On November 14, 1910, pilot Eugene Ely took off in a Curtiss D model airplane from an 83-foot platform mounted on the foredeck of the cruiser Birmingham. After a flight of two and a half kilometers, the plane landed safely at the airfield at Willoughby Spit.
It was the first successful launch from a ship. Two months later, on January 18, 1911, Ely landed his plane on a 120-foot-long dock installed aboard the cruiser Pennsylvania in San Francisco Bay.