Researching Wilfred Blake

It was Blake who led the first attempt to fly round the world in 1922. The pilot for this mission was Norman Macmillan. The aircraft used were to include a de Havilland DH.9 bought from the Royal Air Force for the London to Calcutta stage, a Fairey IIIC floatplane for the Calcutta to Vancouver stage, again the DH.9 for the Vancouver to Montreal stage, and a Felixstowe F.3 flying boat for the trans-Atlantic stage. Blake's ambitious round-the-world trip was cancelled after the second stage of the flight came to grief in the waters of the Bay of Bengal. Macmillan would subsequently write of the attempt in his 1937 book, "Freelance Pilot".

In 1951 he drove his Standard Vanguard motor car on a record journey around South America from La Paz to Rio de Janeiro taking in Peru, Chile, Argentina and Paraguay along the way.

In 1959 he and his wife drove around the Central African Federation, again in a Standard Vanguard, at the invitation of the Federation Government, meeting both Roy Welensky and Edgar Whitehead, the Prime Ministers of the Federation and Southern Rhodesia respectively. Welensky impressed him greatly, Whitehead less so. Blake had visited many of the places he now saw twenty five years before and marvelled at the great changes wrought to the country. He produced a readable, if uncritical, book of his journey Rhodesia and Nyasaland Journey published in 1960. Now rather dated it is nevertheless a useful social history of the period - he several times notes how many ex-RAF men there were in Southern Rhodesia and their likely influence on its politics.

There is a bench in his memory at St Columb Major Parish Church, Cornwall. He lived in St Columb in the latter part of his life before moving to Mijas in Spain, with his wife Ruby. He died in Spain in 1968 and is buried in the RAF section of the military cemetery in Gibraltar. He wife, Ruby's ashes are buried with him.

Blake was born in Embsay, Skipton, Yorkshire, and was a right-handed batsman and right arm, roundarm, medium pace bowler. He made his debut for Lancashire in the Roses Match at Fartown, Huddersfield in 1877. Batting at number 9 in Lancashire's first innings he made a creditable 26, before being bowled by Armitage in a match won by Lancashire by nine wickets. This proved to be his only game for the red rose county, and he re-appeared in 1880 for Yorkshire against Derbyshire on the same ground. He scored 16 in a match won by Yorkshire by an innings.

His final first-class game was against Gloucestershire at the Clifton College Close Ground in August 1880. He was bowled by W. G. Grace for seven in the first innings, and bowled by his brother G. F. Grace in the second for 21, as Gloucestershire ran out winners by six wickets.

Blake then vanished from the first-class scene, and indeed the history books as the date and circumstances of his death are not known.

Overall, he scored 70 runs at an average of 17.5. He took one wicket for seventeen runs for Yorkshire.