Featured above: The Governor, General Sir James Willcocks is helped on board the Curtis Jenny seaplane in Hamilton Harbour.

On May 22, 1919 – The First Plane Flew Over Bermuda

It was a Burgess-Curtiss N-9H Jenny, with registration number A-2646, powered by a Wright-Hispano 150 horsepower engine. It was a naval scout hydro-airplane that normally traveled on the deck of her mother ship the USS Elinore. The aircraft had a gross weight of 2765 pounds and a top speed of 80 miles per hour. The 8725 ton cargo vessel was launched in 1917 as the General de Castelnau and was transferred from the US Shipping Board to the US Navy for war service. After the war, she had dumped gas drums and mustard gas shells in deep waters off Virginia.

On that date in 1919, she was in the town of St. George in Bermuda after a scientific research voyage south of Bermuda, sheltering from bad weather. She was flown over the City of Hamilton Harbor by United States Navy Ensigns G. L. Richard and W. H. Cushing, The sole passenger on the airplane was Governor General Sir James Willcocks. He dropped from the open cockpit the first “Air Letter” posted in Bermuda. A total of 560 N-9s were built during World War I, most of which were “H” models. Only 100 were actually built by Curtiss. Most were built under license by the Burgess Company of Marblehead, Massachusetts. Fifty others were assembled after the war, from spare components and engines by the U.S. Navy at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida.

The Governor wrote a ‘Message of Goodwill to the people of Bermuda’ and dropped it in the Great Sound while flying to Dockyard. The ‘Message’ was found by 10-year-old Dudley Butterfield while swimming two days later.