Triumphant Failure At Sangatte: Challenging the English Channel in a Monoplane
By Stephen H. King

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On the morning of July 12, 1909, a group of men struggled against the wind, wrestling tarpaulins into a makeshift tent at Sangatte, five miles west of Calais on the French coast. Despite the unseasonably cold, rainy and blustery weather, no one was discouraged. They were far too focused on preparing for what they hoped would be a historic flight across the English Channel.

The tent, attached to an abandoned building, would serve as a hangar for a stunning French aircraft, the Antoinette IV monoplane. On hand were pilot Hubert Latham, designer-engineer Léon Levavasseur, engineer Charles Wachter, Jules Gastambide and five mechanics. Levavasseur was the co-owner, with Gastambide, of a company known as Société Anonyme d’Antoinette, which had manufactured the plane.

Despite the miserable weather, curious onlookers began arriving at the camp, motoring or cycling to the coast to see what all the fuss was about. What started out as a small group swelled to huge numbers when word got around that Latham intended to try for the Daily Mail prize of £1,000. The prize would be awarded to the first individual who succeeded in flying from England to France, or vice versa, under the following conditions: The flight must be made between the hours of sunrise and sunset; it was to be accomplished by a heavier-than-air craft that was not supported by gas or any other substance confined within the machine; and no part of the airplane could touch the sea during the crossing.

Newspaper owner Alfred Harmsworth, better known as Lord Northcliffe, had offered the prize in October 1908, originally for £500. When there were no takers by February 1909, he doubled the amount. He was determined to give the British government, or at least his fellow countrymen, a kick in the pants to stimulate more interest in the new science of aviation. Lord Northcliffe felt, not without good reason, that England was woefully behind France and the United States. He really wanted an Englishman to fly the Channel first, but he knew if a Frenchman or an American won the prize, it would go a long way toward getting his own lethargic government “off the shilling,” so to speak.

It was generally assumed throughout Europe that one of the Wright brothers would be the first to make a cross-Channel attempt. Prior to Wilbur’s flights at Le Mans and elsewhere in France in September and October of the previous year, the French had believed that the Wrights’ accomplishments on the other side of the Atlantic were wildly exaggerated, blown out of proportion by a jingoistic Ameri­can press. But Wright’s demonstrations in France stunned the French, and in fact the entire world. He dipped, swirled, performed figure eights, carried a passenger aloft with him and managed to stretch out some of his flights for an unbelievable 45 minutes or longer. Who else, therefore, would dare attempt to fly over the English Channel, a 26-mile flight that would take 30 to 40 minutes?

But Wilbur Wright was in France to sell his biplane, preferably to the French government, and to find a local manufacturer who could build it under license for European clients. Prizes and competitive flying didn’t interest the Wrights in the least. Although their aircraft performed admirably at many of the aviation meets that commenced in August 1909 (the first at Reims), neither brother was ever an entrant. Another pilot, invariably a Frenchman, always piloted the Wright plane on these occasions.

Hubert Latham, who would attempt the cross-Channel flight on behalf of Société Anonyme d’Antoinette, was hardly a household name in France at the time. As for the Antoinette’s designer, Léon Levavasseur, he was a bona fide genius. He had been an electrical engineer by trade, but engines were his true passion. In 1903 he co-founded the Société with business entrepreneur Jules Gastambide, for whom he had once worked as manager of his electrical parts factory in Algeria. Within two months of the company’s formation, Levavasseur designed, on paper at any rate, a V-8 gasoline engine that would become the first patented motor of its kind in the world. His engines fared poorly in automobiles but proved hugely successful in powerboats, devouring the competition in the winter races off Monaco’s coast.

Tags: Aviation History, Flight Technology, Historical Figures

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