. The water circulation system was clogging — sediment or debris blocking coolant flow. Over the middle of the North Atlantic, at night, with a single engine, a rising temperature gauge meant one thing: eventual seizure.

Hawker fought it with altitude changes. He climbed to 13,000-14,000 feet, hoping frigid air would cool the engine externally. Both men gasped in thin, freezing air without supplemental oxygen. The temperature would drop briefly, then climb again. Descending brought warmer, thicker air and even higher engine temperatures.

The question shifted from whether they would reach Ireland to whether they could find a ship.

The Ditching and Rescue

Mackenzie-Grieve worked the navigation toward known transatlantic shipping lanes while Hawker nursed the dying engine. As dawn broke on May 19, they descended through cloud with the temperature gauge pegged dangerously high.

Through a break in the overcast, they spotted the Mary, a small Danish tramp steamer. Hawker brought the Sopwith down into the swells beside her. The boat-shaped hull kept the aircraft afloat long enough for both men to climb out and be hauled aboard by the astonished crew.

They were soaked, freezing, and exhausted — but alive.

Six Days of Silence

The Mary had no wireless radio. In 1919, not every vessel carried transmitting equipment, and this small cargo ship was one of them. Hawker and Mackenzie-Grieve sat in a warm cabin drinking coffee while the entire world presumed them dead.

No word came from the Atlantic. No sighting, no wreckage, nothing. Newspapers that had covered the departure with excitement now ran obituary headlines. King George V sent a personal condolence message to Hawker’s wife, Muriel. The aviation community mourned two more men lost to the sea.

Six days later, the Mary made port at the Butt of Lewis, the northernmost point of Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. Off walked Hawker and Mackenzie-Grieve, very much alive.

What Happened After the Rescue?

London erupted with relief. King George awarded both men the Air Force Cross. The Daily Mail, recognizing the extraordinary courage of the attempt, awarded a consolation prize of £5,000 — half the full amount — even though they hadn’t completed the crossing.

The Sopwith Atlantic herself was lost. The Mary’s crew attempted salvage and got a line on the aircraft, but she was waterlogged and sank. The aircraft remains somewhere on the floor of the North Atlantic.

On June 14-15, 1919, John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown completed the crossing in a modified Vickers Vimy and claimed the full Daily Mail prize. That flight rightfully entered the history books. But it was Hawker and Mackenzie-Grieve who proved the concept was viable.

The Legacy of a “Failed” Attempt

The Hawker and Mackenzie-Grieve flight demonstrated three things that mattered enormously for aviation’s future. It showed the Atlantic could be challenged with existing technology. It proved open-ocean navigation was feasible using star sights and dead reckoning. And it demonstrated that when the machine fails, a disciplined crew can survive by working the problem.

Those six days of silence made the public understand the stakes of transatlantic flight in a way no press conference ever could.

Harry Hawker survived the Atlantic but died two years later, in July 1921, when a Nieuport Goshawk he was testing for the Aerial Derby crashed near Hendon Aerodrome. He was thirty-two. The Hawker name endured — his colleague Harry Sigrist continued the company, and Hawker Aircraft went on to produce the Hurricane, the Sea Fury, and the Harrier.

Mackenzie-Grieve returned to the Royal Navy, served with distinction, and lived a long, quiet life. He rarely spoke publicly about the Atlantic attempt.

Key Takeaways

• Hawker and Mackenzie-Grieve attempted the first nonstop transatlantic flight on May 18-19, 1919, ditching beside a Danish steamer after engine cooling failure roughly halfway across.
• The rescue ship had no radio, leaving the world to believe both men were dead for six days until the vessel reached Scotland.
• The Daily Mail awarded them £5,000 — half the full prize — in recognition of their courage, even though the crossing was incomplete.
• Their attempt proved transatlantic flight was achievable, setting the stage for Alcock and Brown’s successful crossing less than a month later.
• Hawker died in 1921 at age 32 in a test flight accident, but his name lived on through Hawker Aircraft and iconic designs like the Hurricane and Harrier.