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Harry first arrived at Brooklands at a time when things were literally moving rather slowly and the hub of British enterprise in aviation was showing a pronounced tendency to deviate to Hendon, whither many of the bright spirits that were formerly the life of Brooklands had already departed. Mr. T. O. M. Sopwith (now C.B.E.), who gave Harry his start in aviation, had recently returned from a successful American tour, during which he had participated in several motor-boat races and incidentally had commissioned the well-known American boat-builder, Burgess, to construct, under licence from the Wright Brothers, an aeroplane, known as a Burgess-Wright biplane then, and as a Sopwith-Wright after reconstruction by its owner in England.

As it was on this machine Harry made his reputation as a pilot of the first rank, a few references to its design and construction are not out of place. The original machine built by Burgess to Sopwith’s instructions, contrary to the customary Wright practice, was fitted with controls of the Farman type and a Gnome rotary engine. Having brought the machine to England, Sopwith replaced the Gnome engine by a British-built A.B.C. of 40 h.p., and proceeded to manufacture in his sheds at Brooklands duplicates of all the component parts of the aeroplane. Thus the machine, when ultimately reconstructed, became all-British in conformity with the requirements of the competition for the British Empire Michelin Cup No. 1. The machine had twin propellers, driven through the medium of chains connected with the single engine, and on the right-hand side of the latter was arranged the pilot’s seat. The machine was therefore of a distinctly novel type, at any rate so far as concerned this country, where few Wright machines had been seen. One innovation added to the design by Mr. Sopwith (to protect the pilot from the wind) was a nacelle, resembling in appearance a side-car body, and it is probable that without this feature Harry would not have been able to put up as many long flights as he did. Passengers in this machine enjoyed a particularly novel sensation in sitting beside the engine instead of in front of or behind it, and in landing they received the impression that the chassis had collapsed, so low was the build of the machine as compared with other contemporaneous types.