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an ordinary British submarine from Scapa Flow north and south to Vladivostok.
After careful thought and some discussion with his colleagues Bower replied that
in his opinion the transarctic submarine voyage would be far safer, far easier and far more
pleasant. I gathered that Commander Bower and several other submarine men would
be as eager for an opportunity a chance to cross the Arctic as John Smith and Sir Humphrey Gilbert
were to cross the Atlantic, and that the chances of tragedy would be about are somewhat the same. John Smith
came back but Sir Humphrey Gilbert was lost.

I am wishing the Americans the best of luck with the proposed
Shenandoah flight across the Arctic. If the Shenandoah does not do it some other
dirigible will and it is in keeping with American character to persist until the
job is done. But for Bower's sake and the credit of Great Britain I hope they
give him a chance to be the first to cross the Arctic by water and thus to make
good the dreams of the Elizabethan navigators of a short sea route to Cathay.

With the general ideas back of the Wrangell Island enterprise, it
was natural that I should be thrown into a contact with the Air Ministry that was
even closer than that with the Admiralty. Here I dealt chiefly with the Secretary
of State for Air, Sir Samuel Hoare, and with Major-General Sir Sefton Brancker, the
Director of Civil Aviation. Especially with General Brancker it turned out that
our definite plans and vaguer dreams alike had much in common. I had long been
advocating the practicability of carrying by dirigible over the Arctic the impor-
tant mails that constantly must pass between London and Tokyo, and I got so far as
to publish this proposal in the National Geographic Magazine for August, 1922.*
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* See also Chapter VII, "Transpolar Commerce by Air," in The Northward Course of
Empire.
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About the same time General Brancker had actually been planning with General
Maitland a dirigible trip from London to Tokyo; but at that time they had been so
misinformed about the temperatures and other meteorological conditions in the
Arctic that they had not considered the feasibility of taking this most direct