{"id":7729726,"date":"2026-07-29T11:42:01","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T09:42:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/beryl-markham-first-woman-atlantic-east-west-1936\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T11:42:37","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T09:42:37","slug":"beryl-markham-first-woman-atlantic-east-west-1936","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/beryl-markham-first-woman-atlantic-east-west-1936\/","title":{"rendered":"The Woman Who Flew the Atlantic the Hard Way"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style>\r\n\r\n<p>On the evening of 4 September 1936, a turquoise-and-silver monoplane lifted off from an airfield in Oxfordshire and turned out over the Atlantic, into the dark and into the wind. At the controls, alone, was a 33-year-old woman who had never flown the ocean before. Ahead of her lay some 3,600 miles of black water and a headwind that had defeated better-funded men.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Her name was Beryl Markham, and she was about to become the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo from east to west &mdash; the hard way.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f5f5f5;border-radius:8px;padding:20px;margin:24px 0\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 10px;font-weight:700;font-size:18px\">Quick Facts<\/p><ul style=\"margin:0;padding-left:20px;line-height:1.8\"><li><strong>Pilot:<\/strong> Beryl Markham (1902&ndash;1986)<\/li><li><strong>Flight:<\/strong> 4 September 1936, Abingdon, England, westward across the Atlantic<\/li><li><strong>Aircraft:<\/strong> Percival Vega Gull VP-KCC, <em>The Messenger<\/em><\/li><li><strong>Duration:<\/strong> roughly 21 hours, against the prevailing wind<\/li><li><strong>Ended:<\/strong> forced landing in a bog at Baleine Cove, Nova Scotia, after fuel-vent icing<\/li><li><strong>Also known for:<\/strong> her memoir <em>West with the Night<\/em> (1942)<\/li><\/ul><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Raised wild in Kenya<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>She was born Beryl Clutterbuck in England in 1902, but she was made in Africa. At four she moved with her father to colonial Kenya, where he built a horse-racing farm near the Great Rift Valley. She grew up hunting alongside local children, and by 17 she was training thoroughbreds professionally. Then she found the air.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Coached by the British pilot Tom Campbell Black, Markham learned to fly and went to work as a bush pilot, spotting elephant and game from the air and radioing their positions to safaris below. Flying over the vast, empty spaces of East Africa taught her something most pilots never learn: how to be utterly alone in the sky and stay calm.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/S9uzCfwlW2M\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0;border-radius:8px\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;font-style:italic\">A dramatization of Markham&rsquo;s life in Kenya from the 1988 biographical film <em>Beryl Markham: A Shadow on the Sun<\/em>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">West with the night<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>The Atlantic had been flown east-to-west before, but never solo and non-stop from England &mdash; because doing it meant fighting the prevailing westerlies the whole way. Markham took the challenge in a Percival Vega Gull she named <em>The Messenger<\/em>, aiming for New York&rsquo;s Floyd Bennett Field.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>She flew through the night and most of the next day, some twenty-one hours over open ocean. Then, within sight of the coast, ice choked the fuel-tank vents and starved the engine. The Vega Gull came down nose-first in a peat bog at Baleine Cove on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. Markham climbed out with a gash on her forehead &mdash; and into history. She was the first woman to cross the Atlantic solo east-to-west, and the first person to fly non-stop from England to North America.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img data-opt-id=22064412  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/07\/percival-vega-gull-aircraft.jpg\" alt=\"A Percival Vega Gull\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block;border-radius:6px\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">A preserved Percival Vega Gull, the same graceful four-seat type Markham flew across the Atlantic. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;border-radius:0 8px 8px 0;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;I learned what every dreaming child needs to know &mdash; that no horizon is so far that you cannot get above it or beyond it.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Beryl Markham<\/strong> &mdash; from her memoir, West with the Night (1942)<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The book Hemingway envied<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>Six years later, Markham turned her life into prose. <em>West with the Night<\/em>, published in 1942, is a memoir of Africa and flight written in language so clear and vivid that it stunned other writers &mdash; then promptly sold poorly and fell out of print. For forty years it was all but forgotten.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img data-opt-id=628766426  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/07\/beryl-markham-edgar-percival.jpg\" alt=\"Beryl Markham with Edgar Percival\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block;border-radius:6px\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">Markham with Edgar Percival, designer of the Vega Gull she flew, before the Atlantic attempt. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n<p>Its rescue came by accident. In 1982 a California restaurateur read a collection of Ernest Hemingway&rsquo;s letters and stumbled on one in which the famously hard-to-impress novelist raved about Markham&rsquo;s writing. He tracked down the book, loved it, and pushed a publisher to reissue it. This time it became a bestseller.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #1565c0;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;border-radius:0 8px 8px 0;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;She has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer &hellip; she can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers &hellip; it really is a bloody wonderful book.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Ernest Hemingway<\/strong> &mdash; in a 1942 letter, on West with the Night<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WWQdmbBGBj0\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0;border-radius:8px\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;font-style:italic\">A discussion of Markham&rsquo;s memoir <em>West with the Night<\/em> and the writing Hemingway admired.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The horizon beyond<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>Markham lived the rest of her life in Kenya, training racehorses into her eighties. By the time the rediscovered book made her famous again she was elderly and living in poverty near the Nairobi racetrack; the royalties let her end her days in comfort. She died in Nairobi in 1986. Today a crater on the planet Venus carries her name &mdash; a fitting horizon for a woman who never believed in them.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UtuuBONr_cA\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0;border-radius:8px\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;font-style:italic\">A Percival Vega Gull, the type Markham flew, starting up and taxiing &mdash; the sound of the machine that carried her across the ocean.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><em>Sources: Beryl Markham (Wikipedia); West with the Night, Beryl Markham (North Point Press, 1983 [1942]); Mary S. Lovell, <\/em>Straight on Till Morning<em>; This Day in Aviation; Simple Flying.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px;border-radius:0 8px 8px 0\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Related Posts<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/amelia-earhart-first-across-the-atlantic-then-she-vanished\/\">Amelia Earhart: First Across the Atlantic &mdash; Then She Vanished<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/first-transatlantic-flight-nc-4-1919-not-lindbergh\/\">The First Transatlantic Flight Wasn&rsquo;t Lindbergh &mdash; It Was the NC-4 in 1919<\/a><\/p><\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On the evening of 4 September 1936, a turquoise-and-silver monoplane lifted off from an airfield in Oxfordshire and turned out over the Atlantic, into the dark and into the wind. At the controls, alone, was a 33-year-old woman who had never flown the ocean before. Ahead of her lay some 3,600 miles of black water [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":7729259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[665,666],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7729726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aviation-world","category-history-and-legends"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Beryl Markham&#039;s Atlantic Flight, the Hard Way | Afterburner<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In 1936 Beryl Markham became the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo east-to-west, then wrote West with the Night, the memoir Hemingway envied.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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