Given his boundless confidence in his own skills, Latham was probably the only member of the team who got much rest that night. Levavasseur dreaded the thought that his airplane might fail, and Gastambide was worried what failure might mean for the company. Everyone was concerned for Latham’s safety. Navigation methods at that time were primitive, to say the least, and it was easy to envision the aviator unwittingly drifting too far eastward and missing the English coast altogether, then crashing into the North Sea when his fuel gave out. Were that to happen, there was little chance the pilot would ever be found.

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The 19th dawned misty and calm. Harper listened to weather reports from Dover on his wireless and reported that they seemed favorable. Levavasseur rushed to Calais to rouse Latham, then boarded Harpon to be close by during the flight. Latham climbed into the plane as soon as he reached Sangatte. To get to the takeoff point, Cap Blanc Nez, 11⁄2 miles away, a team of horses towed the Antoinette partway, then it taxied under its own power the rest of the distance. Hundreds of onlookers had gathered by that time, along with reporters and photographers. Harper contacted Dover and alerted the British that Latham was about to take off.

Harpon, meanwhile, had left the harbor and was about two miles offshore, where it took up station, steaming in great circles. At 6 a.m. the crew fired the ship’s guns, signaling that it was in position.

A half-hour after Harpon’s signal, Latham climbed into the cockpit and signaled his crew to crank the propeller. The engine coughed a few times and then caught, belching out billowing clouds of blue-black smoke. The flier fiddled with the throttle, alternating between gunning and backing off the engine. Satisfied, he finally yelled out to the mechanics anchoring the plane to let go.

The Antoinette lurched forward, moving ponderously at first, but soon gathered sufficient speed to soar into the air over the bumpy field. The awed crowd cheered and applauded as the beautiful aircraft rose above them.

Latham circled the field several times, climbing until he reached 1,000 feet, an incredible height for that era (a month later he would set a world altitude record at Reims of just 506 feet). He headed out over the cliffs of Cape Blanc Nez for his destination—a field atop Shakespeare Cliff, just outside Dover.

But Latham’s departure a full 30 minutes after Harpon’s signal had worried the ship’s captain. To him, his signal was supposed to have served the twofold purpose of letting Latham know that the boat was ready and that he should take off immediately.

Fearing that Latham might already have crashed into the sea short of where Harpon was then waiting, the captain turned his ship and started to head back toward port—only to have Latham overtake him, traveling in the opposite direction. But in the time it took Harpon to turn 180 degrees, Latham was not only out of sight, he was in the water.

The next 10 minutes of Latham’s adventure were later described by Flight magazine:

If in the whole gamut of human sensations there is anything more likely to bring one’s heart into one’s mouth than the sudden misfiring of one’s engine while aboard a flyer a thousand feet above the sea, I should like to know of it. In Latham’s words, “I examined all the electrical connections that were within my reach. I could hear that more than one of the eight cylinders were misfiring. It was maddening, but I was helpless. I came down not in a series of short glides, but in one clean straight downward slope. My speed at the moment of impact was about 40 or 45 miles an hour. The machine was under perfect control during descent; instead of diving into the sea at an angle I skimmed down so that I was able to make contact with the sea with the aeroplane practically in a horizontal position. It settled on the water and floated like a cork. I swung my feet up onto a cross bar to prevent them from getting wet. Then I took out my cigarette case, lit a cigarette, and waited for the torpedo-destroyer to come up. There was nothing else to be done.”

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