AN unscheduled touch-down in St Helens was one of the factors which caused a pioneer aviator to be pipped at the post in a round-Britain air race.

And in providing the background to that momentous event, local history buff Janet Fenney is eager to fill in a few local gaps to that cloud-high drama of July 1911.

Janet, who spotted the St Helens mention in a recent national newspaper article, writes: "Various competitors entered the race, but two Frenchmen led the way -- one of them, Andre Beaumont, going on the win the £10,000 prize (an incredible amount of money 90 years ago).

Janet to write was the the fate of the runner-up, Jules Verdrines, who caught the tail-end of a thunder storm and became violently air sick. "He was on his way to one of the landing points at Manchester", she goes on, "but, because of his condition, misjudged where he was and landed in St Helens by mistake.

"Now, I realise that it was 90 years ago, but does any reader know where about in St Helens he landed?" asks Janet. "Is there any written record of the event somewhere; or maybe someone remembers their grandparents telling them about it?"

Could there, she wonders, be a newspaper cutting describing the St Helens drama, lying somewhere in the back of someone's set of drawers.

The recent press account says that the hapless Verdrines took off again from St Helens with two helmeted policemen hanging on the tail of his aeroplane until he had revved it to sufficient power to lift off.

But the Manchester airfield he had been headed for also proved elusive and there was a critical delay before he touched down at this stage point at nine in the evening. The volatile Frenchman, exhausted and depressed by his bad luck burst into tears.

And doubtless there were more tears to come at the conclusion of the four-day event when he finally arrived at the Brooklands finishing post to find that his countryman, in an inferior aircraft, had just beaten him to it.

Now Janet clings on to the faint hope that that the two helpful St Helens bobbies can be named.

"Maybe the policemen's descendants or relatives, if any exist, know something about the event. I'll keep my fingers crossed", Janet signs off, "that someone will come up with the answer as to where exactly Jules Vedrines landed in St Helens".

ANYONE able to shed some light on the subject could kindly drop me a line at Whalley's World.