ST. JOHN'S, Newfoundland, Sept. 5, 1936 (UP) -- Mrs. Beryl Markham, 31-year-old English mother, crossed the Atlantic Ocean today in her turquoise-blue monoplane, the first woman ever to succeed in a solo flight over the hazardous east-to-west route.
Amelia Earhart made a solo transatlantic flight in 1932 by the easier west to east route, landing in an Irish pasture.
The plane in which Mrs. Markham is attempting a non-stop flight from Abingdon, England, to New York City, was sighted at 9 a. m. Cleveland time, over Renews, approximately 25 miles north of Cape Race, southeastern tip of Newfoundland. Fifteen minutes later, the plane was sighted passing the Cape, moving at tremendous speed.
The daring Englishwoman succeeded in making the perilous crossing in the face of odds so overwhelming that other flyers had advised her against attempting it at this time. Her plane bucked headwinds on much of the flight and 500 miles out from Newfoundland it moved into the center of a storm area which had been moving northeastward for days.
It was this storm which prompted Harry Richman and Richard Merrill, American flyers, to delay the return trip on their flight from New York to England.
But as the powerful, low-winged Percival Gull plane made landfall over Renews, Mrs. Markham found her luck changing for the better.
Authorities at Cape Race estimated that she had a 40-mile-an-hour following wind. It was still raining and foggy in spots, however.
Halifax, N. S., to the south, also reported favorable winds.
Inhabitants of Renews, a fishing village, got their first glimpse of the transatlantic air voyager from the southeast. The plane roared in at a low altitude, while Mrs. Markham evidently took bearings, banked and sped off to the southwest.
Mrs. Markham left England at 12 p. m. yesterday. Her destination was Floyd Bennett Airport, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Her plane was sighted by the steamer Spaarndam at 7 a. m., approximately 250 miles east of Bonavista Bay, N. F. At that time it was 17 hours and 50 minutes since Mrs. Markham had taken off from Abingdon Airdrome. An hour and four minutes later her blue airplane was sighted from the liner Kungsholm, about 60 miles east of the Newfoundland coast.
The plane carries no radio.
The young Englishwoman has had more than 2,000 hours of solo flying, including several trips between England and Kenya Colony of the British East African coast, where she spent her childhood. She learned to fly after the war.
Mrs. Markham is the wife of Mansfield Markham, second son of the late Sir Arthur Markham, and the mother of a 7-year-old son.
