Glamour Boy
The day Claude Grahame-White thrilled the crowd at the Boston-Harvard meet.
- By Gavin Mortimer
- AirSpaceMag.com, September 08, 2010
(Page 2 of 2)
That feat brought him to the attention of President Taft, who attended the meet one day but jocularly declined to put his own 250-pound frame into a flying machine. The Mayor of Boston, John Fitzgerald (grandfather of JFK), did accept an invitation to fly with Grahame-White, however, and later presented him with a silver loving cup on which was inscribed: “From Boston Friends, in admiration of your skill and sportsmanship as an aviator.”
From Boston, Grahame-White went on to Belmont Park in New York to compete for Britain in the International Aviation Cup, which the American Glenn Curtiss had won the previous year in France. With Curtiss absent this time around, American hopes rested with young Walter Brookins in a Wright biplane. Another American, the fearless John Moisant, was also expected to do well, but neither they nor France’s Alfred Leblanc could prevent a Grahame-White triumph in his Blériot.
Grahame-White remained in the States for another month, basking in the limelight and courting pretty Pauline Chase, one of the country’s most famous actresses. Then, shortly before he was due to depart for England, he was summoned to appear before a circuit court judge. The Wrights had filed suit, accusing Grahame-White of breaching their patent. The brothers demanded a full accounting of his earnings in America, every last cent of the $82,000 that he’d won.
Grahame-White ignored the summons and slipped out of the States on an earlier boat, laughing to reporters back in England 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.”
Two weeks later, on December 18, Grahame-White was badly injured chasing a $20,000 prize for the longest nonstop flight from England to the European mainland. It was while he lay in a hospital bed that he weighed his odds of surviving such a dangerous profession. Hardly a month passed without another aviator falling from the sky, and it seemed just a matter of time before his own luck ran out. So he quit competitive flying and plowed his money into creating the Grahame-White Aviation Company and London’s first aerodrome at Hendon. A few years later he sold the aerodrome to the British Government for more than $1,000,000.
Grahame-White died in the summer of 1959 at the age of 79—one of the last survivors of the pioneering days of aviation. While he’d never had the inventive mind of the Wrights or the vision of Glenn Curtiss, his role in early aviation was nonetheless important. Grahame-White got the ordinary Joe interested in aeronautics, and helped to glamorize a business dominated by engineers. In short, to use a modern word, he made aviation sexy.
Gavin Mortimer's books include Chasing Icarus: The Seventeen Days in 1910 That Forever Changed American Aviation.
Comments (3)
Imagine my surprise to find my deceased grandfather's best friend on your website. What is a shame is that,my husband and I were up in D.C this summer and were at the Smithsonian.I remember Mr. and Mr Grahame-White from my visit to Monaco in the fifties.
We are members of the Smithsonian and thoroughly enjoy our visits and magazine. We reside in South Carolina.
Posted by Carole Rhoades on October 4,2010 | 05:41 PM
"Phoebe Dwight", the female reporter mentioned in this article, was a pseudonym for none other than Eleanor Ladd, who became novelist Earl Derr Biggers' wife in 1912.
Posted by John Meissner on November 15,2010 | 09:59 AM
Claude was my father's Great Uncle and I delighted in this article. I would love to hear from Carole Rhoades about knowing Claude in Monaco.
Posted by Aliya Musa on April 24,2012 | 07:41 AM