End of an era: Richard Pearse's great-nephew, also called Richard Pearse, right, died in Timaru last month. He is pictured with Pearse advocate Jack Mehlhopt and the 2003 centenary replica of the Pearse monoplane.
South Canterbury lost the last close link to aviator Richard Pearse following the death of his nephew, also called Richard Pearse, last month.
Mr Pearse, who died aged 92, was 34 years old when his now-famous uncle died and had spent time with him over the years at the family home at Manse Bridge, Temuka, where the aviator – in later years living in Christchurch – would visit for Sunday dinners to catch up with family.
The South Canterbury Herald visited his son Jeffrey, who, with wife Patricia, lives in the house the aviator and inventor grew up in, on Pearse Rd at Waitohi and talked about the family's links with the world's earliest days of flying and the later controversy Richard Pearse's 1903 flight engendered.
According to witness statements, Richard Pearse flew and landed a powered heavier-than-air machine on March 31, 1903, about nine months before the Wright brothers flew their aircraft.
Since the 1960s there has been controversy around the Pearse story, with claims that the design of his plane meant he could not have flown.
For the family, being on the inside, statements by what Jeffrey Pearse calls "experts, in inverted commas" that his great uncle did not fly, have been hurtful.
He said his father was a reserved man and did not talk much about the aviation achievements of his forebear.
"Dad's sister Margaret, she was less reserved than my father and she always was a strong advocate he flew – not publicly at all, but to us younger generation. I can clearly remember her saying, `Richard flew.' She was very proud of that.
"As I say, my father was far more conservative and quiet in nature but if push came to shove he would always say that he did fly as well."
Jeffrey Pearse's grandfather, Warne Pearse, was a key witness to the early flights. Warne, the brother of the aviator, and the closest of the family to him, was there "from time to time" at Richard's neighbouring block of land, helping him start his aeroplane invention and get it airborne, "and so forth".
Warne was one of the key witnesses featured in later research into his brother's flight.
It was well documented in newspapers of the day that he was highly regarded as a most honest sportsman, and tennis player, his grandson said.
"For critics of Richard Pearse to claim that the story was a load of nonsense and that he could not have flown, really that did question the credibility of some of the witnesses, for example, Warne Pearse, and that did hurt my father," he said.
Jeffrey said there has never been a statement from the family that he flew before the Wright Brothers. What mattered to them was the controversy over whether he had actually flown.
"Certainly he was airborne in a heavier than air machine and was able to achieve short flights." Research by his biographer Gordon Ogilvie found that after considerable taxiing on his farm paddocks, Pearse made his first public flight attempt down Main Waitohi Rd adjacent to his farm. After a short distance aloft, perhaps 50 yards (45 metres), he crashed on top of his own gorse fence. (NZ History Online).
"No details were recorded, by Pearse or onlookers, of this tentative flight."
In two letters, published in 1915 and 1928, the inventor writes of February or March 1904 as the time when he set out to solve the problem of aerial navigation.
He also states that he did not achieve proper flight and did not beat the American brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright who flew on December 17, 1903.
"However, a great deal of eyewitness testimony, able to be dated circumstantially, suggests that March 31, 1903 was the likely date of this first flight attempt," according to NZ History Online.
His attempts at flying were witnessed not only by Warne, but by local farmers and pupils of Upper Waitohi School who would see him flying on their way to or from school, Jeffrey said.
Wikipedia notes that people who had left the district by 1904 remembered the events, and recalled a particularly harsh winter with heavy snow.
The controversy over whether he flew did not arise until the 1960s, after the aviator's death.
Some of the accusations were pretty aggressive but his father did not respond to them although he was upset, Jeffrey said.
Gordon Ogilvie bore the brunt of it as the researcher and argued the claims on behalf of the family.
While the flights – or lack of them were debated – it was forgotten there were real people involved, Jeffrey said.
"Twenty-two witnesses from right throughout the country all having some account of Richard Pearse and his flights – all interviewed independently so no collusion. So it's a fairly weighty lot of evidence.
"There were errors in times and dates and varying degrees of the distance he flew but they were all adamant he was airborne."
But for the family it was never in question, because of Warne's close association with his brother, and his upstanding character.
Pearse's plane lacked an aerofoil section on the wing, a necessary element of flight. The wings worked more like kites, but according to Timaru man Jack Mehlhopt who helped build a replica of the Pearse's first plane, with the fabric covering the bamboo structure not stretched tightly, the ballooning affect in flight would have acted like an aerofoil.
"It's all about the angle of attack," another local Pearse enthusiast Paul Marshall said.
Jeffrey said there has never been a statement from the Pearse family that he flew before the Wright Brothers. What matters to them was the controversy over whether he had actually flown.
"Certainly he was airborne in a heavier than air machine and was able to achieve short flights." Although Pearse's design was not available to later inventors, his concepts had much in common with modern aircraft.
"I don't think there was ever any commercial purpose. But what was absolutely categoric was his vision for flight in the early 1900s – history has shown 100 years later how absolutely correct his vision was," Jeffrey said.
Aerilons (the small flap on the outside of the wing), the propeller in front of the plane, single wings – all have been adopted as the norm.
"If he'd had a world patent on aerilons all would have been well," he said.
It was not his last aviation invention. He created an autogyro in his garage in Christchurch which was designed to be an everyday utility plane, to be driven down the road, and to take off vertically. This plane was found by aviation pioneer and early Richard Pearse researcher, George Bolt, who took it back to Auckland.
A newspaper article alerted Pearse's sisters Ruth and Florrie, and they made contact with Mr Bolt, telling them the history of its inventor, and that he flew before the Wright Brothers. That sparked off Mr Bolt's interest.
"He came down to South Canterbury [in 1958] on the suggestion of the aunts and started digging around. When he found pieces of the original plane, he started to interview witnesses," Jeffrey said.
In later years, his uncle, who never married, would worry, on visits to the family at Temuka, that others were stealing his ideas. He died in Sunnyside, in 1953, but Jeffrey said at that time the hospital was also a home for the elderly.
"It wasn't necessarily a loony place but he was no doubt very eccentric."
Jeffrey cannot pinpoint any point in time when he was told about his famous great uncle – the story was just there in the background of family life – that he had been airborne and that he was incredibly clever as an engineer.
The harshest criticism against the flight came from within New Zealand, he said. The most generous support came from overseas with the aviation publishers Jane's, recognising his contribution to aviation. There has still not been official New Zealand government recognition of his achievements, although he has appeared on a coin.
"I think it's probably in the too hard basket because there are still `experts' that will deny his achievements."
These experts are aviation people with high qualifications but who are very distant from the real story, he said.
His father, Richard Pearse, died suddenly in Glenwood Home, Timaru, in early July, the same home where Warne died in 1967. His passing marked the end of those with the closest association to the man who may well have been the first to fly a plane.
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