Southbourne Aerodrome, Bournemouth, Dorset
Image by Alwyn Ladell
Bournemouth Aviation Meeting, Southbourne Aerodrome, 6th-16th July, 1910.
Claude Grahame White was born at The Towers (Bursledon Towers), Hampshire, on 21st August 1879, the second son and the youngest of the three children of John Reginald White, a cement merchant and keen yachtsman who later took the name Grahame-White, and his wife, Ada Beatrice, the daughter of Frederick Chinnock, a property agent, of London and Dinorbin Court, Hampshire.
The 1881 census shows them living at The Towers, Hound, Hants: John (Head, 33, b.Southampton, living on income from houses); his wife Ada B. (wife, 26, b.London); and their children Beatrice (4, b.Southampton), Montague (3, b.Hound), and Claud (1, b.Hound); with four servants.
Claude’s education began as a day boy at Crondall House School, Farnham, until the family moved to London.
The 1891 census shows all the children with the initial G (for Grahame) added before their surname, the family living with Ada’s widowed mother, Ellen Chinnock (72, b.Berkshire), at 63 Linden Gardens, Kensington: son-in-law John White (cement merchant); his wife, Ada Beatrice, and their children Beatrice Ely G, Montague R G, and Claude G; plus one domestic servant.
From there Claude continued his education at Bedford Grammar School. He built his own bicycle, became very enthusiatic about motor cars, and in 1895 (aged 16), began an apprenticeship as an engineer. In 1897 he became one of the founder members of Frederick Simms’s Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland and, the next year, went to work for his uncle, Francis Willey, a Yorkshire wool magnate at the Shipley Wool Combing Company. The engineering side of the business interested him and he persuaded his uncle to replace the firm’s horse-drawn vans with motor lorries. He then formed his own company in Bradford, the Yorkshire Motor Vehicle Company, in competition with the steam trams but the business failed due to a lack of skilled drivers. The 1901 census shows the single Claude G. White boarding at 14 Hanover Square, Bradford, described as Manager, Motor Works. In the census for Brighton his father has assumed the name John Graham White (without the ‘e’ or hyphen).
He spent some time in London and Monte Carlo before meeting the wealthy land-owner George Wilder and his wife, owners of Stansted Park in Sussex. They paid Claude to buy new cars on their behalf and teach them how to drive. Claude became agent for their estate, a position he held for three years before making a nine-month visit to South Africa, during which he hunted big game.
On his return he set up a motor-car dealership at 1 Albemarle Street, London, and traded as C. Grahame-White and Co., whilst living at 166 Piccadilly.
Aviation was in its infancy in the early years of the 20th century. Claude had his own balloon but he disliked being at the mercy of the elements, and soon his attention turned to heavier-than-air flight. He was a member of both the Aéro-Club de France and the Aero Club of Great Britain, and in 1908 he travelled to France to see Wilbur Wright fly. Inspired by Louis Blériot’s crossing of the English Channel in 1909, he attended the Reims aviation meeting, at which he met Blériot and subsequently enrolled at his flying school becoming one of the first Englishmen to qualify as a pilot. He ordered an aircraft for himself and spent eight weeks at Blériot’s factory helping to build a new Type XII.
On 4th January, 1910, he became the first Englishman to receive a pilot’s certificate from the Aero Club de France (Certificate no. 30). He went on to establish a flying school at Pau, before transferring it to England where, on 26th April, when he was awarded the Royal Aero Club Certificate No. 6. He became a celebrity in England that month when he competed with the French pilot Louis Paulhan for the £10,000 prize offered by the Daily Mail newspaper for the first flight between London and Manchester in under 24 hours. Although Paulhan won the prize, Grahame White’s achievement was widely praised being the first aviator to make a night flight.
On 2nd July 1910, in his Farman biplane, he won the £1,000 first prize for Aggregate Duration in Flight (1 hr 23 min 20 secs) at the Midlands Aviation Meeting at Wolverhampton. Disappointed to learn that aviation was not included in the Fleet Review of July. 1910. To prove a point he took his Farman biplane to the coast and flew low over the fleet, performing lots of aerial manoeuvres. At a meeting in Blackpool, Claude demonstrated the potential use of the aeroplane for military reconnaissance and dispatch carrying, at one point taking up a photographer who captured images of ‘enemy positions’
This sparked his first trip to America where he won the Gordon Bennett Aviation Cup race in Belmont Park, Long Island, New York, for which he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Aero Club. He followed this up on 4th October, while in Washington, D.C. by flying his Farman biplane over the city and landing on Executive Avenue near the White House before meeting President Taft. Far from being arrested Claude was congratulated for the feat by the newspapers. During three months spent in the USA he earned 0,000 in prize money and exhibition fees. This undoubtedly helped to promote his commercial achievements in aeronautics and he soon became immersed in promoting the military application of air power (as Europe teetered on the brink of war) with a campaign called "Wake Up Britain". He also experimented with fitting various weapons and bombs to planes and was later credited with mounted the first aerial defence of a city when he flew the first night patrol mission against an expected German raid on 5th September, 1914.
In the 1911 census the single Claude Grahame-White (Engineer in Aerial Engineering, an Employer of 2) is living at 73 St. James’ Street, London; and signs with a hyphenated surname.
During 1911 he leased 207 acres of land at Hendon and created an oval airfield two miles in circumference with associated hangars, workshops and an office block and established a flying school, which quickly became Hendon Aerodrome. He formed the Grahame-White Aviation Company to cover his aviation interests, including the aerodromes and developed some aircraft. One of the designers was John Dudley North who would become Boulton and Paul’s chief designer.
A regular contributor to The Aeroplane monthly magazine, and other publications, he also wrote at least fifteen books on flying and aeronautics in the military and commercial fields between 1911 and 1930.
War was brewing in Europe and in April 1912 the War Office announced the creation of a Royal Flying Corps. Claude immediately volunteered but was turned down on account of his civilian status. In May 1912 the Royal Flying Corps came into being, and at a Royal Review of the Home Fleet in Weymouth Bay naval pilots performed a display of their flying skills. Claude and a fellow pilot from Hendon then took to the air, performing manoeuvres which included taking a photograph of the upper decks of the dreadnought Neptune from a height of about 500 feet – that same photograph appeared on the front page of the next days’ Daily Mirror. Again Claude was pushing the importance of the aeroplane and the potential value of photography from the air.
On 27th June, 1912, Grahame-White married Dorothy Caldwell Taylor, the wealthy socialite daughter of Bertrand Le Roy Taylor of New York, at Chelmsford. After his marriage he continued to work tirelessly, embarking upon his ‘Wake Up England’ tour aimed at raising the profile of the aeroplane and convincing the public of its value. Claude and his pilots visited 121 towns, gave over 500 exhibition flights and took up approximately 1,200 passengers. In 1912 Grahame-White gave H.G. Wells his first flight.
At the outbreak of war in 1914 Claude was commissioned as a Flight-Commander in the Royal Naval Air Service, and Hendon Aerodrome and the hangars, workshops and aircraft of the Grahame-White Aviation Company were requisitioned under the Defence of the Realm Act, becoming a station of the RNAS. On the night of the 5th/6th September 1914 Claude and Richard Gates made the first night patrol over London in response to the threat of bombing from German airships, and in February 1915 he took part in a mass air raid on the German-held ports of the Belgian coast. In appalling flying conditions he was forced to ditch into the sea five miles off the Belgian coast and was eventually picked up by a French minesweeper. On returning to England he heard conflicting reports that he had drowned in the Channel or been shot as a spy in the Tower of London.
Claude resigned his commission in June 1915 and focused his efforts on aircraft production, expanding his factory and employing more staff. He encountered many problems along the way: checks were made by Naval personnel rather than aircraft specialists leading to the rejection of perfectly sound components; unsuitable materials were supplied; he had to borrow money from his uncle to finance the expansion of his factory; and in December 1916 he and Dorothy were divorced. Just before Christmas 1916 he married Ethel Levy, a friend of Dorothy’s whom Claude had known for some time. The cumulative effect of years of relentless hard work and successive frustrations contributed to a nervous breakdown in December 1917, and a period of six weeks spent in hospital.
The summer of 1918 saw several government contracts changed and/or cancelled, and following the Armistice of November 1918 all outstanding contracts were suspended or cancelled pending a decision on the future of the Royal Air Force. This was extremely costly and frustrating for Claude who had claims of over £400,000 lodged with the Treasury. Out of necessity, Claude returned to automobile engineering to keep the factory going. One of his hangars became an auction house for war-surplus vehicles, and he turned his wood-working department to furniture production. In this way he was able to keep his factory fully operational and all of his staff in employment.
Despite his financial difficulties and the challenging post-war situation, Claude had the drive and somehow the capital to help found a new company, Aerofilms Ltd, which was registered on the 9th May 1919. His contribution to the venture was to provide £3,000 and premises at Hendon.
The London Flying Club at Hendon opened its doors on the 1st July 1919, but it was a flying club without an airfield as that was still in the hands of the government. During a visit to the USA Claude heard that without notice the Treasury had appointed a Receiver to his company, taken possession of his factory and discharged his employees. A lengthy legal battle ensued; after four and a half years Claude had had enough and planned to publish his view of the affair on the front page of the Daily Mail. The government caved in, Claude got his money and decided to leave aviation behind him. His post-Hendon life involved extensive travel, often aboard his private yacht Ethleen, and time spent living abroad. In 1925 he became agent for Baby Gar speed boats, an American company, he wrote several books on aviation with Harry Harper, and branched out into property and real-estate investment, for example making £100,000 on the sale of the site of Victoria Coach Station in London. His marriage to Ethel came to an end, and in November 1939 he married another American, Miss Phoebe Lee of New York. They spent the war together at Cowes on the Isle of Wight and later at Rossmore Court, a Grahame-White development next to Regent’s Park in London. Claude’s only role during the Second World War was as a fire-watcher during the air raids.
Claude died at 33 Avenue Maeterlinck in Nice on the 19th August, 1959, just two days before his 80th birthday, leaving £248,708. 17s. 6d.
Hendon Aerodrome later became RAF Hendon but, after flying ceased there in the 1960s, it was largely redeveloped as a housing estate which was named Grahame Park. An original World War I Grahame-White aircraft factory hangar was relocated a few years ago to the RAF Museum, where it houses the museum’s World War I collection and is named the Grahame-White Factory.
Stanford Photo, Boscombe, Bournemouth.
Postally unused (1910).
