1

Aviation in Botwood began in 1919 and ended in 1945. Major Sidney Cotton and Captain Sidney Bennett established the first facilities for aircrafts in Botwood during 1921-22 as headquarters for Cotton's Aerial Survey (Newfoundland) Company (Decks Awash, 1981). He constructed hangars for his planes, a deHavilland 9, a Rolls-Royce powered Martynsyde and a Westland Napier. The planes were equipped with skis made locally by Nathaniel Hart for winter use on the frozen Exploits River and Bay; Hart became friends with Cotton and once flew to Labrador with him. In other seasons the planes were equipped with pontoons. Cotton chose Botwood because it was sheltered and easily accessible, suitable for both summer and winter. Few people in Botwood had ever seen an airplane and crowds came out to see the spectacle.

On February 26, 1921 Cotton flew from St. John's to St. Anthony, landing on ice at Botwood harbour to refuel his aircraft. This plane carried the first air mail to the seal hunt and the Fogo area. The Fogo mail was subsequently delivered on a flight from Botwood on March 28, 1921.

Near the end of November 1921 an attempt was made by Sidney Cotton to fly mail collected at Botwood to Halifax. The bay was still ice free, but during some delay caused by trouble with floats, the bay froze over. A storm arose and built up a huge barrier of ice blocks between the shore and the hangar. It took eight days to remove the ice. Finally, on December 20 he started out but engine trouble brought him down 100 miles away near Deer Lake. When he started up the next morning Cotton was struck by the propeller and hospitalized. Captain Sidney Bennett attempted to fly the plane back to Botwood but made a forced landing and crashed near Grand Falls.

On December 10, 1921 Cotton and Bennett made the first air mail run from Botwood to Nova Scotia.

Mr. Joseph R. Smallwood, [Newfoundland's first premier] took his first airplane flight with Major Cotton. Mr. Smallwood flew over St. John's on January 22, 1922 along with Albert B. Perlin and a reporter named Walsh of the Daily News of St. John's (1967, Smallwood).

Cotton was the first to spot seals from an aircraft and by 1923 had a small air fleet operation from the base in Botwood. "The community of Botwood was the first in Newfoundland (and probably the first in the world) to receive seal flippers via aircraft" (Morris, 1976).

On one seal spotting flight out of Botwood, flying solo and without a wireless set, Cotton got a scare when the Martynsyde developed engine trouble 200 miles from land:

I suddenly realized what an absolute fool I had been. I'd been taking this sort of risk for three years and so far I had been lucky, but now the prospect of freezing to death on the ice floes stared me in the face. Why had I done it? All the time, as I coaxed the engine along and it gave more and more trouble, I was thinking these miserable thoughts. The sealing people had still not grasped the importance of aerial seal-spotting and perhaps they never would. If the Avro proved successful they would cut me out and run it themselves. Even the air mail contracts, it seemed, were stifled by politics and threatened by corruption. There and then, as the engine missed and sputtered, I made a vow that if I ever got back to Botwood I would give up seal-spotting, and that if I couldn't get a promise of constructive support from the government I would leave Newfoundland (Candow, 1987).