Hubert Latham

Hubert Latham
Latham a few weeks after second Channel attempt. Note the scar on his forehead from the crash injury
Born	(1883-01-10)10 January 1883 Paris, France
Died	25 June 1912(1912-06-25) (aged 29) near Fort Archambault (now Sarh), Chad
Cause of death	Buffalo attack (officially) or murder (alleged by at least one publication)
Nationality	French
Occupation	Aviator
Known for	Pioneering aviator and display pilot Set three altitude records up to 1,384 m in 1909-1910 First powered attempt to cross the English channel, 19 July 1909 First successful 'Landing on Water', 19 July 1909 First pilot to shoot wild fowl (duck) from an aeroplane First over-city flight, Berlin, October 1909. First person to smoke a cigarette while piloting an aeroplane - May 1909

Arthur Charles Hubert Latham (10 January 1883 – 25 June 1912) was a French aviation pioneer. He was the first person to attempt to cross the English Channel in an aeroplane. Due to engine failure during his first of two attempts to cross the Channel, he became the first person to land an aeroplane on a body of water.

In August 1909 at the Grande Semaine d'Aviation de la Champagne he set the world altitude record of 155 metres (509 ft) in his Antoinette IV. In April 1910 he set the official World Airspeed Record of 48.186 miles per hour (77.548 km/h) in his Antoinette VII.

Latham was born in Paris into a wealthy Protestant family. His French mother's family were the bankers, Mallet Frères et Cie, and his father, Lionel Latham, was the son of Charles Latham, an English merchant adventurer and trader of indigo and other commodities, who had settled in Le Havre in 1829. Hubert Latham’s English grand-uncles were mercantile traders, merchant bankers and lawyers in the City of London and Liverpool and his home was the centuries-old Château de Maillebois, near Chartres, which his father purchased from Vicomte de Maleyssie in 1882. One of Latham's maternal grand-aunts was the mother of the German Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, (appointed in 1909), which made him a second cousin of the aviator.

Latham had two siblings, an older sister, Edmée, and a younger sister, Léonie. The three children were raised within the small but elite circle of Protestant high society. All three children spoke French, English and German fluently. His father, Lionel, died of pneumonia in 1885 and his mother never remarried.

Latham attended Balliol College at the University of Oxford for one academic year 1903/4 after which he fulfilled his reservist military service training obligation in Paris and then accompanied his cousin, the balloonist Jacques Faure, on a night crossing of the English Channel (from London to Paris) in a gas balloon on 11–12 February 1905. He also competed successfully in an Antoinette motor yacht in the power boat racing events at the Monaco Regatta, April 1905, in association with his cousin Jules Gastambide and Léon Levavasseur, the inventor of the Antoinette engine. He then led an exploratory expedition with friends to Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1906/07 during which he collected specimens for the Natural History Museum in Paris and performed survey work for the French Colonial Office. In 1908, his travels continued on to the Far East, before returning to France later that year.