In July 1910 Harold M. Chase and Minor F.H. Gouverneur received a patent for a mechanism to stabilise and control aeroplanes. Their invention was a manually operated lever described as capable of being swung in any direction to transmit motion to other elements of the plane, apparently including on the wings. Three weeks later they won a second patent for rear wing panels (ailerons) that were controllable in flight by a cable or flexible cord, a device different enough from the 1906 Wright wing-warping patent.
On November 14, 1910, M. F. H. Gouverneur, vice-president of the Tide Water Power Company, and H. M. Chase, manager of the American Chemical and Textile Coloring Company, made the only public test flight of the airplane they built on Shell Island, sometimes called Moore’s Beach. More than 5,000 visitors crowded Wrightsville Beach four months earlier, when, on July 4, the pair had planned to attempt the first flight of their self-designed aircraft. Newspaper reports described the November flight, piloted by Mr. Chase, as having attained an altitude of about five feet, sustained for some distance, just long enough to demonstrate the plane’s ability to fly. The event carries the distinction of being the first airplane constructed in North Carolina and owned and flown by North Carolinians.
Designed and built by H. M. Chase and M. F. H. Gouverneur, Wilmington NC, USA, the 1911 Chase-Gouverneur “Wrightsville Beach” multiplane was similar to a Wright aircraft but built from aluminum.
It flew short hops at about five feet altitude on 10 November 1911, at Wrightsville Beach, Chase flew in a series of unannounced hops along the Shell Island beach at low tide.
In 1911 Gouverneur won a lawsuit for $380, with interest, against Boston’s Harriman Motor Works, apparently because its motor was unreliable.
In 1912 Gouverneur informed London’s Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft that he was now using the Gouverneur IV, a 25ft long monoplane with a 31 ft span, with pilot, it weighed 840 lb. According to Chase, his former patner hired an experienced pilot to fly one of his planes, apparently the Gouverneur IV, but the aviator crashed and “Gouverneur went no further”.
Engine: Harriman, 40hp
Wingspan: 16’0″
Length: 30’0″
Weight gross: 1200 lb
Seats: 1
Gouverneur IV
Wingspan: 31 ft
Length: 25ft long
Loaded weight: 840 lb
