Crossens Canoe

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Pioneers of Aviation

Come Josephine in my flying machine...

Pioneers of Early Aviation

In 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright flew the world's first manned, heavier-than-air, powered aircraft - the Wright Flyer - near the Kill Devil Hills in North Carolina. Less than a decade later, and some 3,500 miles away from this exotically named place, it was the Sefton coast of Freshfield, Formby and Waterloo that had become a global hub for the pioneering of early aviation.

This long stretch of firm, sandy beach proved an ideal home for these 'magnificent men and their flying machines', and within its airy dunes lie the origins of both our own Air Mail service and - perhaps most improbably - the South African Air Force.


Cecil Compton Paterson
Paterson was a 25 year-old motor engineer from Liverpool with no formal academic qualifications. He had no flying licence - largely because he had never flown a plane - and taught himself the basics of flying from a manual. With this distinguished aeronautic background, he was also responsible for the first ever man-powered flight on Merseyside.

At daybreak, on 14th May 1910, Paterson transported his plane - constructed of ash-wood, bamboo, spruce, fine varnished cloth and pram wheels - to the Freshfield shore, where spectators quickly helped him to assemble it. This rickety Icarus' first successful flight was only a few hundred yards, but a half mile flight was completed just several hours later, to the admiration of awestruck bystanders, including a phalanx of idolising ladies. All this from a biplane that had cost £625 to build (around £47,000 today).

Such glory, however, was not to be so routinely obtained in those precarious days. Just over a month later, Paterson crashed his plane into the sandhills: the propeller was smashed, the wings torn, the wires snapped and framework severely bent. But Paterson emerged unscathed and smiling, and had the plane repaired within days. And as a direct result of this crash came the invention of a pendulum balance device, much like the 'artificial horizon' of modern-day aircraft.


Paterson and Robert King
Following the Wright Brothers' first historic flight in America in 1903, it was France that had begun to take the lead in aeroplane development on this side of the Atlantic. The potential of flight in terms of weaponry as well as transport meant that Britain, as a superpower, could not afford to fall behind. In this spirit, Lord Northcliffe (right), owner of the Daily Mail, dreamt up a series of aviation prizes designed to drive the development of aeronautics.

One such prize was the reward of £1,000 (around £76,000 today) for the first manned flight from Liverpool to Manchester. By 1911, Paterson had built three aircraft hangars (really, large sheds) behind the beach at Freshfield, which housed his plane, as well as being fitted out to provide him with overnight stays - to the extent that his family may have seen very little of him. This was also the base for his new flying school, where he trained other enthusiastic would-be flyers.

(It should also be noted that Paterson had, by now, acquired a pilot's licence (right), some eight months after his first flight. His licence was just the 38th to have been issued in the whole of Europe).

One of his pupils was Robert King, from Wirral. Having become good friends, they no doubt regularly shared a pint at the Grapes Hotel in Freshfield, which had become the hang-out for the Freshfield pilots and their friends. The enthusiastic King bought his own Farman bi-plane, and tested it out with Paterson as pilot. However, when coming in to land from a flight to Hoylake and back, Paterson only very narrowly missed another plane taking off beneath him, which was forced to crash land.

It was in King's plane that the pair took up the Daily Mail's Liverpool to Manchester challenge. Paterson took off from Formby, attempting to rise to over 1,000 feet, making south towards Liverpool before turning for Manchester. However, the plane developed horrendous problems: it refused to fly evenly, constantly dipped, and wouldn't allow itself to be flown over 200 feet. Finally, about a mile south-west of Formby, it was caught in a whirling down-draught, sucking the plane earthwards, just missing some telephone wires, and pancaking onto rough ground. Only the magnificent skills of Paterson had avoided a terrible disaster and injury to the two men.


Paterson and William Brailey
Another eager flyer that Paterson met at Freshfield was William Theodore Ronald Brailey (left). Brailey was a musician, and member of the Southport Pier Pavilion Band. He was engaged to a Miss Steinhilber of St Luke's Road, Southport.

He died aged 24 on 14th April 1912, whilst working as a pianist aboard the Titanic. He was a member of the famous orchestra which continued to play even as the ship went down. His body was lost in the sinking, and never recovered.


Founder of the South African Air Force
In 1912, the South African government, wishing to establish an air force, contracted Paterson to train a select group of ten aviators (right) at his flying school at Alexandersfontein.

In July 1913, the Paterson Aviation Syndicate was registered. As well as the ten trainees, the school also accepted three private pupils, one of whom, Maria Bocciarelli, was the entire African continent's first woman pilot. A number of South African pilots went on to excel in the First World War, and Paterson may well be regarded founder of the South African Air Force.

CLAUDE GRAHAME-WHITE

The son of a racing yachtsman. Brother to a celebrated racing-car driver. The first Englishman to obtain a pilot's licence. The first to make a night flight. And a Vanity Fair heartthrob. By the time he arrived at Freshfield, Claude Grahame-White was already an aviation superstar, as well as the dandyish scourge of the sober Wright Brothers.



Claude Grahame-White had catapulted himself into the national psyche in 1910 for his feats in the Daily Mail London to Manchester air race. Seeking to win the £10,000 prize, he made an audacious night flight - the first of its kind - in an attempt to catch up with, and beat, the Frenchman Louis Paulhan, who had already set off. Navigating via the streetlights below, Grahame-White, carrying too much fuel, was forced down near the dangerous terrain of the Peak District. Nevertheless, it was the journey, not the destination, that became cause for celebration and notoriety.

Grahame-White first arrived on the Sefton coast on a bank holiday in August 1910. Having flown from a carnival at Blackpool, he landed on Southport Beach and, with his fame preceding him, was quickly surrounded by cheering crowds. The Manchester Guardian said that: "He... drew all the bare-legged population of the seaside towards him like a new Pied Piper of Hamelin". Such was the size of the crowd that Cecil Paterson, who had flown his plane up from Freshfield at a height of 100 feet in an attempt to meet him, found that he was stuck on the periphery, unable to get anywhere near the visiting hero.



Perhaps the most salacious visit by Grahame-White to our coast was in February 1911, to meet up with his friend - and, at one point, alleged fianceé - the great American actress Pauline Chase (above).

Chase is best known for having played Peter Pan in J.M. Barrie's play of the same name from 1906-13, having been specially selected by the author. No stranger to controversy, Chase was said to have once had an affair with the great explorer Robert Falcon Scott (Scott of the Antarctic).

In 1911, she was playing Peter Pan at the Southport Theatre, hence Grahame-White's visit, and, on 12 February, the pair took to the sky. However, they were not alone. They were closely followed by Cecil Paterson, along with his own beau, a Miss. Barnes from Freshfield. Proving too much for the air aces' egos, the flight turned into a race, all the way to Birkdale and back - grim-jawed machismo meeting doe-eyed coquetry.



The matinee idol lifestyle of Grahame-White did not endear him to the Wright Brothers, who viewed him as a shallow entertainer with no interest in, or knowledge of, aeronautics. In 1910, whilst in America, Grahame-White was sued by the Wrights, accused of breaching their patent. However, he ignored the court summons, and returned to England saying that "the Wrights are frightened. I've scared them so bloody well that they are terrified. I'm their most formidable competitor and they know it".

ROBERT FENWICK

Robert Fenwick, together with another engineer, Sydney Swaby, designed what came to be know as the Mersey Monoplane - a revolutionary new aircraft with the engine in the nose but the propeller behind the pilot.



This design had an immediate military application: it allowed a pilot full frontal vision, and also provided for a forward-firing machine gun. By 1911, Britain was well into an arms race with Germany, and the War Office, conscious of England's vulnerability from attack from the air, no doubt supported the development of this new plane, which was built in utmost secrecy.

The Mersey Monoplane flew for the first time from Freshfield, and reached speeds of up to 70mph. By the summer of 1912, it had logged more than 700 miles without serious incident, and was entered into military trials on Salisbury Plain - Fenwick and Swaby no doubt hoping for a lucrative War Office contract.

Fenwick's take-off was perfect. However, after about a mile, the aircraft became unstable. Witnessed by a crowd of onlookers, the plane plunged towards the earth from 300 feet, with Fenwick's body found among the tangled wreckage - the 16th Briton to be killed in an aircraft accident.

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