foot glide, it did not give enough power to give him safety in the gale
he was facing. The rising wind kept him on the ground throughout the
day, and, though he hoped for better weather, the gale kept up until
the Sunday evening. The men in charge of the machine during its halt had
attempted to hold the machine down instead of anchoring it with stakes
and ropes, and, in consequence of this, the wind blew the machine over
on its back, breaking the upper planes and the tail. Grahame White had
to return to London, while the damaged machine was prepared for a second
flight. The conditions of the competition enacted that the full journey
should be completed within 24 hours, which made return to the starting
ground inevitable.
Louis Paulhan, who had just arrived with his Farman machine, immediately
got it unpacked and put together in order to be ready to make his
attempt for the prize as soon as the weather conditions should admit.
At 5.31 p.m., on April 27th, he went up from Hendon and had travelled
50 miles when Grahame White, informed of his rival's start, set out to
overtake him. Before nightfall Paulhan landed at Lichfield, 117 miles
from London, while Grahame White had to come down at Roden, only 60
miles out. The English aviator's chance was not so small as it seemed,
for, as Latham had found in his cross-Channel attempts, engine failure
was more the rule than the exception, and a very little thing might
reverse the relative positions.
A special train accompanied Paulhan along the North-Western route,
conveying Madame Paulhan, Henry Farman, and the mechanics who fitted the
Farman biplane together. Paulhan himself, who had flown at a height of
1,000 feet, spent the night at Lichfield, starting again at 4.9 a.m.
On the 28th, passing Stafford at 4.45, Crewe at 5.20, and landing at
Burnage, near Didsbury, at 5.32, having had a clean run.
Meanwhile, Grahame White had made a most heroic attempt to beat his
rival. An hour before dawn on the 28th, he went to the small field in
which his machine had landed, and in the darkness managed to make an
ascent from ground which made starting difficult even in daylight.
Purely by instinct and his recollection of the aspect of things the
night before, he had to clear telegraph wires and a railway bridge,
neither of which he could possibly see at that hour. His engine, too,
was faltering, and it was obvious to those who witnessed his start that
its note was far from perfect.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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