Harriet Quimby
Harriet Quimby was the first American woman to gain a pilots license and the first woman to fly across the English Channel. Harriet flew the reverse route to Bleriot, starting in Dover and landing in Calais in 1912 flying a Bleriot XI.
Although Harriet claimed to be the daughter of a wealthy family and of having attended the best school sin America it seems likely she was the daughter of a Mid-West farming family. Harriet was a New York newspaper reporter who learnt to fly in 1911. After a short period flying in Mexico Harriet went to Europe and flew across the English Channel on 12th April 1912. She did not receive the publicity or accolades she deserved because the timing of the flight coincided with the sinking of the Titanic and that event overshadowed her achievement.
Harriet Account of the flight, '“…the [borrowed Bleriot monoplane] machine was shipped very secretly to the aerodrome on Dover Heights, …a fine smooth ground from which to make a good start. The famous Dover Castle stands on the cliffs, overlooking the channel. It points the way to Calais. I saw at once I only had to rise in my machine, fix my eyes upon the castle, fly over it and speed directly across to the French coast. It seemed so easy that it looked like a cross-country flight. I am glad I thought so and felt so, otherwise I might have had more hesitation about flying in the fog with an untried compass, in a new and untried machine, knowing that the treacherous North Sea stood ready to receive me if I drifted only five miles too far out of my course…
…It was a cold five-thirty a.m. when my machine got off the ground…the motor began to make its twelve hundred revolutions a minute, and I put up my hand to give the signal of release. Then I was off. The noise of the motor drowned the shouts and cheers of friends below. In a moment I was in the air, climbing steadily in a long circle. I was up fifteen hundred feet within thirty seconds. From this high point of vantage my eyes lit at once on Dover Castle…In an instant I was beyond the cliffs and over the channel…the thickening fog obscured my view. Calais was out of sight…There was only one thing for me to do and that was to keep my eyes fixed on the compass…
…The distance straight across from Dover to Calais is only twenty-two miles, and I knew that land must be in sight if I could only get below the fog and see it. So, I dropped from an altitude of about two thousand feet until I was half that height. The sunlight struck upon my face and my eyes lit upon the white and sandy shores of France. I felt happy…rather than tear up the farmers' fields [below] I decided to drop down on the hard and sandy beach…A crowd of fishermen…came rushing from all