Reserve, after he was rescued from the Channel, where with a companion
he had clung for eighty hours without food and drink to the under-side
of a capsized seaplane pontoon. "I left our station in a British
seaplane as pilot, with Sublieutenant Moore of the Royal Naval Air
Service as observer, at 9 o'clock in the morning. Our duty was to convoy
patrols. When two hours out, having met our ships coming from the
westward, we thought we sighted a periscope ahead, and turned off in
pursuit. We lost our course. Our engine dropped dead, and at 11.30
o'clock forced us to land on the surface of a rough sea. We had no kite
nor radio to call for assistance, so we released our two
carrier-pigeons. We tied a message with our position and the word
'Sinking' on each. The first, the blue-barred one, flew straight off and
reached home. But the other, which was white-checked, lit on our machine
and would not budge until Moore threw our navigation clock at him, which
probably upset him so that he failed us.

"Heavy seas smashed our tail-planes, which kept settling. I saw that
they were pulling the machine down by the rear, turning her over. We
tore the tail-fabric to lessen the impact of the waves. It wasn't any
use. The tail-flat was smashed and its box filled with water.

"This increased the downward leverage and raised her perpendicularly in
the air. At 2.30 P.M. we capsized. We climbed up the nose and 'over the
top' to the under-side of the pontoons. Our emergency ration had been in
the observer's seat at the back, but we had been so busy trying to
repair the motor and save ourselves from turning over that we didn't
remember this until too late. When I crawled aft for food Moore saw that
I was only helping the machine to capsize. He yelled to me to come back
and I did, just in time to save myself from being carried down with the
tail and drowned.