The tempo of financial possibilities was picking up considerably. In February, Germany offered $500,000 for fifty Wright Flyers, and the brothers agreed that Flint & Company should be their sales representative—but only their sales representative—on a 20 percent commission everywhere except in the United States.
Then in May came an urgent message from Charles Flint, saying the company’s European representative, Hart O. Berg, had become skeptical about the Wrights and their machine and wanted one or the other or both to come to Europe as soon as possible and make their case themselves, all expenses, of course, to be covered by Flint & Company.
Wilbur thought Orville should go. Wilbur wanted to see to the finishing touches on the new engine and prepare the Flyer III for shipment. “I am more careful than he is,” Wilbur would explain to their father. Further, the one who went to Europe would have to act almost entirely on his own judgment without much consultation by letter or cable. Wilbur felt he was more willing to accept the consequences of any errors of judgment on Orville’s part than to have Orville blaming him if he were to go.
Orville stubbornly disagreed, insisting that Wilbur would make the best impression in France, and Orville was right, as they all knew, including Wilbur, who “grabbed a few things” and left for New York. By Saturday, May 18, he was on board the RMS Campania, sailing past the Statue of Liberty on his way out to sea.
An entirely new adventure had begun, unlike anything he, or any of the family, had yet experienced. Wilbur had just turned forty that April and was to be on his own far from home, separated from his family, for longer than he had ever been or ever imagined, and tested in ways he had never been.
II.
“I sailed this morning about 9 o’clock and we are now something over 200 miles out,” Wilbur wrote in a letter addressed to Katharine but intended for all at home. “The St. Louis and another ship started at the same time, but we have run off from them.” The Campania, part of the Cunard Line, was known as one of the finest vessels of its kind, and one of the fastest, a “flying palace of the ocean,” which Wilbur particularly liked. The ship was 622 feet in length, with two tall stacks, and burnt some five hundred tons of coal per day. The predominant interior style was Art Nouveau, with staterooms and public rooms paneled in satinwood and mahogany, and thickly carpeted.
The weather was “splendid,” the sea smooth, and he had a cabin to himself. With only about half the usual number of passengers on board, he was able to get a $250 cabin for only $100, and he was quite happy about that, too, even if Flint was covering expenses.
“We made 466 miles the first day,” he wrote the following evening, “and left the other boats out of sight.” The third day out he took a tour of the engine room, marveling at the scale of it all—engines half as high as an office building back home, engines that could deliver 28,000 horsepower, this in contrast to the 25 horsepower of the new engine for Flyer III. There were twelve boilers, and over one hundred furnaces. The ship’s propellers measured no less than 23 feet in diameter.
He kept note of the miles made day by day, and walked the promenade deck five to ten miles a day. Though he wrote nothing about the food served or the other passengers, he seemed to be having a fine time.
All went ideally until the sixth day out, when a storm hit and Wilbur had his first experience with pitch and roll on water, not in the air. “The waves are probably 10 feet high and the ship pitches considerably. Fortunately there is but little roll.” The spray was such that the promenade decks were useless. The ship had become more like a hospital, though he himself felt only “a little sick” just after breakfast.
The last day at sea, off the Irish coast, he wrote of seeing gulls at intervals, “and how they could skim within a foot or two of the waves and in strong winds did not even have to flap their wings very much.”
After landing at Liverpool at first light, Saturday, May 25, Wilbur went by train to London, where, at Euston Station, he was met by the Flint & Company sales representative, Hart O. Berg, an American who recognized Wilbur the moment he stepped off the train.
“I have never seen a picture of him, or had him described to me in any way,” Berg would write to Charles Flint, “. . . and either I am a Sherlock Holmes, or Wright has the peculiar glint of genius in his eye which left no doubt in my mind as to who he was.”