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Title: Latham
Description: On the morning of Sunday, July 25, 1909, renowned aviator Hubert Latham slept in. At the same time, Louis Blériot, Latham’s competitor for the Daily Mail prize for a cross-Channel flight, took off for from France in his Blériot XI airplane. |
With a significant tailwind at his back, Blériot began his flight across the English Channel with a decided advantage. By the time Latham made it to the air field, the early morning winds had changed direction. While Latham sat in France and the winds blew against him, Blériot flew into history, landing in England in the first successful Channel crossing. Despite his defeat (and an earlier attempt that left him floating in the Channel), Latham (1883—1912) as a celebrity aviator still captured the public’s imagination. Son of a wealthy Parisian family of British citizenship, Latham had studied law at Oxford and served in the French army. Finding that the business world did not suit him, he turned to an exciting life of world traveling and adventure, racing cars and ballooning. A self-described “man of the world,” Latham struck a handsome figure wherever he went. Cutting a dashing figure in the air and on the ground, he piloted his graceful Antoinette monoplane, depicted in the poster, to numerous aviation records. During the world’s first air show, the famous Reims display of August 1909, and just two months after his failed attempts at the Channel crossing, Latham coaxed his Antoinette to an altitude record of 509 feet (155 m). In February 1909, he partnered with Jules Gastambide, the manufacturer of the Antoinette monoplane, and Gastambide’s engineer, Léon Levavaseur. As the pilot of Gastambide and Levavaseur’s airplane, Latham quickly took to flying the Antroinette. ,By June 5, 1909, Latham set a new duration record for French fliers of one hour, seven minutes, and thirty-seven seconds, a world record for monoplane flying. Not content with this, he proceeded to win the Goupy aviation prize the very next day, covering six kilometers in just over four minutes. After further shows of his flying prowess that June, Latham’s star was in the ascendancy, his popularity established. Although he lost out to Blériot in the Channel competition, Latham’s aerial career continued to prosper. Although he died not long after establishing himself as a celebrity aviator, Latham, in contrast to many of his fellow pilots who lost their lives while flying, died as a result of a hunting accident in Africa in 1912. A statue dedicated to his memory stands near Calais—the point from which the cross-Channel flight competition began—commemorating a man who, with style and panache, swept through the air and into the public’s imagination in the heady days of early flight. The poster shown here shows Latham piloting one of his lovely Antoinette monoplanes, an elegant and pioneering airplane that was a common sight in the skies of Europe during the first years of aviation. Named for Gastambide’s daughter, it was a pusher-type craft and one of the first monoplanes produced. Latham’s use of it in his attempted Channel flights helped popularize the plane, which had a paddle-bladed propeller and an 8-cylinder, 50 hp engine. Poster artist Pousthomis’s image makes Latham and his Antoinette look as if they were one. In the background the indistinct silhouettes of church steeples and buildings suggest a small coastal town like Calais. The simple, almost cartoon-like clouds, set off the delicate and precise rendition of the airplane and pilot duo. |
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