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Show CROSSED CHANNEL I IN AN AIRSHIP French Aviator Makes Trip From Calais to Dover Without Mishap in Small Monoplane. His Speed Averaged Forty-five Miles an Hour, Making the Trip Twice at Swiftly as the Fastest Mail Boat Wins Prize of $5,000. Dover. Louis Bleriot, a Frenchman, French-man, has at last succeeded in crossing cross-ing the English channel in an airship. This sleepy seaport town experienced experi-enced the keenest thrill known in a generation, when at sunrise Sunday a white-winged, bird-like machine, with loudly-humming motor, swept out from the haze obscuring the sea toward to-ward the distant French coast, and circling twice above the high chalky cliffs of Dover, alighted on English soil. Bleriot left Les Barreques, three miles from Calais, about '4:30 a. m. on one of the smallest monoplanes ever used. He crossed the channel in less than half an hour, twice as swiftly as the fastest mail boat. His speed averaged more than forty-five miles an hour, though sometimes it approximated sixty miles. He kept about 250 feet above the sea level, and for about ten minutes in mid-channel mid-channel was out of sight of both coasts and the French torpedo-boat destroyer, which followed him, with his wife and friends aboard. The wind was blowing about twenty miles an hour, and the sea was choppy. chop-py. The aviator was swathed in a single garment of drilling impervious to the wind, which covered him from the top of his head to his feet, only his face showing. He wore also a cork life-belt. By his achievement, Bleriot won the prize of $5,000 offered by the London Lon-don Dally Mail, for the first flight across the English channel, and stole a march on his rivals, Hubert Latham and Count de Lambert, both of whom had hoped to make the attempt on Sunday. |