Last week, we featured an article which referred to the permits recently announced for the creation of hydroplane ports on 25 Greek Islands, a decision which did not eventually, despite high hopes held by many, include Crete.
In commenting on the article, our reader Patricia Shaft said, “Ironic really that Crete is excluded when Elounda was a stopover/refuelling point for Imperial Airways seaplanes enroute the Middle East and India (forerunner of BOAC & BA) in the 1920’s/1930’s.”
As this fact was unknown to me, I began researching the facts highlighted in this comment and started to do a little bit of digging around online. I came up with some fascinating details surrounding the Company and it’s mode of operation, plus a tragic accident which is perhaps not well known, in the modern history of the area. These are the findings of the research, with different sources and references, all of which are available on the web.
Elounda 1930-1940 . Imperial Airways hydroplane in the Elounda gulf. Imperial Airways was the early British commercial long range air transport company, operating from 1924 to 1939 and serving parts of Europe but especially the Empire routes to South Africa, India and the Far East.
However, there was also a yacht which was used in the Company and it’s story goes as follows:
Built in 1925 in Holland, with the name ”Knikker”, as a pearl trawler for use in the Red Sea. In 1929 it was purchased by the British company, Imperial Airlines, had it’s name changed to the “Imperia” and was anchored in the Bay of Mirabello in Crete, as a support vessel for the hydroplanes of the Company, which are on route from Athens to Alexandria, Egypt, giving telegram support and providing facilities to passengers whilst the hydroplanes refuelled, before continuing their journey.
In 1940, with the commencement of WW2, it was withdrawn to Egypt as the flights with the hydroplanes had ceased to run.
The excerpt below is a from a diary, which mentions another role the route had – carrying medicines to Egypt:
“After studying the weather report the pilot decided it was too
late to try to make Egypt that day and we therefore went aboard
the old hundred-ton yacht Imperia which constituted the air
base. As there were no inns at this end of Crete the air line kept
the yacht moored in the bay to accommodate pilots and passengers.
Knowing that one night’s delay of the boxes of serum we
carried might jeopardize the life of a girl in Cairo, the pilot was
worried.”
“We were called at four in the morning and breakfasted, unwashed, by the light of the cabin lamps. Just as dawn broke we took off for Alexandria, 370 miles away, the longest regular
oversea flight in Europe. Crete soon sank below the horizon in the dim early morning.”
A piece from the archives of The Spectator Magazine, on 27th August 1936, page 3:
Scipio,’ in the Mediterranean, in which two lives were lost and the lives of all the passengers and crew were imperilled, inevitably recalls the recently issued report on the sinking of the ` City of Khartoum ‘ at Alexandria. The absence of a reasonably accurate and detailed report makes it difficult to comment on the latest accident ; but with Imperial Airways structural failure in the air or bad piloting can definitely be ruled out as possible causes of disaster. Modern aircraft can fly safely through bad weather ; but when landing under these conditions the flying-boat is naturally at a disadvantage compared with the aeroplane. And it seems possible that an altogether exceptional and unforeseen combination of squalls and very rough sea were too much for the flying-boat in this case. There can, unfortunately, be no guarantee that this will not occur again.
And part of an official investigation:
IMPERIAL AIRWAYS LINER “SCIPIO” (ACCIDENT).
HC Deb 18 November 1936 vol 317 c17781778
§32. Mr. PERKINS
asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether he is aware that the Imperial Airways liner “Scipio” crashed at Mirabella on 22nd August, resulting in the loss of two lives; that the inspector of accidents reported that one of the reasons for the accident was that the pilot misjudged the approach and consequently had to open out his engines; and whether all the engines then responded?
§Sir P. SASSOON
I am aware of the facts mentioned in the first two parts of the question. As regards the last part, there was no evidence to suggest that any of the engines failed to respond.
S.K.