The crates down in the hold of the ship were lashed and stenciled and marked WRIGHT FLYER. It would take a full week to cross the Atlantic. In 1903, the Flyer had lifted off from the sands of Kitty Hawk. Now, twenty-five years later, it was headed for London and no one knew when it was coming back, if ever.

When in 1925 Orville had decided to ship the Flyer to the Science Museum in London, the crates were once again unpacked. Mabel Beck assisted in the rebuilding of the flyer once again. “Actual work was not started on the machine until December 1926,”1 Mabel would write later. “The original cloth was in bad shape, very frail and worn from having been handled too much in setting up the machine in various exhibitions. Mr. Wright therefore decided to recover the machine with new cloth…. Jim Jacobs [again] was hired to do the woodwork and assembly and Mr. Wright and I laid out and cut the cloth, and I did the sewing. Jacobs later did the crating. Only the three of us had anything to do with the final work on this machine.”²

The 1903 Flyer was ready to go to Britain in March 1927. It remained in Orville's laboratory for the next nine months, under the guard of Mabel Beck, who went there every day to check on it. Then, in June, Orville called her at home early one morning and told her to meet him at the laboratory. Mabel went there, and in walked Charles Lindbergh, just weeks back from his famous flight.³ The young man stared at the 1903 Flyer with Orville beside him and Mabel just behind.

Orville then went to Canada for vacation that summer, and Mabel stayed with the plane. In January 1928, it was crated up and Mabel made the arrangements to have the 1903 airplane shipped to London. America demanded to know why Orville would send the 1903 Flyer, the plane that conquered the skies, to the Science Museum of London. He had responded with a letter.

I believe that my course in sending our Kitty Hawk machine to a foreign museum is the only way of correcting the history of the flying machine, which by false and misleading statements has been perverted by the Smithsonian Institution. In its campaign to discredit others in the flying art, the Smithsonian has issued scores of these false and misleading statements. They can be proved to be false and misleading from documents. But the people of today do not take the trouble to examine the evidence.

With this machine in any American museum the national pride would be satisfied; nothing further would be done and the Smithsonian would continue its propaganda. In a foreign museum the machine will be a constant reminder of the reasons for its being there, and after the people and the petty jealousies of this day are gone, the historians of the future may examine the evidence impartially and make history accord with it. Your regret that this machine must leave the country can hardly be so great as my own.4

Then the 1903 Flyer left for the Old World. Mabel had thought about that journey across the Atlantic ocean. It was her job to make sure the treasure of the Wright brothers arrived safely. She imagined America was far behind in the stormy gray seas that tossed the ship and stressed the ropes holding the crates. A journey to Britain took seven days. The steady thrum of the steam engines and the ship's propeller cutting the chop of the ocean vibrated through the crates and the butterfly wings inside. The ship rolled up and down and heaved to port, and then turned to starboard. The crates didn't move at all, even though the taut wires inside vibrated with the pulse of the steam turbines pushing the screws.

Mabel understood that Mr. Wright would have his revenge. The Smithsonian and Glenn Curtiss, they would all pay. He was taking his treasure, America's treasure, and leaving for the country against which America had fought for independence less than two hundred years earlier. That would show the secretary of the Smithsonian and his lackeys. Langley's machine would never have flown. This Orville knew. If the Smithsonian wanted to try to credit someone else with making the first powered flight, then London would have the prize. Mabel had taken grim pleasure in shipping the Flyer. Their outright lies. It was an outrage. This would teach them all.

Ms. Beck had heard there were storms out on the Atlantic. They were not unlike the nor'easters that hit Kitty Hawk. Orville had told her that he and Wilbur had survived more than a few storms, with their tent almost blown away several times. That the plane managed to fly in that wind in 1903 was simply amazing. The wind was blowing at 25 miles an hour that day, and it had been a cheek-biting 35 degrees. Orville said Wilbur would have approved of him taking their flyer away from the men who would do them harm. It was still hard to believe that his brother had been dead for sixteen years.

What Mabel didn't know about was the strange sound coming out of the cargo hold.

Some of the men heard it at night and went down to investigate. They stared at the crates marked WRIGHT FLYER. It was a hum, really. What they didn't know was that the strut wires inside the crates were vibrating from the engine of the ship. Wilbur would have known in a second what that hum was…. It was the sound of flight.