The first Man to fly

William Frost

You must have heard of the Americans, Orville and Wilbur Wright - history records that these two successfully made the first flight in a heavier-than-air machine at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on 17 December 1903, a trip which lasted all of 12 seconds. But have you heard of the Welshman, Bill Frost? Probably not. But there are quite a few people who believe that Frost should be recognised for already having flown an aircraft several years earlier, at Saundersfoot in Pembrokeshire. And there is evidence to prove it.

William Frost was born in Saundersfoot in 1848 when it was a poor mining and fishing village, and he worked as a carpenter and builder on the nearby Hean Castle estate. One day the youth was carrying a 12 foot-long pine plank when a sudden, fierce gust of wind rushed up under him and lifted the plank - and Frost - into the air. The carpenter landed gently, still clinging to the plank, but that incident fired the Welsh boy's imagination. From then on he had only one thought - to find a way to invade the aerial domain of the birds. Oh, how the people of Saundersfoot laughed at his dream, just as people of long ago had laughed at the futile flight attempts of Leonardo da Vinci, and later at the dangerous balloon escapades of the Montgolfier brothers. So Bill Frost was in good company when he ran down Stammers Hill, strapped within hopelessly inadequate aerofoil designs while onlookers smiled and laughed scornfully. The result was always the same. He reached the bottom of the hill still on the ground, demoralised and breathless, while all those watching laughed at the 'Bird Man'.

But Bill Frost learned from his mistakes. He had a dream, a vision that was decades ahead of its time - a flying machine that was to be driven by two propellers revolving horizontally which would give his machine the necessary lift. But in that isolated village there was no one he could go to for help and advice. He had no books to help him, so most of the design drawings for his wonder machine were stored in his head. Eventually he managed to borrow and save enough to patent the design for his aeroplane, which he did in 1894. In September of the following year, the Bird Man of Stammer Hill took his prototype plane, a machine 31ft long and made of bamboo, canvas and wire mesh, to the field of his father-in-law, Fred Watkins, and from there took off to begin his adventure in the air. The strange-looking contraption buzzed through the warm evening air over Stammer Hill, and soared over the heads of the people who had laughed at his previous gravity-defying attempts. None of them laughed now. They surveyed the 48-year-old flying man slanting across the sky in his flying-machine. The adults marvelled while the children squealed with delight at the sight - but the plane suddenly got caught in a squall which shook the plane violently. Frost started to lose altitude. The plane nose-dived, then levelled off, but still continued to lose height. It scudded low over the fields until its undercarriage smashed into the top branches of an ash tree. Frost was incredibly lucky to survive the first ever aircrash, a crash which happened after a flight of 600 yards. The plane was wrecked beyond repair. The people who had observed the stomach-turning descent came running to the crash-site to take a look at what was left of this strange machine. Some still scoffed at the fallen pilot.

With no money to rebuild his plane, Frost decided to offer his patent to the War Office, hoping for a substantial financial return. But instead, he received a letter from the Under Secretary of State, William St. John Broderick, which declared, "This Nation does not intend to adopt aerial navigation as a means of warfare!"

For years, Bill Frost kept on at everyone and anyone who would listen that the flying-machine would soon change the face of travel, commerce and war. Few took his predictions seriously. In the last years of his life he became blind, and was a familiar, pathetic-looking character being led about the village by two goats - a sad end for a man with such a vision of things to come.

Bill Hutchings