Sailing out of Disaster

P.G. Taylor flew as a fighter pilot in World War I and later made many long-distance flights including some pioneering ones with Charles Kingsford Smith. This gained him a well-earned reputation as one of Australia’s greatest navigators.  

His public reputation was created after an astonishing display of courage when several times he climbed out of the cockpit of “Southern Cross” while on a trans-Tasman flight with Charles Kingsford-Smith. He braced himself against the leading edge of the wing and edged along the struts linking the engine nacelles to the fuselage to refill an oil tank to save a failing engine and the famous aircraft.  

Taylor felt that the vast unflown distance between Australia and South America could become a regular air route operated by flying boats, so he set out to make a proving flight to South America via Easter Island. His Consolidated “Catalina” which he called “Frigate Bird II” left Sydney for the long flight to Easter Island and arrived on schedule to meet with locals who had arranged a refuelling party. There were no facilities, just rocky inlets which were open to dangerous wind changes and huge ocean swells. Taylor chose a small bay at the southern tip of Easter Island as a landing place. From there he planned to taxi around the southern point of the island should the wind change.  

While most of the crew were ashore organising the refuelling, the wind changed and strengthened to near gale force. The anchor war p snapped. Eventually, all the crew clambered aboard to try and move the aircraft to the shelter around the point.  

Taylor found that he could not taxi into the wind directly over incoming waves because this would have broken the hull in half. Fortunately, he was an experienced yachtsman, so he devised a system of tacking off the lee shore, angling the hull just off the wind across the large and sometimes breaking swells. This was achieved by running the left engine while applying right rudder and putting the right-hand aileron down to create drag on that wing. This kept Frigate Bird II pointing just off the wind.  

P.G. Taylor

In this manner, on one tack, “Frigate Bird” gradually moved offshore, away from the rocky coast. One tack took about a mile. At the end of the tack, because he could not risk turning to run the aircraft downwind, he switched both engines off and with left aileron down and full left rudder he sailed backwards, still keeping the hull pointing offshore to a point where he could start another tack out to sea. Using this technique, the Catalina gradually crept towards the southern point. After many tacks, Taylor finally made it, backwards, through a small gap between the end of the island and a pinnacle of rock to the safety of a sheltered bay.  

With all speed, the crew refuelled the Catalina and later made a hair-raising, rocket-assisted take-off to arrive in Valparaiso, Chile many hours later.  

Marshall's painting shows Frigate Bird II at Easter Island on its way out on one of the final tacks to seaward, the broken anchor warp hangs from the bow. Above the flying boat a frigate bird soars triumphantly on the wind. 

This diagram shows, in principle, P.G. Taylor's method of tacking out to sea and moving gradually to a sheltered anchorage, always keeping Frigate Bird II head to Wind.