ANTOINETTE MONOPLANE OF 1909.
(Courtesy W. J. Hammer.)
ANTOINETTE MONOPLANE OF 1910.
The cross-Channel prize, above mentioned, was a cash sum of one thousand pounds, offered by the London Daily Mail for the first successful flight from France to England. Many would fain have it, though the voyage seemed dangerous, if not foolhardy. Of the various aviators who coveted the prize, Latham and Blériot were the most strenuous in competing for it. The bold boy tried first.
Housing his aëroplane on the high cliff facing the Channel near Calais, Latham looked toward England, impatiently waiting for placid weather, and a chance to soar. The venture was hazardous. By some it was deemed rash, owing to the uncertainty of having to alight upon the water, if the motor should fail. But the brave youth was less alarmed than the old aviators, who had no intention of competing with him. So, with a boy’s confidence, he brought forth his huge-winged Antoinette, on July 19th, skimmed along the ground, soared grandly above the high cliffs, and sped over the waters at a great elevation, as usual in his aërial voyages.
Latham’s flight was magnificent, but brief. Owing to spark failure and the stoppage of his motor six miles from the French shore, he settled promptly, but skillfully, down upon the sea. When found by the accompanying torpedo boat destroyer, detailed to follow him from Calais, he was seated on the aëroplane, serenely smoking, buoyed up by the great hollow wings. He was quickly brought to shore, undaunted and eager for another trial; but in the rescue his frail flyer was roughly handled and very much wrecked.
Louis Blériot now hurried to Calais eager to attempt the cross-Channel flight. Placing his little monoplane, No. XI, in a tent on a farm near Calais, he waited an opportune moment to sail. On Sunday, July 25th, he was routed from bed very early by his friend, Alfred LeBlanc, and taken forth all reluctant to the field, for preliminary practice before sunrise; for the weather was favorable and he should sail as soon as the sun arose. Though suffering from a foot burned in a recent accident, he discarded his crutches and mounted his winged machine with eager courage, remarking: “If I cannot walk I will show the world that I can fly.” For some minutes he circled about the ground where, even at that early hour, many scores of people were assembling. All was now in readiness; the flyer was in excellent trim, the pilot in buoyant spirits, and the torpedo boat destroyer, Escopette, well out at sea to escort her swift aërial charge as well as might be.
The moment of departure had come. Blériot, buttoned in his close-fitting suit and hood, sat on his white-winged machine, headed for the cliff, and surrounded by a group of well-wishers. At 4.35 the light-wheeled craft with propeller whirring, sped along the ground, rose gracefully in the air and shot bravely over the precipice, with the hustling aviator on its back. The admiring spectators were wild with excitement and joy. But there was one sad group in Calais that morning. Latham and his watchers, who had been waiting for better weather, rose in time to see his rival on the wing, but too late for pursuit, as the wind had suddenly risen. The unwary boy remained behind, weeping with disappointment.
Blériot was now soaring high over the sea, faring toward Dover without a guide or a compass. For some time he could observe the Escopette following him, her great column of smoke obscuring the new risen sun. Presently both shores vanished, and for ten minutes he could descry neither land nor signal of any kind. He was sailing over the sea at forty miles an hour and drifting with the air he knew not whither; but he allowed his fiery steed to follow its instinct, as a bewildered horseman does sometimes. Along the horizon now appeared the white cliffs of the English shore. He was headed not for Dover but for Deal, carried adrift by the southwest wind. Three boats crossing his course seemed plying for some port on his left, and hailed him with lively greeting. He could not well inquire the way, but he followed the general course of the vessels, soaring high aloft. At length he saw a man on the cliff violently waving the tricolor, and strenuously shouting: “Bravo! Bravo!” He plunged in the direction of the signaler, whom he knew to be his friend M. Montaine. On nearing the earth he was caught in a violent turmoil of air and whirled about. Wishing to land at once, he stopped his power sixty feet aloft, and swooped abruptly down with an awakening thud upon the old English soil, sleeping in the peaceful sunlight of a Sabbath morning.[52]