Southport finally pays tribute to Sir Henry Segrave

MARCH 16, 1926 was a good day for speed.

For starters a physicist called Robert H.Goddard launched the world’s first liquid-fuelled rocket from a farm in Massachusetts – the very technology that made everything from putting a chap on the Moon to watching episodes of The Simpsons beamed in from satellites possible. It’s also why you no longer need an angry partner and a crumpled road atlas to get anywhere – sat nav isn’t perfect, but it’s still wonderful.

The same day, 3,153 miles away on the other side of the Atlantic, an Eton-educated racing driver decided to go out for a drive – along Southport’s beach at 152mph, setting a world land speed record in the process. Sir Henry Segrave’s stint as the fastest man on four wheels may have lasted barely a month but it’s still an epic bit of driving, because it involved having to get a supercharged V12 monster with skinny tyres and no traction control to behave itself while doing more than twice the national speed limit. On sand.

I’ve long bemoaned the lack of any sort of proper tribute to Sir Henry’s achievement – other than the name of the town’s branch of JD Wetherspoon – but the other day the car’s current owner kindly brought it back for another run. Exactly nine decades on the 1925 Sunbeam Tiger was back in Southport!

To get the actual car – which usually resides in Utah - back on the beach was an incredible achievement, but nothing quite like actually hearing that 4.0-litre supercharged engine at full chat. In an age of instant gratification where you download today’s entire Champion to your smartphone in about three seconds I listened to several people grumbling because it took two hours to get the methanol-fuelled beast up and running; in fact a few actually got bored and went home!

Yet two hours is worth the wait when you consider it’s been 90 years since the mighty Tiger last roared in anger here – and the spectacle of actually seeing the thing being given the beans and the driver fighting a twitchy rear end on the sands was definitely worth it. It was the sort of unforgettable moment I’m sure I’ll one day bore my grandchildren with – and doubtless plenty of you will too, given the size of the crowds that turned out to see it.

Good news, by the way. I’ve spoken to the driver and he tells me the Tiger’s owner is more than up for a centenary re-run in 2026 – maybe we could honour Robert H Goddard too and have a simultaneous rocket launch. Go on Sefton Council, you know you want to…

This Southport motoring event is one you won't want to miss

SOUTHPORT is finally getting its moment in the motoring spotlight.

Anyone up on their local history will know the town actually does pretty well on automotive heritage – and that Red Rum isn’t the only sort of horsepower our part of the world can be proud of. A century ago we were building Vulcan cars here, followed by Corgi scooters well into the 1950s, and when the beach wasn’t being used to hone future Grand National winners it was being used as a race circuit for blokes in Minis and Hillman Imps. We’re also home to the oldest Morgan dealership in the world (which has been selling Malvern’s finest since 1926) and just up the road in Banks there’s a chap who’s made more than 400 re-creations of the Lotus Europa.

Yet our finest automotive hour has been all but forgotten. Five years ago I remember writing for The Champion that the day Sir Henry Segrave set the world land speed record right here in the North West – March 16, 1926 – was marked only by the name of the town’s branch of JD Wetherspoon. The resort’s stint as the fastest place on earth had been all but forgotten - until now.

Organisers The Atkinson and Aintree Circuit Club – the people behind the Ormskirk MotorFest – have vowed to mark the 90th anniversary in style. I’ve seen the plans for the event and it’s exciting stuff; they could have parked some classic cars outside The Atkinson and left it at that, but they haven’t. They’re planning an entire week of events, topped off by a re-creation of the actual run on 16 March using a Sunbeam Tiger (the V12-engined vintage monster, not the 1960s roadster) just like Sir Henry did.

That means it’ll be the second land speed record re-enactment in a year, following the return of Sir Malcolm Campbell’s Blue Bird to Pendine Sands in Wales. To have something like that happen right on my doorstep is hugely exciting, which is why I can’t wait to see this event getting off the ground and witnessing a 1920s racer capable of more than 150mph fire into action on the very beach it wowed the world.

The event’s called The Southport Festival of Speed and I’m sure there’ll be plenty more on it The Champion in the coming weeks. See you there!

Henry Segrave was a Southport hero of speed

Sculptures, plaques, statues and artworks. These are just some of the things which haven’t been commissioned for what surely ranks as the most awe-inspiring spectacle in Southport’s history.

On this day 87 years ago the world land speed record was set on the town’s beach yet there's barely anything in the resort in the way of pomp or ceremony to celebrate. In fact, the only lasting tribute to the day the seaside resort became the fastest place on Earth is The Henry Segrave, a JD Wetherspoon pub named in honour of the dashing chap who dared to push the edges of what’s possible at the driving seat of a car.

It seems hard to believe, all these years, that it’s physically possible to drive along the beach at 152mph, a speed that’s more than twice what you can legally do on the motorway. The fastest I’ve ever driven was 130mph on a banked racing circuit at the helm of a V8-powered Vauxhall, and even on smooth tarmac in a modern car designed to cope, it was mildly terrifying. I can’t even begin to imagine what it would have been like going faster still on sand, driving a racing monster with no airbags, traction control or ABS - things which weren’t invented until decades later - and surviving to tell the tale.

In 1926, when most people’s experience of motoring was a bumble down the backroads in an Austin Seven, seeing Henry Segrave screaming down the sands in his Sunbeam Tiger must have been an epic sight. Record-breakingly epic, in fact.

Sir Henry O’Neil de Hane Segrave was, to borrow the cliché, a chap cast of the right stuff. Eton-educated, a First World War fighter pilot and a Grand Prix winner, he was exactly the sort of stiff-upper-lip yet heroic character you’d likely encounter in a Biggles adventure story, and as such ideally qualified for the risky business of breaking land speed records. To this day he’s the only person who’s ever held the land and water speed records simultaneously, and was actually killed at just 33 setting his final water speed record on Lake Windermere. After hitting a log at 98mph and crashing, he was recovered from the lake while still unconscious, and awoke in hospital to ask of the state of “his men” who’d helped him in the attempt.

He stayed conscious just long enough to be informed he’d broken the record, dying of lung haemorrhages less than half an hour later. You couldn’t make it up.

Yet it’s always his first record, the one he set on March 16, 1926 that sticks out in the mind. It wasn’t an easy record to break - on his third run, Segrave hit a gulley, sending his Sunbeam into the air for 49 feet - but he managed to eake 152.33mph out of the V12-engined, twin-supercharged Tiger, which he’d christened Ladybird on account of its red paint. Despite it being the fastest anybody had ever driven, it was an event which attracted few spectators.

The car, which is now part of a private collection of classic cars owned by an American enthusiast, was also the last land speed record contender to also be a competitive machine on the nation’s racing circuits, and owed its speed not only to the driver but also the immense punch offered up by its 350bhp V12 engine.

Journalist Wille Green, one of the few lucky enough to drive the machine, said: “This is one of the gutsiest, most torquey and powerful engines I’ve ever sat behind and even when you throw in the Alfa P3 and the Napier Railton for comparison, with big superchargers, you can sometimes get surge in a corner but the Tiger’s throttle response is impeccable in this respect. There is just instant, solid, vast power on tap.”

Even though the Southport record was smashed a month later, when John Parry-Thomas pounded along Pendine Sands in Wales at 171mph, it took more than 60 years before someone was able to make the Sunbeam go any faster, when the late John Baker-Courtenay took it to 157.44mph on the runway at RAF Elvington in Yorkshire. It’s his run, which attracted the attention of the world’s press back in 1990, which is likely to remain the ultimate tribute to Segrave and his incredible antics in Southport.

It is one of the most daring things ever to be done in the north west, yet in 2011 the only reminder you’re likely to find of Sir Segrave’s speed record is in the name of The Henry Segrave, a pub on Lord Street. With no museum exhibits, statues or plaques to commemorate the resort’s brief claim to being the fastest place on Earth, it is a record that’s almost slipped from memory entirely.

As records go it’s one that deserves more recognition than it has right now, and it’s high time that we in the north west did something to remember this brief but brave, bold and ultimately successful attempt to nab the world land speed record on Southport beach.

Statue, anyone?

A version of this feature originally appeared in the Autumn 2011 issue of GR8Life magazine. Life On Cars would like to thank Edwina Gibney, John Baker-Courtenay’s daughter, for her help with information on the Sunbeam Tiger and the Southport land speed record.

We Brits know mower about setting records than anyone else

A MOWER man from Southport has this week seen history being made after a British team set the world land speed record - for lawnmowers!

Brian Radam, curator of the National Lawnmower Museum, on Shakespeare Street in Southport, was one of the people who witnessed the Project Runningblade team take the record for the fastest ever lawnmower at Pendine Sands in Wales, which in the early 20th century was frequently used for speed records.

“It was a fantastic achievement as the average ride on lawnmower has a top speed of 6mph, racing lawnmowers only reach approx 60mph,” he said.

“Although this is the fastest speed for a mower, it is not the quickest at cutting grass, this record is held by an American cutting one acre in one minute! It was a shame the attempt could not have been held at Southport Beach where in the 1920s several land speed records were attempted.”

Project Runningblade's machine, driven by Don Wales, nephew of Donald Campbell and grandson of Sir Malcolm Campbell, both land speed record holders, took the record by travelling across the sands at a two way average speed of 87.833mph, although no actual mowing was involved in the record-breaking runs.

“We are delighted to have set this new world record. It is a triumph of British engineering, and my thanks go to Countax for building this magnificent machine, to Beaulieu who have supported us so well from the outset, and to all our other sponsors who have helped us achieve this marvellous record,” said Stephen Vokins, Team Principal.

Project Runningblade is now on display in the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu, near Southamption, beside a collection of legendary world land speed record cars including Donald Campbell's Bluebird.

Other famous lawnmowers are on display in Southport at the National Lawnmower Museum. For more information contact 01704 501336 or visit the museum's website at www.lawnmowerworld.co.uk