things material into an infinite space." On 15 October, Jannus crashed on take off while setting off to search for Albert Jewell, an aviator who had disappeared over off southern Long Island while flying to join the race on 13 October; Jannus was unhurt in the crash, though the airplane was written off. The following month, Jannus moved to St. Petersburg, Florida First scheduled airline flight Prior to 1914, travel from Tampa, Florida, to St. Petersburg, located on a then-isolated peninsula, required a slow steamboat trip across Tampa Bay or a circuitous, five-hour journey by railroad. A bumpy automobile or horse and buggy ride took many hours over primitive, unpaved roads. The airplane at the time was a rare novelty, lacking any practical application. Impressed by the record-setting overwater flight made by Jannus in 1912, Florida businessman Percival Fansler approached some St. Petersburg businessmen the next year with a proposal to use Benoist flying boats for "a real commercial line" over open water between the two cities. Convinced by Fansler's plan, several St. Petersburg community leaders, led by L. A. Whitney of the local chamber of commerce and Noel Mitchell, agreed to provide financial support for the creation of an airline service to connect the two cities. A 90-day contract with Benoist was signed on December 17, 1913 (the 10th anniversary of Wilbur and Orville Wright's historic first airplane flight), to provide airplanes and crew for two daily round trips across Tampa Bay, dubbed the St. Petersburg–Tampa Airboat Line — the world's first scheduled airline. Fansler told the St. Petersburg Times: "The St. Petersburg waterfront is an ideal place for starting and landing as the trip to and from Tampa will be one of the most beautiful in the country. Skimming a few feet above the surface of the water... with the purr of a 75 h.p. engine and the whirring of a propeller turning several hundred times a minute, the rush of the cool salt air and the shimmering sunlight on Tampa Bay — no trip could be more enjoyable.". Departing from a location on January 1, 1914, near the downtown St. Petersburg Municipal Pier on Second Avenue North, Jannus piloted the twenty-three-minute inaugural flight of the pioneer airline's Benoist XIV flying boat biplane. A crowd of 3,000 gathered at the pier to watch the history-making takeoff at 10 a.m. and were told by Fansler that "What was impossible