stunt. However, heavy weather forced his aircraft down at Hammersmith in West London. On Saturday 9 September 1911 Hamel flew a Blériot XI the 19 miles between Hendon and Windsor in 18 minutes to deliver the first official airmail carried in Great Britain. He carried one bag of mail with 300-400 letters, about 800 postcards and a few newspapers weighing 23Ib and arrived safely at Windsor around 5.13pm. Included was a postcard he had written en route. The centenary of the event was marked by the Royal Mail with the issue of a set of commemorative postage stamps on 9 September 2011. On 12 October 1911 Hamel made his first cross-channel flight when he ferried a new Bleriot monoplane from Boulogne to Wembley. This was the first of 21 cross channel flight that he was to make. 1912 Hamel made the first cross-channel flight with a woman as passenger on 2 April 1912, when he flew Eleanor Trehawke Davies from Hendon to Paris, with intermediate stops at Ambleteuse and Hardelot. Later in the month he assisted Harriet Quimby to become the first woman pilot to cross the channel by testing her newly-delivered Blériot monoplane before her flight. Hamel made the first flight from Hedon airfield near Hull on Friday 2 August 1912. Hamel took part in the first Aerial Derby race, carrying Eleanor Trehawke Davies as a passenger. At first he was credited with the fastest time, since Thomas Sopwith was disqualified for missing one of the control points, but after Sopwith successfully appealed Hamel was relegated to second place. 1913 In April 1913 Hamel made the first cross-channel return flight carrying a passenger, the Evening Standard journalist Frank Dupree. and later that month flew with Dupree as passenger from Dover to Cologne, the first time that a flight had been made from England to Germany. The flight, sponsored by the Evening Standard, was intended to draw attention to Britain's need for military aircraft. In August 1913 a seventy five mile air race around the Midlands was arranged between Bentfield Hucks and Hamel. The take-off point for the contest was the Tally-Ho grounds, adjacent to Cannon Hill Park. Both aviators then flew anti-clockwise around the circuit, landing at Redditch recreation ground, Coventry, Nuneaton, Tamworth and Walsall and finishing at Edgbaston. Hamel won the race by a margin of just twenty seconds. Following his disappointment the previous year Hamel entered the