At the age of twelve, on hearing that Sir Ross Smith had broken the England-Australia aero record in a Vickers Vimy, Roly Alderson decided that he wanted to fly. Denied a secondary education, orphan Roly was an accomplished engineer by the time he arrived at Cambridge in his home-built car. He left with a degree, a racing Bentley and a pilot’s licence.
Alderson had already logged several hundred hours when recruited by Imperial Airways in 1933. His skills were quickly recognized, and he was selected to fly Lord Willingdon, the Viceroy and Governor General of India, on his farewell tour of India. Alderson’s Holy Grail, nevertheless, was to ‘fly boats’, and it was not long before Roly had joined these venerated ranks on the new route to South Africa.
Whilst serving as a Captain on Imperial Airways’ prestigious New York-Bermuda service, Alderson reported a number of serious concerns regarding carburettor icing on his Short Empire flying boat Cavalier. His prescience was ignored, and on 21 January 1939, a day after penning a final warning, Cavalier was forced down into the empty wastes of the Atlantic. Due to Alderson’s consummate airmanship and the bravery of heroine passenger Edna Watson, ten of the thirteen souls on board survived. Their miraculous rescue by the tanker Esso Baytown, part of a huge international search and rescue effort, after eleven gruelling hours in cold shark-infested waters, dominated the world’s headlines.
Alderson returned to duty on the long-distance flying boat routes to Singapore and Durban, but, following the German invasion of France in 1940, he was transferred to the treacherous West Africa run. After a brush with a U-boat off Sierra Leone, he was tasked with ferrying General de Gaulle back to the UK from Nigeria. After avoiding a suspected poisoning attempt at Freetown and Luftwaffe interception over the Bay of Biscay, the General personally thanked Alderson for his safe return.
Later, in 1940 the British Government bought three huge Boeing flying boats to maintain the wartime transatlantic link, and Alderson was promoted to the roster for these. The hours in these behemoths were prodigious, routing via Portugal, West Africa, and Brazil, with the fear of enemy attack a constant and very real threat. Only V.I.P.s and vital mail were carried, although Alderson did once deliver President Roosevelt’s personal gift to Winston Churchill: a critical supply of Havana cigars!
Adventure abounds in this remarkable story of a flying boat pilot and captain in both war and peace: racing Bentleys, landing on beaches, black-tie dinner with the Luftwaffe, landing on the Nile, flying across India, and espionage and intrigue in Lisbon.
Throughout his life, MARK ALDERSON has worn many coats of different colors. He began his working life as a land agent, morphed into an antiques dealer, became a sailor and yacht chandler, and finally trained as a palliative care health professional. In his spare time, he has been a pilot, a lifeboatman, a long-distance yachtie and a horseman. Now without aeroplane or boat, he lives in the depths of Devon with two horses, a dog and his wife – not necessarily in that order.
