FRENCHMAN'S FEAT

Evening Star, Issue 19774, 26 January 1928, Page 14

FRENCHMAN'S FEAT

CHANNEL CROSSED ON A SEA CYCLE. A young Frenchman, Rene Savard, arrived at Dover on November 17 on a water cycle, having pedalled his way across the Channel from Calais in six and a-half hours (states the Dover correspondent of the ‘Daily Express’). His craft, which lias now added a new record to the list of Channel crossings, is simply a bicycle set on floats. As the rider pedals ho works a small paddle wheel. M. Savard, who comes from Paris, staitcd from Calais in tho morning, accompanied by a motor boat. The sea was then smooth, but it was rough when he arrived hero, and there was a cold wind. Just outside Dover Harbor the motor launch broke down, and his arrival was thus delayed by an hour. When he reached Dover M. Savard was completely exhausted, and was immediately taken to his hotel and put to bed. He was congratulated by the Mayor of Dover, who signed a certificate proving the authenticity of the novel feat. Dover has amusing memories of a strange craft in which Edward Tierney, a Salford hairdresser, and his navigator, William Matthewson, an oighfy-six-year-old Crimean veteran, proposed to pedal across the Atlantic. That craft capsized in harbor, and nearly drowned one of the crew. Wo have, however, heard here of successful attempts on tho Clyde to build water cycles on floats, but to M. Savard belongs the credit of the first cross-Channel cycling feat.