On June 14, 1919, a Vickers Vimy biplane lumbered into the air from a field in St. John s, Newfoundland. More than sixteen hours and 3,000 kilometres later, the British crew of John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown brought the aircraft to a crash landing in a bog near Clifden, Ireland. The race to fly across the Atlantic Ocean had been won. It is hard for us today to fully appreciate the celebrity status accorded Alcock and Brown and their contemporaries in the world of aviation. Aircraft were flimsy, unreliable novelties and the men and women who flew them possessed incredible courage, daring, and vision. Many of them have been forgotten, but others have become legends: Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Wiley Post, and Richard Byrd. The Big Hop tells the stories of aviators who challenged the Atlantic Ocean between 1919 and the end of the Second World War, with a focus on the role played by Newfoundland and Labrador. It tells how these pioneers lived, and, all too often, how they died in their quest for glory.

Gavin Will is a publisher and journalist who lives in Newfoundland and Labrador.

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