Lost Ports of the Skies

In 1923, "disappearing ships" were being replaced in the popular imagination by "disappearing planes."

That's remained true, from Amelia Earhart in 1937 to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in 2014. When was the last time you heard of a disappearing ship?

A July 1923 New York Times Magazine article described the shift:

We have accustomed ourselves to the vagaries of the sea. We conceive of wet and tentacled hands that reach up and pull ships of the sea off their course and into unknown ports. But there have been other hands, long hands that beckon from out the clouds and mist, rain, and snow, and the flying craft swerve from their line of flight, to be drawn virtually on the wings of the wind into lost ports of the skies.

Still, the numbers proved it wasn't actually as bad as it seemed:

While flying was once a dangerous profession, much of that being done by civilians is little else than safe. Of the 89,435 flights reported to have been made by some 130 civilian operators in 1922, in the United States, only seventy resulted in accident, and of these only seven were fatal.

"Only" seven were fatal. Today, in the U.S., there hasn't been a fatal airline crash since 2009.

Lost Ports of the Skies

Published: Sunday, July 15, 1923