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We flew the Dutch flag, we were registered in a Dutch port, but every timber in that British-built ship creaked out a protest, and there paced the quarter-deck five registered Dutchmen who could not croak "Gott-verdammter!" if their lives depended on it, and who guzzled "rice taffle" in a very un-Dutch manner. Generally they forgot that they had sold their birthright.
An order was placed for a Short machine, and this, fitted with a 50-60 horse-power Green engine, was used for the circular mile, which won a prize of L1,000 offered by the Daily Mail, the feat being accomplished on October 30th, 1909. Five days later, Moore-Brabazon achieved the longest flight up to that time accomplished on a British-built machine, covering three and a half miles.
In the 1912 Trials, the only machines which actually completed all their tests were the Cody biplane, the French Deperdussin, the Hanriot, two Bleriots and a Maurice Farman. The first prize of L4,000, open to all the world, went to F. S. Cody's British-built biplane, which complied with all the conditions of the competition and well earned its official acknowledgment of supremacy.
The importance of a supply of British-built engines was realised before the War, it is true, and a competition was held in which a prize of L5,000 was offered for the best British engine, but this awakening was so late that the R.F.C. took the field without a single British power plant.
In 1775, more than one-third of the foreign trade of Great Britain was carried in American-built ships; the respective tonnage being, British-built, 605,545; American, 373,618. British merchants and ship-owners knew also that the colonial carriers were not ardent adherents of the Navigation Act, but conducted their operations in conformity with it only when compelled.
In one of the deserted British-built redoubts I found two boxes of shrapnel shells and charges. The Boers had not troubled to touch them. Their guns were of a later pattern, and fired powder and shell made up together like a great rifle cartridge. The combination, made for the first time in the history of war, of heavy artillery and swarms of mounted infantry is formidable and effective.
One of the earliest of the British-built Vee type engines was an eight-cylinder 50 horse-power by the Wolseley Company, constructed in 1908 with a cylinder bore of 3.75 inches and stroke of 5 inches, running at a normal speed of 1,350 revolutions per minute.
Proclamation, annually authorized and re-issued, remained therefore the mode of regulating commerce between the British dominions and the United States up to the date of Jay's treaty. Once only, in 1788, Parliament interfered so far as to pass a law, confining the trade with the West Indies to British-built ships and to certain enumerated articles, in the strict spirit of the Navigation system.
Cody carried off the only prize awarded for a British-built plane, this being the sum of L1,000, and consolation prizes of L500 each were awarded to the British Deperdussin Company and The British and Colonial Aeroplane Company, this latter soon to become famous as makers of the Bristol aeroplane, of which the war honours are still fresh in men's minds.
Their vessels shared in the privileges reserved for British-built ships. The compulsory sending of the enumerated commodities to England may have damaged the tobacco-growers; but in other respects it did little harm. The articles would have gone to England in any case.
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