In 1913, The Daily Mail newspaper in London, England, offered a prize of £10,000 to "the aviator who shall first cross the Atlantic in an aeroplane in flight from any point in the United States of America, Canada or Newfoundland and any point in Great Britain or Ireland" in 72 continuous hours."

The competition stalled with the outbreak of war, but once the Armistice was declared in 1918 it began to hot up again with four teams competing to be the first non-stop across the Atlantic. One of these was John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown.