Lawrence Hargrave; A Dreamer of the Skies.

The wheeling gulls, the wild geese flying through night to the mainland, fascinated him. The plunge of the porpoise through the water, the swirl of the shark, the lazy swim of the dugong, stirred dreams of adventure in him.  When be returned to Sydney his father persuaded him to enter the drafting room of the engineering shops of the Australasian Steam Navigation Company.  Here he learned a technical efficiency which was to prove of considerable value in the great work to come. The New Guinea gold boom broke out. From that wild land hectic tales of adventure and derring-do came to Sydney. And again young Hargrave listened eagerly to the siren call of adventure.

In a flurry of excitement the New Guinea Prospecting Association was formed to exploit Golden New Guinea and open up trade with the natives. And young Hargrave immediately joined the seventy-five adventurers who quickly banded together. It was a somewhat reckless company, eager for adventure and gold. They bought the old brig Maria, a tub of 167 tons that for years had waddled her way along the northern coast in the Newcastle coal trade. She could by no means be classed as seaworthy, neither was her skipper the best that sailed the seas. But the high-spirited lads were perfectly satisfied and anxious to up-anchor and away to the "Isles of Gold."

The authorities frowned upon the expedition; they called them would-be filibusters and even worse. But they left port all right. Once outside the Heads, bad weather came. Big seas smashed over the clumsy craft. The tiller broke and they began drifting at the mercy of the waves.

"The end of the Golden Rainbow," said one lad, laughing grimly. "It's Davy Jones's locker for us now."

But young Hargrave quickly set to and mortised a capstan to replace the tiller. Thus they regained control of the brig. Hargrave, they declared, was a crack engineer. They toasted him on the tiny deck and roared a, joyous song when the clumsy craft went on. North up the Queensland coast they sailed and wondered that New Guinea could be so far away.

They were just off Cardwell when thunder clouds swirled along. Big seas rolled in from the Pacific. The Maria pitched and tossed, groaning in every cranky timber. A storm swept in with a bowl, and driving mists that blotted out the world. The Maria was battered by mountainous seas. She began to break up. Then above the confused noise of the seas and the confusion aboard came "Crash!" She struck on Bramble Reef. Waves crashed down upon her. Slowly she began to sink.

Those who could, escaped in two boats - the others hurriedly built two rafts, with the brig going down under them. Most of the men got away on the rafts. Others were drowned. With the brig going down, Hargrave shinned up the topmast. One of the boats managed to pull alongside and take him off. By such a slender thread bung the life of the man destined to help make possible the flying machine.

One boat reached Cardwell. One raft reached the mainland, where the castaways were well treated by the blacks. Blacks killed all the men on the other raft-but the full story of this tragedy cannot be told here. H.M.S. Basilisk rescued the survivors-only forty of the seventy-five lads who had left Sydney with such high hopes. "Spirited but hare-brained young men from Sydney," Admiral Moresby termed them.

Lawrence Hargrave was now a hardy and determined young man. It took more than a shipwreck and hostile natives to stop him. He got to New Guinea in the Chevert with William Macleay's expedition to the Gulf of Papua. The Chevert was a barque of 314 tons, originally built as a French man-of-war of fourteen guns. Hargrave secured a job in charge of the steam launch. This launch was to be used by the expedition to explore unknown rivers.

During these exploring trips (he did six years of them) Lawrence Hargrave always worked his passage. But he was well content. He was fascinated by the flights of the countless birds of many species; by the movements of their wings. He studied the countless strange movements of tides and currents and eddies among islands and reefs, rivers and sandbanks. For hours and days, weeks and months he watched the movements of waves; how they reacted to winds and currents, to tides and storms and calms. He wondered at the lifting powers of waves, and the pressure of the atmosphere upon them. 

Watching the birds be found out that they get lifting and flying power from the waves as the air is pushed up and falls down. He would sit for hours watching a New Guinea warrior practise with bow and arrow; watching the flight of the arrow, its course and angle, and the distance it travelled through the air. He mused on the propelling power of the bowstring. The tautening, then sudden relaxing of -the bowstring meant power-the power to propel that long arrow, swift and true, a surprising distance. 

And that arrow was heavier than the air it cleaved. It must also be possible, he decided, to make something much heavier rise and travel through the air. He watched and studied every moving thing be could see on land, in the air, under the ground, and in the sea. He pondered that a fish could fly, but a man could not.

He tried to understand the working of the physical mechanism which gave to each moving thing its power of movement. He even studied the movement of worms in the earth, and of worms crawling along the sea bottom.

Most intensely interested was he in the wing power of birds, the mechanism of long-flight birds, short-flight birds, diving birds, soaring birds, ground birds. He studied the flight of birds with the wind, against the wind, high in the air, low down over the sea. He tried to reason out their methods in what must surely be currents in the air, just as there are currents in the sea. In the depths of jungle be watched those birds that run before they "take off," watched their flight among the trees and cable-vines and countless other obstacles in the jungle; watched them stay their flight and "land" upon branch or ground. What, he asked himself, were the powers and the methods that enabled them to do these things?

He took his discharge from the Chevert at Somerset, that home of pioneers 'way up at the top end of Cape York Peninsula. From this outpost of Empire there have sailed many explorers, many expeditions by land and sea, many a romantic adventure.

From Somerset he sailed with Stone on his exploration of the hinterland of Port Moresby. At a heavily stockaded village be came within a hairbreadth of losing his head. But for a miracle the whole expedition might have been wiped out. This is what happened.

Hargrave shot a pig. He thought it a wild pig until the villagers came roaring down upon him. He backed away from the excited warriors who, stringing bows and flourishing clubs, leaped down the jungle path towards him. To a roar of vengeful voices he hastened back in amazement to the camp. Promptly his comrades hurried out to try to pacify the natives. But apparently these were bent on clubbing Hargrave. He had killed a pig, and by many a New Guinea native a pig is more valued than his wife. 

At the critical moment a member of the expedition snatched up his violin and drew the bow across the strings. He played with might and main, and then as the lively tune rose above the native babel the natives were silent. With awe-stricken faces and heaving chests they stared at the violin player.

Thus the jungle people listened to the music of a violin. Hargrave's life was saved. A big present was given to the village in return for the killing of the pig, and all ended well. But the expedition moved on hastily.

In the wilds of New Guinea the expedition met one of the most famous explorers the islands have ever known, the indomitable d'Albertis, famous wanderer of the island seas. He took a liking to the cheery young engineer and invited him to accompany him on a hazardous expedition he had in mind. Hargrave accepted with enthusiasm. So, after a return to Sydney, Hargrave sailed with this little expedition, again from Somerset. Clarence Wilcox, a lad of seventeen, sailed with them, as well as two West Indian Negroes, a Filipino, a Sandwich Islander, a native of Lifu, and Tientsin, the Chinese cook, What a mixed party they were!

The Neva was a tiny launch, now loaded so heavily she was almost in danger of swamping. Hargrave was the engineer. But his chief pleasure was this chance of seeing waterways and mountains and native tribes upon which no white man has ever gazed.

Ascending the jungle-clad Fly River for hundreds of miles into the gloomy heart of New Guinea was one of the great trips of Hargrave's life. Here be saw wonderful birds -the quaint hornbill, the beautiful and gigantic Fly River pigeons, the gorgeous birds of paradise that danced for him as the tiny steamer chugged along between the dense walls of trees. Ever and anon they passed an enormous Dubu house built high above the earth, its gloomy recesses strung with stuffed beads and painted skulls. Now and again they steamed past the villages of head-hunters; past houses built in towering trees. 

Away up there the natives were nearly safe from the head-hunters, but Hargrave wondered how these monkey-people slept when wild storms swayed their houses. Sometimes a flight of arrows came hissing out at them from the jungle; occasionally they found the river ahead blocked by canoes massed with shouting warriors, strange men with cuirasses of plaited cane, their beautiful bead-dresses waving as they flourished their clubs. But the discharge of a few rockets and the Neva puffing towards them were sufficient to put these warriors to flight. To them, the steam launch must have seemed a terrible thing, belching up their quiet river, puffing out sparks and smoke.

The Neva ascended two great rivers and penetrated almost to the Papuan Alps, those mighty mountains that tower far up into the sky. It was only shallow water that at last caused the little expedition to turn back.

After this trip Hargrave sailed the Coral Sea seeking pearling stations for pearling fleets, roaming the wild Strait in several adventurous voyages. There seemed to be no limit to his energy, his hunger to learn. all he could of everything that came before his notice. And be thought deeply of all he saw and tried hard to imagine the explanation of things he could not see. These six adventurous years were among the happiest in his life.

Eventually, he returned to Sydney and settled down. In 1878 he was appointed Extra Assistant Astronomical Observer at the Sydney Observatory. Thus the lad who had studied the movement of worms crawling along the ground now lifted his eyes to the stars. And while staring into the starry heavens night after night be pondered on the motion of the air currents so far up, and wondered what effect they would have on a machine flown by man. How many of our aviators, soon destined to be flying under the stars at night, ever gave a thought to Lawrence Hargrave who helped to make it possible for their machines to fly through the sky?

Lawrence Hargrave married. There were six children, five girls, and one boy, Geoffrey. The father loved them all; but it was natural that be should build his highest hopes on his son. What a tragedy it was that the father's great work should indirectly be linked with the forces that brought death to the beloved son.

For five years Lawrence Hargrave mapped and explored the heavens. Then he made his big decision. He felt certain that man would fly. He gave up work at the Observatory to devote his life to studies that were to help in the evolution of human flight. A friend solemnly warned him against this folly.

"Forget it," he said seriously, "otherwise you certainly will end in Callan Park!"

Lawrence Hargrave laughed. Often be was to hear remarks like that. Many people declared he was a crank, an imaginative dreamer who would never do anything practical. Such an absurdity they said, to believe that men could make a machine which would fly in the air! Other people simply shrugged, others simply ridiculed him and his ideas. For all that, there was a tiny circle of people, some whom he never met, who believed in him, and continued to believe in him. Most important of all, Hargrave had unshaken faith in his objective. Man was going to fly.

Throughout all his life Hargrave gave all his thoughts and discoveries to the world. He refused to patent his inventions despite the entreaties of his friends. He wished the world to know what he had learned so that others could carry on his work towards the great objective-man -made flight.

Besides his lectures to the Royal Society of New South Wales and the publication of his research papers be corresponded with the tiny band of aeronautical workers in England, Europe, and America. The members of this scattered band were the pioneers of our present-day aviation. But the work of the great Australian was far better known in the busy worlds overseas than in his own Australia.

Lawrence Hargrave was well content that other men should use his ideas and, when possible, improve on them for thus would the building of the flying machine be hastened. He believed that the progress of civilization demanded aerial transport; that the flying machine would spread the cause of peace. He never thought of it as an instrument of war.

THE GREAT SACRIFICE

All he had ever learned about the movements of birds and beasts and of sea waves and air currents Lawrence Hargrave applied to his working models. First he made a pair of wings flap by the use of clockwork. After many experiments be made a model that would actually fly. For the power to make the wings flap like a bird he used elastic bands, for these were lighter than clockwork. Also, he proved that they could, in proportion to their weight, transmit more power. Not for nothing bad be watched a New Guinea savage draw taut his bowstring years before.

That first successful model only flew a few feet, its wings flapping energetically, then drunkenly, as it side-slipped to the ground. Hargrave laughed happily. The richest fortune in the world would never have brought him one-hundredth part of that joy.

Now he was on the way to proving what he had believed from late boyhood, what some dreamers had believed throughout the centuries-that man could really fly. This tiny model of sticks and paper was heavier than air. It bad flown. Its flight proved that a much bigger machine could fly. All that was required was the engine to lift it and keep it forging through the air.

Immediately, Hargrave set to work to make models that would fly farther. He made hundreds of models, mostly small. There was one model with a wingspan of seven feet that flew for hundreds of feet. Then he built a man-carrying machine, and by doing so proved that a specially made engine must be evolved and built to drive it, for the strength of a man was not sufficient to flap the wings. So the germ of an engine came to be developed in his brain. With each succeeding experiment he learned a little more of the many secrets of flight.

Within several years he was building little engines. Some were failures, but each failure taught him something. Then he started experimenting with a "screw" to take the place of the flapping wings, and this screw was the forerunner of the modern propeller. His first model of a screw propelled monoplane was worked by rubber bands which were first stretched to the utmost, and then, in the unwinding, supplied the motive power for the propeller. He found that a propeller model would fly as well as a flapping wing model.

Then be built a tiny three-cylinder engine driven by compressed air. Its weight was only nineteen and a half ounces. Its lightness, simplicity and efficiency were truly wonderful. But the public did not know that. Hargrave was still only a crank, they said. Flying? That was too ridiculous. But Hargrave still persevered *

Then he made his great discovery. If, be reasoned, a three-cylinder propeller engine could be made by turning the boss of the propeller into an engine, thus allowing the cylinders to revolve on the crankshaft, the shaft and crankpin being stationary, the thrust would fall direct on the valve face. And this, be decided, would produce an immeasurably more powerful engine. He made such an engine-it weighed only three-quarters of a pound. 

Then he made an improved model, and thus was invented the rotary aeroplane engine. It was to prove one of the most successful of the early power plants. Perhaps the most famous example modeled on Hargrave's invention was the celebrated French engine the Gnome. Other soon-to-be famous engines were the Clerget and the Le Rhone.

How many of us Australians know that the principle of construction of those famous machines came from the brain of Lawrence Hargrave? Even in Sydney, where his models and engines were thought out and built, few people know this.

In his new models Hargrave now used the propeller as well as the flapping wings, and the engine instead of the elastic bands. He wrecked many an ingenious flying model before be could determine the centre of gravity of a machine. He bad to learn this so as to ensure the machine's stability. Again and again be made models, only to see them suddenly dive and crash-a month's hard work gone in a second. He would pick the model up, examine it with a rueful smile, find out what had been at fault, then set to work to build another. Here was a great, an inspiring, perseverance.

He made a beautiful little single-cylinder engine, driven by compressed air. This little engine had a tube attached that looked like a torpedo. But it wasn't. In this tube was the compressed air which was the fuel.

The years went by. Hargrave progressed from model to model, from improvement to improvement. He made a little three-cylinder engine which drove a propeller -equipped model. Ingeniously he counted the number of revolutions made by the propeller when in flight. This was the method: He attached a reel of cotton on an axis parallel to the screw shaft, fixed an empty reel on the crankshaft, then flew the model. As it flew, so the cotton wound up on to the empty reel. When the model planed to earth he simply counted the turns of cotton now wound on the previously empty reel. 

By such very simple but efficient aids be learned many a secret of the air-of power, lift and flight. He could count the seconds his models would fly, and assess their distance in the time, the height, and the revolutions made by the propeller. Every experiment taught him a tiny bit more, urged him to further efforts. Sometimes a failure taught him more than a successful flight. He was very patient, very understanding.

He made tiny steam engines to power his models. He just kept on and on. Then, when he believed the engine difficulty was practically solved, be turned to a study of the dynamic principles underlying the movements of air and wind, attempting to adapt these movements to helping the rise of a heavy machine from the ground. If he could do this he knew that flying machines were as good as in the air.

He built kites, the box kites that were to become world famous, and proved they possessed great lifting power. Then he discovered that a flying machine with curved surfaces would fly much better than one built with a flat body plane. Remember his long studies of birds! Birds did not have flat bodies. See bow be got the idea?

Previously he had built his flying models with a single, flat surface. Now be experimented with curved surfaces. The results were astonishing. The models rose much easier, flew better.

In one of his experiments, Hargrave "looped the loop." So far as we know, be was the first man in the world to do this. He did not do it in a machine-it was to be years before man could fly. Hargrave "looped the loop" by flying a little model built with a curved surface design. Air history was made then.

Nor was that all. He made kites that would soar, kites that could lift the weight of a man from the ground. These he demonstrated at Stanwell Park - he being the man who was lifted. He bad often wondered at the ability of birds to soar so easily in wind and even in storms. And be tried to find out their secret through his kites. If be could discover this, then he would apply the principle to his model aeroplanes. He knew now that be was drawing very, very close to the secret.

Thus the busy years went by. All his experiments, all his discoveries, Hargrave made known to the world. He kept no secrets. Nothing was patented.

And now events began to move fast. In other parts of the world, other men, other nations, were busy experimenting. In America, Germany and England the long-held secrets were being won from the skies. Could these cranks of the air be right? Might man really be able to fly? Jealously the big nations began to work, to organize, to watch one another.

Hargrave's experiments were eagerly awaited by the experimenters. His results were put to use in other countries. He realized that the great nations could, with their brains and money, move faster, get more done, than be could in far-away Australia, where the greatness of his work was still unrecognized. So the great forces of the outside world accepted everything from the great Australian experimenter, added his researches to their own, and progressed fast.

Hargrave had to sit back now and watch others carry on. It was impossible for him to keep pace without national help, and so far away from the centre of operations that were moving fast and ever-changing. He had built the firm, the lasting foundation. Let others complete the work.

He was a happy man when, at Kitty Hawk, the Wright Brothers startled the world with a man-made flight. He must have been still happier when the first aeroplane flew publicly; Santos Dumont flew it in France. For that flying machine was really an improvement of the Hargrave box kite.

The American authority, Octave Chamte, wrote in his book: "If there be one man more than another who deserves to succeed in flying through the air, that man is Lawrence Hargrave, of Sydney."

Hargrave gave to the Sydney Technological Museum some of his original monoplane models, which had actually flown. And a box kite. But all his other models went to the big Munich Museum in Germany. A pr 0-posal had been made to him, on behalf of Germany, that a special building should be erected for the models in that country. It was pointed out to him that in Germany his models would be readily accessible to flying research workers now numerous throughout Europe; that, if the models were kept in Australia, their usefulness would be greatly limited. 

This argument won Hargrave. He was a patriot, and intensely proud of his work for Australia. But he really believed that the flying machine would help to bring peace to all mankind. "In my mind," he said in an address in Sydney, "the flying machine will tend to bring peace and goodwill to all; it will throw light on the few unexplored corners of the earth; and it will herald the downfall of all restrictions to the free intercourse of nations." And so, his models went to Munich-to Germany whose war was to kill his only son.

But at that time neither the world, nor Hargrave were to know this. Hargrave was happy in his workshop with Geoffrey. Young Geoffrey was taking an eager interest in this new science of aviation. Father and son worked proudly, happily. Naturally the father hoped that the son would carry on his own great work, would himself become an eagle of the sky whose secrets Hargrave had so long striven to know.

In 1914, when the Great War began, Geoffrey Hargrave enlisted in the A.I.F. The Landing at Gallipoli, Anzac! The bullet that killed Geoffrey Hargrave broke his father's heart. He died soon afterwards.