october | do you know...

Eighty years ago the Graf Zeppelin was considered the finest airship ever built. 776 feet in length, 100 feet in diameter and with a volume of 3,700,000 cubic feet, she made 590 flights covering more than one million miles, carrying over 13,000 passengers.

Her first flight was on September 18th, 1928, and less than four weeks later, on October 11th, she started the first transatlantic crossing from Friedrichshafen near Lake Constance in Germany. Bound for Lakehurst, New Jersey, the Graf Zeppelin had 61 people on board – 40 crew members, 20 passengers and a 19-year-old stowaway.

As the airship headed towards the Atlantic, heavy storms were reported and it was decided to take a more southerly course by way of the Azores, rather than the planned route via Newfoundland. The trip was not without difficulties, however, as the airship suffered potentially serious damage to its port tail fin on the third day of the flight when a large section of the linen covering was ripped loose while passing through a mid-ocean squall line. With the engines stopped, the ship’s riggers did their best to tie down the torn fabric to the framework and sew blankets to the ship’s envelope while attempting to not fall to the raging seas below. Fortunately the riggers finished just before the engines were restarted after the airship had dropped to within a couple of hundred feet of the ocean’s surface.

Meanwhile cables arriving in Bermuda from New York, stated that the Graf Zeppelin had broken the ‘port horizontal’ and local rumour had it that the dirigible was heading directly to Bermuda to get within reach of assistance should she have to make a forced landing. Then came the news that the airship had made her own repairs and that a more northerly route would be taken to Lakehurst, bypassing Bermuda. This was followed by a wireless transmission from the steamer Larcomo, giving the position of the Graf Zeppelin as 62 miles east of St. David’s.

As the airship was battling 35 miles an hour headwinds, her speed dropped to only 22 miles an hour and she took a course more closely to Bermuda. During the early evening of Sunday, October 14th, the Graf Zeppelin passed directly over St. George’s and at 1,000 feet could be seen from stem to stern.

During the passage over St. George’s a package was dropped from the airship. This information was radioed to New York and a cable sent to the Royal Gazette & Colonist Daily requesting that the package be found if at all possible. Due to the high winds and the probability that the package was carried out to sea, there was little expectation that it would ever be found. That is until Leonard Bascombe hauled up his mooring line!

Attached was a thoroughly soaked small bag containing a number of postcards with the request that they be taken to the Post Office and forwarded by ship to New York. This was done by the Postmaster of St. George’s who, even though the postage stamps had soaked off the postcards, dried them and applied both the St. George’s date stamp of October 15th 1928, as well as the AIR MAIL SERVICE BERMUDA handstamp which was used three-and-a-half years earlier when the airship Los Angeles visited Bermuda.

It is uncertain just how many postcards were in that soaked bag Leonard Bascombe hauled up in St. George’s Harbour. It is known, however, that about half a dozen have survived and that they are very much sought after by collectors of Bermuda postal history, Zeppelin mail, as well as aerophilately. So if you find one of them in your attic, it could be worth several thousand dollars!