Another figure of the early days was A. V. Roe, who came from marine engineering to the motor industry and aviation in 1905. In 1906 he went out to Colorado, getting out drawings for the Davidson helicopter, and in 1907 having returned to England, he obtained highest award out of 200 entries in a model aeroplane flying compet.i.tion. From the design of this model he built a full-sized machine, and made a first flight on it, fitted with a 24 horse-power Antoinette engine, in June of 1908 Later, he fitted a 9 horsepower motor-cycle engine to a triplane of his own design, and with this made a number of short flights; he got his flying brevet on a triplane with a motor of 35 horse-power, which, together with a second triplane, was entered for the Blackpool aviation meeting of 1910 but was burnt in transport to the meeting. He was responsible for the building of the first seaplane to rise from English waters, and may be counted the pioneer of the tractor type of biplane. In 1913 he built a two-seater tractor biplane with 80 horse-power engine, a machine which for some considerable time ranked as a leader of design. Together with E. V. Roe and H. V. Roe, "A. V." controlled the Avro works, which produced some of the most famous training machines of the war period in a modification of the original 80 horse-power tractor. The first of the series of Avro tractors to be adopted by the military authorities was the 1912 biplane, a two-seater fitted with 50 horsepower engine. It was the first tractor biplane with a closed fuselage to be used for military work, and became standard for the type. The Avro seaplane, of I 100 horse-power (a fourteen-cylinder Gnome engine was used) was taken up by the British Admiralty in 1913. It had a length of 34 feet and a wing-span of 50 feet, and was of the twin-float type.
Geoffrey de Havilland, though of later rank, counts high among designers of British machines. He qualified for his brevet as late as February, 1911, on a biplane of his own construction, and became responsible for the design of the BE2, the first successful British Government biplane.
On this he made a British height record of 10,500 feet over Salisbury Plain, in August of 1912, when he took up Major Sykes as pa.s.senger. In the war period he was one of the princ.i.p.al designers of fighting and reconnaissance machines.
F. Handley Page, who started in business as an aeroplane builder in 1908, having works at Barking, was one of the princ.i.p.al exponents of the inherently stable machine, to which he devoted practically all his experimental work up to the outbreak of war. The experiments were made with various machines, both of monoplane and biplane type, and of these one of the best was a two-seater monoplane built in 1911, while a second was a larger machine, a biplane, built in 1913 and fitted with a 110 horse-power Anzani engine. The war period brought out the giant biplane with which the name of Handley Page is most a.s.sociated, the twin-engined night-bomber being a familiar feature of the later days of the war; the four-engined bomber had hardly had a chance of proving itself under service conditions when the war came to an end.
Another notable figure of the early period was "Tommy" Sopwith, who took his flying brevet at Brooklands in November of 1910, and within four days made the British duration record of 108 miles in 3 hours 12 minutes. On December 18th, 1910, he won the Baron de Forrest prize of L4,000 for the longest flight from England to the Continent, flying from Eastchurch to Tirlemont, Belgium, in three hours, a distance of 161 miles. After two years of touring in America, he returned to England and established a flying school. In 1912 he won the first aerial Derby, and in 1913 a machine of his design, a tractor biplane, raised the British height record to 13,000 feet (June 16th, at Brooklands). First as aviator, and then as designer, Sopwith has done much useful work in aviation.
These are but a few, out of a host who contributed to the development of flying in this country, for, although France may be said to have set the pace as regards development, Britain was not far behind. French experimenters received far more Government aid than did the early British aviators and designers--in the early days the two were practically synonymous, and there are many stories of the very early days at Brooklands, where, when funds ran low, the ardent spirits patched their trousers with aeroplane fabric and went on with their work with Bohemian cheeriness. Cody, altering and experimenting on Laffan"s Plain, is the greatest figure of them all, but others rank, too, as giants of the early days, before the war brought full recognition of the aeroplane"s potentialities.
One of the first men actually to fly in England, Mr J. C. T.
Moore-Brabazon, was a famous figure in the days of exhibition flying, and won his reputation mainly through being first to fly a circular mile on a machine designed and built in Great Britain and piloted by a British subject. Moore-Brabazon"s earliest flights were made in France on a Voisin biplane in 1908, and he brought this machine over to England, to the Aero Club grounds at Sh.e.l.lness, but soon decided that he would pilot a British machine instead. An order was placed for a Short machine, and this, fitted with a 50-60 horse-power Green engine, was used for the circular mile, which won a prize of L1,000 offered by the Daily Mail, the feat being accomplished on October 30th, 1909. Five days later, Moore-Brabazon achieved the longest flight up to that time accomplished on a British-built machine, covering three and a half miles. In connection with early flying in England, it is claimed that A.
V. Roe, flying "Avro B,"," on June 8th, 1908, was actually the first man to leave the ground, this being at Brooklands, but in point of fact Cody antedated him.
No record of early British fliers could be made without the name of C.
S. Rolls, a son of Lord Llangattock, on June 2nd, 1910, he flew across the English Channel to France, until he was duly observed over French territory, when he returned to England without alighting. The trip was made on a Wright biplane, and was the third Channel crossing by air, Bleriot having made the first, and Jacques de Lesseps the second. Rolls was first to make the return journey in one trip. He was eventually killed through the breaking of the tail-plane of his machine in descending at a flying meeting at Bournemouth. The machine was a Wright biplane, but the design of the tail-plane--which, by the way, was an addition to the machine, and was not even sanctioned by the Wrights--appears to have been carelessly executed, and the plane itself was faulty in construction. The breakage caused the machine to overturn, killing Rolls, who was piloting it.
XIV. RHEIMS, AND AFTER
The foregoing brief--and necessarily incomplete--survey of the early British group of fliers has taken us far beyond some of the great events of the early days of successful flight, and it is necessary to go back to certain landmarks in the history of aviation, first of which is the great meeting at Rheims in 1909. Wilbur Wright had come to Europe, and, flying at Le Mans and Pau--it was on August 8th, 1908, that Wilbur Wright made the first of his ascents in Europe--had stimulated public interest in flying in France to a very great degree. Meanwhile, Orville Wright, flying at Fort Meyer, U.S.A., with Lieutenant Selfridge as a pa.s.senger, sustained an accident which very nearly cost him his life through the transmission gear of the motor breaking. Selfridge was killed and Orville Wright was severely injured--it was the first fatal accident with a Wright machine.
Orville Wright made a flight of over an hour on September 9th, 1908, and on December 31st of that year Wilbur flew for 2 hours 19 minutes. Thus, when the Rheims meeting was organised--more notable because it was the first of its kind, there were already records waiting to be broken. The great week opened on August 22nd, there being thirty entrants, including all the most famous men among the early fliers in France. Bleriot, fresh from his Channel conquest, was there, together with Henry Farman, Paulhan, Curtiss, Latham, and the Comte de Lambert, first pupil of the Wright machine in Europe to achieve a reputation as an aviator.
"To say that this week marks an epoch in the history of the world is to state a plat.i.tude. Nevertheless, it is worth stating, and for us who are lucky enough to be at Rheims during this week there is a solid satisfaction in the idea that we are present at the making of history.
In perhaps only a few years to come the compet.i.tions of this week may look pathetically small and the distances and speeds may appear paltry.
Nevertheless, they are the first of their kind, and that is sufficient."
So wrote a newspaper correspondent who was present at the famous meeting, and his words may stand, being more than mere journalism; for the great flying week which opened on August 22nd, 1909, ranks as one of the great landmarks in the history of heavier-than-air flight. The day before the opening of the meeting a downpour of rain spoilt the flying ground; Sunday opened with a fairly high wind, and in a lull M.
Guffroy turned out on a crimson R.E.P. monoplane, but the wheels of his undercarriage stuck in the mud and prevented him from rising in the quarter of an hour allowed to compet.i.tors to get off the ground.
Bleriot, following, succeeded in covering one side of the triangular course, but then came down through grit in the carburettor. Latham, following him with thirteen as the number of his machine, experienced his usual bad luck and came to earth through engine trouble after a very short flight. Captain Ferber, who, owing to military regulations, always flew under the name of De Rue, came out next with his Voisin biplane, but failed to get off the ground; he was followed by Lefebvre on a Wright biplane, who achieved the success of the morning by rounding the course--a distance of six and a quarter miles--in nine minutes with a twenty mile an hour wind blowing. His flight finished the morning.
Wind and rain kept compet.i.tors out of the air until the evening, when Latham went up, to be followed almost immediately by the Comte de Lambert. Sommer, c.o.c.kburn (the only English compet.i.tor), Delagrange, Fournier, Lefebvre, Bleriot, Bunau-Varilla, Tissandier, Paulhan, and Ferber turned out after the first two, and the excitement of the spectators at seeing so many machines in the air at one time provoked wild cheering. The only accident of the day came when Bleriot damaged his propeller in colliding with a hayc.o.c.k.
The main results of the day were that the Comte de Lambert flew 30 kilometres in 29 minutes 2 seconds; Lefebvre made the ten-kilometre circle of the track in just a second under 9 minutes, while Tissandier did it in 9 1/4 minutes, and Paulhan reached a height of 230 feet. Small as these results seem to us now, and ridiculous as may seem enthusiasm at the sight of a few machines in the air at the same time, the Rheims Meeting remains a great event, since it proved definitely to the whole world that the conquest of the air had been achieved.
Throughout the week record after record was made and broken. Thus on the Monday, Lefebvre put up a record for rounding the course and Bleriot beat it, to be beaten in turn by Glenn Curtiss on his Curtiss-Herring biplane. On that day, too, Paulhan covered 34 3/4 miles in 1 hour 6 minutes. On the next day, Paulhan on his Voisin biplane took the air with Latham, and Fournier followed, only to smash up his machine by striking an eddy of wind which turned him over several times. On the Thursday, one of the chief events was Latham"s 43 miles accomplished in 1 hour 2 minutes in the morning and his 96.5 miles in 2 hours 13 minutes in the afternoon, the latter flight only terminated by running out of petrol. On the Friday, the Colonel Renard French airship, which had flown over the ground under the pilotage of M. Kapfarer, paid Rheims a second visit; Latham manoeuvred round the airship on his Antoinette and finally left it far behind. Henry Farman won the Grand Prix de Champagne on this day, covering 112 miles in 3 hours, 4 minutes, 56 seconds, Latham being second with his 96.5 miles flight, and Paulhan third.
On the Sat.u.r.day, Glenn Curtiss came to his own, winning the Gordon-Bennett Cup by covering 20 kilometres in 15 minutes 50.6 seconds.
Bleriot made a good second with 15 minutes 56.2 seconds as his time, and Latham and Lefebvre were third and fourth. Farman carried off the pa.s.senger prize by carrying two pa.s.sengers a distance of 6 miles in 10 minutes 39 seconds. On the last day Delagrange narrowly escaped serious accident through the bursting of his propeller while in the air, Curtiss made a new speed record by travelling at the rate of over 50 miles an hour, and Latham, rising to 500 feet, won the alt.i.tude prize.
These are the cold statistics of the meeting; at this length of time it is difficult to convey any idea of the enthusiasm of the crowds over the achievements of the various compet.i.tors, while the incidents of the week, comic and otherwise, are nearly forgotten now even by those present in this making of history. Latham"s great flight on the Thursday was rendered a breathless episode by a downpour of rain when he had covered all but a kilometre of the record distance previously achieved by Paulhan, and there was wild enthusiasm when Latham flew on through the rain until he had put up a new record and his petrol had run out.
Again, on the Friday afternoon, the Colonel Renard took the air together with a little French dirigible, Zodiac III; Latham was already in the air directly over Farman, who was also flying, and three crows which turned out as rivals to the human aviators received as much cheering for their appearance as had been accorded to the machines, which doubtless they could not understand. Frightened by the cheering, the crows tried to escape from the course, but as they came near the stands, the crowd rose to cheer again and the crows wheeled away to make a second charge towards safety, with the same result; the crowd rose and cheered at them a third and fourth time; between ten and fifteen thousand people stood on chairs and tables and waved hats and handkerchiefs at three ordinary, everyday crows. One thoughtful spectator, having thoroughly enjoyed the funny side of the incident, remarked that the ultimate mastery of the air lies with the machine that comes nearest to natural flight. This still remains for the future to settle.
Farman"s world record, which won the Grand Prix de Champagne, was done with a Gnome Rotary Motor which had only been run on the test bench and was fitted to his machine four hours before he started on the great flight. His propeller had never been tested, having only been completed the night before. The closing laps of that flight, extending as they did into the growing of the dusk, made a breathlessly eerie experience for such of the spectators as stayed on to watch--and these were many. Night came on steadily and Farman covered lap after lap just as steadily, a buzzing, circling mechanism with something relentless in its isolated persistency.
The final day of the meeting provided a further record in the quarter million spectators who turned up to witness the close of the great week.
Bleriot, turning out in the morning, made a landing in some such fashion as flooded the carburettor and caused it to catch fire. Bleriot himself was badly burned, since the petrol tank burst and, in the end, only the metal parts of the machine were left. Glenn Curtis tried to beat Bleriot"s time for a lap of the course, but failed. In the evening, Farman and Latham went out and up in great circles, Farman cleaving his way upward in what at the time counted for a huge machine, on circles of about a mile diameter. His first round took him level with the top of the stands, and, in his second, he circled the captive balloon anch.o.r.ed in the middle of the grounds. After another circle, he came down on a long glide, when Latham"s lean Antoinette monoplane went up in circles more graceful than those of Farman. "Swiftly it rose and swept round close to the balloon, veered round to the hangars, and out over to the Rheims road. Back it came high over the stands, the people craning their necks as the shrill cry of the engine drew nearer and nearer behind the stands. Then of a sudden, the little form appeared away up in the deep twilight blue vault of the sky, heading straight as an arrow for the anch.o.r.ed balloon. Over it, and high, high above it went the Antoinette, seemingly higher by many feet than the Farman machine. Then, wheeling in a long sweep to the left, Latham steered his machine round past the stands, where the people, their nerve-tension released on seeing the machine descending from its perilous height of 500 feet, shouted their frenzied acclamations to the hero of the meeting.
"For certainly "Le Tham," as the French call him, was the popular hero.
He always flew high, he always flew well, and his machine was a joy to the eye, either afar off or at close quarters. The public feeling for Bleriot is different. Bleriot, in the popular estimation, is the man who fights against odds, who meets the adverse fates calmly and with good courage, and to whom good luck comes once in a while as a reward for much labour and anguish, bodily and mental. Latham is the darling of the G.o.ds, to whom Fate has only been unkind in the matter of the Channel flight, and only then because the honour belonged to Bleriot.
"Next to these two, the public loved most Lefebvre, the joyous, the gymnastic. Lefebvre was the comedian of the meeting. When things began to flag, the gay little Lefebvre would trot out to his starting rail, out at the back of the judge"s enclosure opposite the stands, and after a little twisting of propellers his Wright machine would bounce off the end of its starting rail and proceed to do the most marvellous tricks for the benefit of the crowd, wheeling to right and left, darting up and down, now flying over a troop of the cavalry who kept the plain clear of people and sending their horses into hysterics, anon making straight for an unfortunate photographer who would throw himself and his precious camera flat on the ground to escape annihilation as Lefebvre swept over him 6 or 7 feet off the ground. Lefebvre was great fun, and when he had once found that his machine was not fast enough to compete for speed with the Bleriots, Antoinettes, and Curtiss, he kept to his metier of amusing people. The promoters of the meeting owe Lefebvre a debt of grat.i.tude, for he provided just the necessary comic relief."--(The Aero, September 7th, 1909.)
It may be noted, in connection with the fact that c.o.c.kburn was the only English compet.i.tor at the meeting, that the Rheims Meeting did more than anything which had preceded it to waken British interest in aviation.
Previously, heavier-than-air flight in England had been regarded as a freak business by the great majority, and the very few pioneers who persevered toward winning England a share in the conquest of the air came in for as much derision as acclamation. Rheims altered this; it taught the world in general, and England in particular, that a serious rival to the dirigible balloon had come to being, and it awakened the thinking portion of the British public to the fact that the aeroplane had a future.
The success of this great meeting brought about a host of imitations of which only a few deserve bare mention since, unlike the first, they taught nothing and achieved little. There was the meeting at Boulogne late in September of 1909, of which the only noteworthy event was Ferber"s death. There was a meeting at Brescia where Curtiss again took first prize for speed and Rougier put up a world"s height record of 645 feet. The Blackpool meeting followed between 18th and 23rd of October, 1909, forming, with the exception of Doncaster, the first British Flying Meeting. Chief among the compet.i.tors were Henry Farman, who took the distance prize, Rougier, Paulhan, and Latham, who, by a flight in a high wind, convinced the British public that the theory that flying was only possible in a calm was a fallacy. A meeting at Doncaster was practically simultaneous with the Blackpool week; Delagrange, Le Blon, Sommer, and Cody were the princ.i.p.al figures in this event. It should be added that 130 miles was recorded as the total flown at Doncaster, while at Blackpool only 115 miles were flown. Then there were Juvisy, the first Parisian meeting, Wolverhampton, and the Comte de Lambert"s flight round the Eiffel Tower at a height estimated at between 1,200 and 1,300 feet.
This may be included in the record of these aerial theatricals, since it was nothing more.
Probably wakened to realisation of the possibilities of the aeroplane by the Rheims Meeting, Germany turned out its first plane late in 1909.
It was known as the Grade monoplane, and was a blend of the Bleriot and Santos-Dumont machines, with a tail suggestive of the Antoinette type.
The main frame took the form of a single steel tube, at the forward end of which was rigged a triangular arrangement carrying the pilot"s seat and the landing wheels underneath, with the wing warping wires and stays above. The sweep of the wings was rather similar to the later Taube design, though the sweep back was not so p.r.o.nounced, and the machine was driven by a four-cylinder, 20 horse-power, air-cooled engine which drove a two-bladed tractor propeller. In spite of Lilienthal"s pioneer work years before, this was the first power-driven German plane which actually flew.
Eleven months after the Rheims meeting came what may be reckoned the only really notable aviation meeting on English soil, in the form of the Bournemouth week, July 10th to 16th, 1910. This gathering is noteworthy mainly in view of the amazing advance which it registered on the Rheims performances. Thus, in the matter of alt.i.tude, Morane reached 4,107 feet and Drexel came second with 2,490 feet. Audemars on a Demoiselle monoplane made a flight of 17 miles 1,480 yards in 27 minutes 17.2 seconds, a great flight for the little Demoiselle. Morane achieved a speed of 56.64 miles per hour, and Grahame White climbed to 1,000 feet alt.i.tude in 6 minutes 36.8 seconds. Machines carrying the Gnome engine as power unit took the great bulk of the prizes, and British-built engines were far behind.
The Bournemouth Meeting will always be remembered with regret for the tragedy of C. S. Rolls"s death, which took place on the Tuesday, the second day of the meeting. The first compet.i.tion of the day was that for the landing prize; Grahame White, Audemars, and Captain d.i.c.kson had landed with varying luck, and Rolls, following on a Wright machine with a tail-plane which ought never to have been fitted and was not part of the Wright design, came down wind after a left-hand turn and turned left again over the top of the stands in order to land up wind. He began to dive when just clear of the stands, and had dropped to a height of 40 feet when he came over the heads of the people against the barriers.
Finding his descent too steep, he pulled back his elevator lever to bring the nose of the machine up, tipping down the front end of the tail to present an almost flat surface to the wind. Had all gone well, the nose of the machine would have been forced up, but the strain on the tail and its four light supports was too great; the tail collapsed, the wind pressed down the biplane elevator, and the machine dived vertically for the remaining 20 feet of the descent, hitting the ground vertically and crumpling up. Major Kennedy, first to reach the debris, found Rolls lying with his head doubled under him on the overturned upper main plane; the lower plane had been flung some few feet away with the engine and tanks under it. Rolls was instantaneously killed by concussion of the brain.
Ant.i.thesis to the tragedy was Audemars on his Demoiselle, which was named "The Infuriated Gra.s.shopper." Concerning this, it was recorded at the time that "Nothing so excruciatingly funny as the action of this machine has ever been seen at any aviation ground. The little two-cylinder engine pops away with a sound like the frantic drawing of ginger beer corks; the machine scutters along the ground with its tail well up; then down comes the tail suddenly and seems to slap the ground while the front jumps up, and all the spectators rock with laughter. The whole att.i.tude and the jerky action of the machine suggest a gra.s.shopper in a furious rage, and the impression is intensified when it comes down, as it did twice on Wednesday, in long gra.s.s, burying its head in the ground in its temper."--(The Aero, July, 1910.)
The Lanark Meeting followed in August of the same year, and with the bare mention of this, the subject of flying meetings may he left alone, since they became mere matters of show until there came military compet.i.tions such as the Berlin Meeting at the end of August, 1910, and the British War office Trials on Salisbury Plain, when Cody won his greatest triumphs. The Berlin meeting proved that, from the time of the construction of the first successful German machine mentioned above, to the date of the meeting, a good number of German aviators had qualified for flight, but princ.i.p.ally on Wright and Antoinette machines, though by that time the Aviatik and Dorner German makes had taken the air. The British War office Trials deserve separate and longer mention.
In 1910 in spite of official discouragement, Captain d.i.c.kson proved the value of the aeroplane for scouting purposes by observing movements of troops during the Military Manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain. Lieut.
Lancelot Gibbs and Robert Loraine, the actor-aviator, also made flights over the manoeuvre area, locating troops and in a way antic.i.p.ating the formation and work of the Royal Flying Corps by a usefulness which could not be officially recognised.
XV. THE CHANNEL CROSSING
It may be said that Louis Bleriot was responsible for the second great landmark in the history of successful flight. The day when the brothers Wright succeeded in accomplishing power-driven flight ranks as the first of these landmarks. Ader may or may not have left the ground, but the wreckage of his "Avion" at the end of his experiment places his doubtful success in a different category from that of the brothers Wright and leaves them the first definite conquerors, just as Bleriot ranks as first definite conqueror of the English Channel by air.
In a way, Louis Bleriot ranks before Farman in point of time; his first flapping-wing model was built as early as 1900, and Voisin flew a biplane glider of his on the Seine in the very early experimental days.
Bleriot"s first four machines were biplanes, and his fifth, a monoplane, was wrecked almost immediately after its construction. Bleriot had studied Langley"s work to a certain extent, and his sixth construction was a double monoplane based on the Langley principle. A month after he had wrecked this without damaging himself--for Bleriot had as many miraculous escapes as any of the other fliers-he brought out number seven, a fairly average monoplane. It was in December of 1907 after a series of flights that he wrecked this machine, and on its successor, in July of 1908, he made a flight of over 8 minutes. Sundry flights, more or less successful, including the first cross-country flight from Toury to Artenay, kept him busy up to the beginning of November, 1908, when the wreckage in a fog of the machine he was flying sent him to the building of "number eleven," the famous cross-channel aeroplane.
Number eleven was shown at the French Aero Show in the Grand Palais and was given its first trials on the 18th January, 1909. It was first fitted with a R.E.P. motor and had a lifting area of 120 square feet, which was later increased to 150 square feet. The framework was of oak and poplar spliced and reinforced with piano wire; the weight of the machine was 47 lbs. and the undercarriage weight a further 60 lbs., this consisting of rubber cord shock absorbers mounted on two wheels. The R.E.P. motor was found unsatisfactory, and a three-cylinder Anzani of 105 mm. bore and 120 mm. stroke replaced it. An accident seriously damaged the machine on June 2nd, but Bleriot repaired it and tested it at Issy, where between June 19th and June 23rd he accomplished flights of 8, 12, 15, 16, and 36 minutes. On July 4th he made a 50-minute flight and on the 13th flew from Etampes to Chevilly.
A few further details of construction may be given: the wings themselves and an elevator at the tail controlled the rate of ascent and descent, while a rudder was also fitted at the tail. The steering lever, working on a universally jointed shaft--forerunner of the modern joystick--controlled both the rudder and the wings, while a pedal actuated the elevator. The engine drove a two-bladed tractor screw of 6 feet 7 inches diameter, and the angle of incidence of the wings was 20 degrees. Timed at Issy, the speed of the machine was given as 36 miles an hour, and as Bleriot accomplished the Channel flight of 20 miles in 37 minutes, he probably had a slight following wind.
The Daily Mail had offered a prize of L1,000 for the first Cross-Channel flight, and Hubert Latham set his mind on winning it. He put up a shelter on the French coast at Sangatte, half-way between Calais and Cape Blanc Nez. From here he made his first attempt to fly to England on Monday the 19th of July. He soared to a fair height, circling, and reached an estimated height of about 900 feet as he came over the water with every appearance of capturing the Cross-Channel prize. The luck which dogged his career throughout was against him, for, after he had covered some 8 miles, his engine stopped and he came down to the water in a series of long glides. It was discovered afterward that a small piece of wire had worked its way into a vital part of the engine to rob Latham of the honour he coveted. The tug that came to his rescue found him seated on the fuselage of his Antoinette, smoking a cigarette and waiting for a boat to take him to the tug. It may be remarked that Latham merely a.s.sumed his Antoinette would float in case he failed to make the English coast; he had no actual proof.
Bleriot immediately entered his machine for the prize and took up his quarters at Barraques. On Sunday, July 25th, 1909, shortly after 4 a.m., Bleriot had his machine taken out from its shelter and prepared for flight. He had been recently injured in a petrol explosion and hobbled out on crutches to make his cross-Channel attempt; he made two great circles in the air to try the machine, and then alighted. "In ten minutes I start for England," he declared, and at 4.35 the motor was started up. After a run of 100 yards, the machine rose in the air and got a height of about 100 feet over the land, then wheeling sharply seaward and heading for Dover.
Bleriot had no means of telling direction, and any change of wind might have driven him out over the North Sea, to be lost, as were Cecil Grace and Hamel later on. Luck was with him, however, and at 5.12 a.m. of that July Sunday, he made his landing in the North Fall meadow, just behind Dover Castle. Twenty minutes out from the French coast, he lost sight of the destroyer which was patrolling the Channel, and at the same time he was out of sight of land without compa.s.s or any other means of ascertaining his direction. Sighting the English coast, he found that he had gone too far to the east, for the wind increased in strength throughout the flight, this to such an extent as almost to turn the machine round when he came over English soil. Profiting by Latham"s experience, Bleriot had fitted an inflated rubber cylinder a foot in diameter by 5 feet in length along the middle of his fuselage, to render floating a certainty in case he had to alight on the water.
Latham in his camp at Sangatte had been allowed to sleep through the calm of the early morning through a mistake on the part of a friend, and when his machine was turned out--in order that he might emulate Bleriot, although he no longer hoped to make the first flight, it took so long to get the machine ready and dragged up to its starting-point that there was a 25 mile an hour wind by the time everything was in readiness.