It's a strange, sad end to a story of bravery and true pioneering spirit. But, just three years later, he was killed by a wounded buffalo on a hunting expedition in the Congo. Latham went on to break records and win prizes. They had championed him, and they suspected something happened." But the Times newspaper was appalled at what they called his supine friends. She points out that Latham was unpopular in some quarters: "I don't know what happened. We'll probably never find out why, but his biographer Barbara Walsh is suspicious. Latham was considered the favourite by many Like Bleriot, he went to bed on the night of 24 July having requested an early alarm call so he could make an attempt. The enterprising Gordon Selfridge had the Bleriot XI taken and displayed in his new department store.īut what of Latham? Few have heard of him now, but were it not for a mysterious chain of events, he might be the one we remember. His place in history was assured, and his business prospects manufacturing planes were guaranteed. A gap appeared and, finding himself over land, he brought his plane down with a crash in a field behind Dover Castle. It was the English coast and Bleriot flew towards the cliffs. But, gradually, a thin grey line emerged on the horizon. For ten minutes, he saw nothing in front, behind or below. The margin for error for the pilot who couldn't swim was tiny. Most incredible of all is the size of the Anzani engine - just 25 horsepower, barely enough oomph to carry even a tiny plane across the water. Like sitting on the back of a butterfly is how someone described flying the plane. Egyptian cotton wings linked by a fragile web of wooden struts and wires sit on top of a pair of bicycle wheels.Īviation in those days involved regular crashes Looking at the Bleriot XI at the Shuttleworth Collection in Bedfordshire, it's easy to understand his apprehension. So Latham fails, and Bleriot took the train and journalists came with him, and he arrived in Calais with the idea of assembling his aircraft and flying immediately."īleriot later confessed that when he was woken early on 25 July, he felt "dreadful" and would have been relieved if the attempt had been called off. Eventually, he decided that if Latham fails, I shall enter the competition. "Bleriot had told his wife he would never cross the Channel because she was too scared.
So, says the French aviation writer Michel Benichou, the way was clear for Bleriot. He glided down to the water and, pulling his feet clear of the waves, lit a cigarette and waited to be rescued. But he was barely over the sea before his engine failed. On the morning of 19 July, Latham rose early, put on his knitted blue jersey and his goggles, and climbed into the plane. Louis Bleriot may have been rather nervous himself In Monaco, he teamed up with the pioneering engineers Leon Levavasseur and Jules Gastambide and raced boats powered by their Antoinette engine. After leaving university, he made a name for himself as an explorer.Īt home, he was part of a social elite, a small, dapper man known for his bravery. He was brought up as a Frenchman but spoke English without an accent and went to Oxford University.
"Because he was a very passionate hunter he sent a lot of trophies back from Africa, and we're still surrounded by these now hundred-year-old trophies of gazelles, and elephant and rhinoceros tusks." "It's a very romantic fairy tale like castle in red brick, near a river and surrounded by woods," says Ms Armand-Delille. Born in 1883 into a rich Anglo-French family, he was brought up in the Chateau de Maillebois, about 60 miles West of Paris, as was his great-niece, Sylvie Armand-Delille. The languid, chain-smoking Latham was very much the Edwardian playboy sportsman. "But, by the middle of the next year, there were two or three people who had a reasonable chance of doing it - but only two or three people in the whole world." Extract from the Times newspaper on 26 July 1909 (News International)
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