Charles Rolls, a co-founder of Rolls-Royce Limited, was the first man to make a non-stop double crossing of the English Channel by plane.
The flying car that looked like a buggy with wings crossing the English Channel might have caught a fair few cargo ships off guard in 2017.
But against a clear blue sky, the crews had just witnessed a pretty oddly specific world record; the first to cross the English Channel by flying car.
Bruno Vezzoli, a French pilot, took off from a wartime runway near Calais, Vezzoli landed in Dover some 35 miles away 85 minutes later.
While it’s safe to say we won’t be booking flying cars to travel between Britain and France anytime soon, doing so on planes is so commonplace it’s almost bland.
But in 1910, the thought was almost inconceivable to everyone – except Charles Stewart Rolls, that is.
The third son of Tory politician and landowner Lord Llangattock, Rolls could have enjoyed a life of leisure, fishing and hunting at this father’s Welsh estates or kicking back in a yacht.
Instead, Rolls got behind the wheel of cars. First, it was soapbox derbies as a child, then studying mechanical engineering at university. Something unheard of for the elite.
He founded Britain’s first car dealership before pairing up with car dealer Henry Royce to found the iconic automaker Rolls-Royce.
Rolls was, however, a bit of a ‘weird chap’, as historian Lorraine Sencicle Dover Historian describes him. He was a 6’5″ veggie who soon became fascinated with flying, especially by ballon.
And he had a good reason to be. Wilbur and Orville Wright in 1903 had taken to the skies in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, flying the world’s first successful airplane.
‘His flying career spanned what was then virtually the entire history of aviation,’ a Rolls-Royce news release says.
In 1909, Rolls would rather casually hang out with the Wright Brothers when they visited England as guests of the Royal Aero Club, which Rolls had created.
He even bought a plane produced by the Wright Brothers, a Wright Model A manufactured in Kent. Ross soared above countless spectators who responded with a mix of joy and did-I-see-that-right double-takes for demonstrations of what aviation can achieve.
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You don’t really get these kinds of reactions to Ryanair flights these days.
Rolls-Royce weren’t kidding by the way. In another aviation feat in Rolls’ lifetime, on July 25 that year Louis Blériot made the first heavier-than-air crossing of the English Channel.
But Blériot just flew one way – Rolls was determined to do a round trip.
Too late to beat the French aviator, at about 6.30pm on June 2, 1910, Rolls took off in a rickety flimsy biplane from the Swingate Downs near Dover in a Wright Brothers Model A biplane, according to the Guinness World Records.
‘He flew across the English Channel to the French coast, where he flew low circles over the town of Sangatte, dropping a note for the attention of the Aero Club of France, before flying back to Dover, where he landed at around 8pm,’ the organisation’s entry for ‘first double-crossing of the English Channel by aircraft’ says.
The journey give or take took 95 minutes – slightly faster than a flying car. Some 3,000 people in Dover watched Rolls, well, roll in. They even carried him through the town ‘shoulder high’, the Dover Historian notes.
‘The flight caused a sensation and made Rolls an instant national celebrity,’ Rolls-Royce adds.
‘The recently crowned King George V sent a personal telegram: “The Queen and I heartily congratulate you on your splendid Cross-Channel flight. George R.I.”
‘The Aero Clubs of both England and France presented him with special awards. London’s famous Madame Tussauds even began making a waxwork of him.’
Only a few weeks later on 12 July 1910, Rolls tragically entered the history books once again – the first Briton to die in an plane accident.
Aged 32, he was taking part in a flying tournament in the skies above Southbourne, a suburb of Bournemouth, when the tail of his Wright Flyer broke off, sending both plane and pilot hurtling to the ground.
He died almost instantly. Rolls was buried in the churchyard at Llangattock Vibon Avel in Monmouth, Wales.
‘Charles Rolls was a high-achiever, and perhaps ahead of the times,’ an obituary in the Bournemouth Daily Echo said.
‘We can only wonder at what might have been if he had lived longer.’
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