"All aboard for Friedrichshafen, Tokyo, Los Angeles!" bawled a sergeant of Marines at Lakehurst, N. J., one midnight last week.
The Graf Zeppelin, steel blue in the floodlights, was trimmed to circumnavigate the globe. Marines, sailors and Boy Scouts relinquished the ropes which held her to earth. Up she nosed, and away, a steady-moving monster quickly lost in the darkness. Manhattan watchers heard her motors, saw her slummer through the murk. She circled the Statue of Liberty before heading to sea.
Company. Twenty-two passengers were aboard. Most active were Karl H. Von Wiegand. European director of William Randolph Hearst's Universal News service: Sir George Hubert Wilkins, Hearst-backed polar explorer; Lady Grace Drummond Hay, fastidious Hearst voyageuse; Robert Hartman, Hearst photographer; the U. S. Navy's Lieut.-Commander Charles E. Rosendahl, Hearst guest. Their duties were to report the popular and scientific details exclusively for Hearst and associated newspapers. Other passengers and the crew were forbidden to say a word or sell a picture until the Hearst group permitted them to do so. For exclusive news rights, Publisher Hearst paid a secret sum (approximately $200,000). Correspondent Von Wiegand had conceived the flight, arranged details of its stopovers at Tokyo and Los Angeles. He, Sir Hubert and Lady Drummond Hay were to take turns observing and reporting every day and night of the three weeks. She, "who is of a very reserved nature," insisted upon a cabin all to herself. She was the only woman aboard.
The Hearst group had tickets for the whole voyage. Other trippers included Joachim Rickard, Massachusetts-born Spanish correspondent, who was obliged to fight Hearst opposition to his passage; Lieutenant Jack C. Richardson, U. S. Navy observer; William B. Leeds, socialite playboy. Lieut.-Col. Nelson Morris, nephew of Ira Nelson Morris (Chicago meatpacker and onetime Minister to Sweden), had a ticket as far as Friedrichshafen.
Mail. Aboard were 50,631 pieces of mail, whose aggregate postal charges were $44,074.11. Of this Germany got $42,471.99, the U. S. $1,602.12.
Stowaway. A would-be stowaway, remained behind in the Lakehurst guardhouse. He, one Morris Roth, 18, plumber's helper, of Trenton, N. J., was caught crawling along a high girder in the Lakehurst hangar. He had a 175-ft. rope with him and had planned to slide down it to the top of the Graf Zeppelin. The covering of the airship is of fabric. He might have broken through and caused disaster when she was in the air. The stowaway who crossed from Germany to the U. S., one Albert Buschko, 19, Dusseldorf baker's apprentice, was sent home on the Hamburg-American liner Thuringia, ignominiously.
Thieves. While the rest of Lakehurst watched the departing ship, a shrewd thief entered the headquarters; building, stole $2,000 from an open safe. Other thieves took a safe containing $700 from a canteen, robbed public telephone booths.
Departure. Lady Drummond Hay: "We passed from a symphony of silver to golden glory as the lights of New York City scattered themselves beneath us like grains of golden Stardust, tracing patterns strange and fantastic, set with the jewelled brilliancy of ruby, emerald and topaz electric signs. . . ."