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As early as February 24th a conference was held in Washington and a date of May 15th or 16th for the flight from Newfoundland was set. This date coincided with a full moon over the North Atlantic, and the machines started May 16th from Trepassey. There were really only three routes open to pilots anxious to make the first crossing of the Atlantic.
From the beginning of the flight from Trepassey the NC-4, thought to be the "lame duck" of the squadron, ran away from the other two machines. She lost contact with them very quickly and plowed through the night alone, laying her course by the line of destroyers lying beneath her. She was about half an hour ahead of the NC-1 at daybreak the next day and within an easy run of Horta, Fayal.
When the NC flying boats of the United States navy lined up at Trepassey in May, 1919, for their Atlantic venture, and the press was full of pictures of them, how many hasty readers, eager only for news of the start, stopped to think what the initials NC stood for?
Her average for the 320 miles was 85 nautical miles an hour, about 20 miles an hour faster time than either of the other two machines had made. Four days later she left Halifax for Trepassey in a last-minute effort to catch her sister planes. It seemed certain that she could not get there in time and would be forced to follow on the course a day later.
The NC4, with Lieutenant Commander Albert Cushing Read and crew, left Trepassey, Newfoundland, on the 16th of May and in twelve hours arrived at Horta, the Azores, more than a thousand miles away. All along the course the navy had strung a chain of destroyers, with signaling apparatus and searchlights to guide the aviators.
Some alarm was felt during the night by the failure of destroyers to find her. She appeared the next morning off the Chatham breakwater, "taxi-ing" under her own power. While her sister ships, the NC-1 and the NC-3, were flying to Trepassey the NC-4 waited at Chatham.
Just as she flew into Trepassey Bay, on May 14th, the NC-1 and NC-3 were preparing to take-off. They postponed their start until the next day. In the mean while repairs were rushed and adjustments made, and she was ready to start the next afternoon, when all three planes started a little after six o'clock.
In 1778, in command of the thirty-two-gun frigate Raleigh, he sailed from Boston, fell in with two British frigates, and after a fight was forced to run ashore in Penobscot Bay. Barry and his crew escaped, and in 1781 carried Laurens to France in the frigate Alliance. On the way out he took a privateer, and while cruising on the way home captured the Atalanta and the Trepassey after a hard fight.
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