Elsie Mackay

Elsie Mackay Biography

The Honourable Elsie Mackay (circa 1893" circa 13 March 1928) was a British actress, interior decorator and pioneering aviatrix who died attempting to cross the Atlantic Ocean with Walter G. R. Hinchliffe in a single engined Stinson Detroiter.

Biography

She was born in 1893 in Simla, India to James Mackay, 1st Earl of Inchcape of Strathnaver, a British colonial administrator in India who became chairman of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company and Jean Paterson Shanks. Her father was serving as President of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce, as a member of the Legislative Council of the Viceroy of India, and as a member of the Council of the Secretary of State for India.

She was reportedly disinherited by her family after eloping with actor Dennis Wyndham to be married on on 23 May 1917. She appeared on the stage and screen as Poppy Wyndham from 1919 through 1921. This marriage was annulled in 1922.

Theatre and film

Poppy Wyndham's film career included :

A Great Coup (1919) as Kate Hampton,
'Snow in the Desert' (1919),
'Many a Slip' (1919) as The Girl,
'Nothing But the Truth' (1920) as Gwendolyn Gerald,
'A Dead Certainty' (1920) as Pat Stone,
'The Town of Crooked Ways' (1920) as Queenie Clay,
'The Tidal Wave' (1920) (as Carmen Hale / Columbine),
'A Son of David' (1920) as Esther Raphael

Interior design

After the marriage to Wyndham was annulled she returned to her family and developed a career as an interior decorator, creating lavish interiors, state rooms and public spaces for her father's shipping line, the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O). In 1923 she launched the RMS Maloja, and went on to design much of the interiors for the four P&O "R" class ships of 1925: SS Rawalpindi, SS Ranchi, SS Ranpura and SS Rajputana, plus the RMS Viceroy of India in 1927.

Flying

In 1923 she took up flying, gaining her pilot's licence at the De Havilland Flying School, probably the second woman since World War I after 'Mrs Atkey' bought a plane, and expressed a determination to be the first woman to fly the Atlantic Ocean. She was regarded as a contemporary role model amongst women, with dark looks, graceful manner, and a habitually well-gowned and bejeweled appearance. She was renowned for driving her Rolls Royce at great speed, galloping her horses, and being a familiar sight in her Avro biplane in the skies over South Ayrshire and Wigtownshire. She even participated in an "outside loop," the most dangerous of all stunts in air, with Capt. E.C.D. Herne as her pilot. During this manoeuvre her safety-strap broke but she clung to bracing wires while her body swung outside the plane like a stone twirled on the end of a piece of string. She was one of the first women in Britain to gain her Royal Aero Club pilot's licence and was later elected to the advisory committee of pilots to the British Empire Air League.

Transatlantic flight

To achieve her transatlantic ambition Elsie Mackay bought a Stinson Detroiter, having been impressed by the aircraft during Ruth Elder's failed 1927 transatlantic attempt (despite an oil leak causing the failure 300 miles over the Atlantic). It was shipped from the USA to Britain and delivered to the Brooklands motor racing track, which at the time was also used as an airfield. She named it 'Endeavour'. It was a monoplane with gold tipped wings and a black fuselage, powered by a 9 cylinder, 300 h.p. Wright Whirlwind J-6-9 (R-975) engine, with a cruising speed of 84 m.p.h.

In early March 1928 the Daily Express discovered that Captain Hinchliffe and Elsie were preparing for a transatlantic attempt by carrying out test flights at RAF Cranwell and were staying at the George Hotel in Leadenham near Grantham. The story was silenced by Mackay's threatened legal action as she intended to depart in secret while her father was in Egypt, having promised her family she would not make the attempt.

At 8:35 am on 13 March 1928 'Endeavour' took off from RAF Cranwell, Lincolnshire, with minimal fuss as Walter had told only two friends he was going and Elsie registered under the pseudonym of 'Gordon Sinclair'. Approximately 5 hours later, at 1.30 pm the Chief lighthouse keeper at Mizen Head on the south west coast of Cork, Ireland saw the monoplane over the village of Crookhaven, on the great circle course for Newfoundland. A French steamer the SS Josiah Macy later reported seeing them still on course, but nothing else is known. A crowd of 5,000 is reputed to have waited for them at Mitchel Field, Long Island. In December 1928, 8 months later, a single piece of identifiable undercarriage (a wheel with a serial number on it) washed ashore in north west Ireland.

Commemoration

Elsie Mackay is commemorated by a stained glass window in the chancel of Glenapp Church in the parish of Ballantrae, Ayrshire (where her father owned the Glenapp estate) Rhododendrons, now somewhat overgrown, spell out "Elsie" on the opposite side of the glen.() A street is named after her in Gander, Newfoundland and Labrador. Her financial legacy was the 'Elsie Mackay Fund', a £500,000 trust that was left to the British nation on 12 December 1928, for 50 years and used to help pay off the national debt.

Selected filmography

A Great Coup (1919)
A Son of David (1920)