How Charles Rolls Helped Found a British Icon!

Famous for being one half of Rolls-Royce, an icon of British industry that survives to this day, Charles Rolls wasn’t just a co-founder of a motor giant that eventually dabbled in aviation, he was a pioneer of aviation who paid the ultimate price.

The twelfth person to die in the pursuit of furthering aviation, and the first Briton. A car salesman who amassed a large fortune, Charles provided Henry Royce with the money needed to found Rolls-Royce, initially as a luxury car manufacturer.

Since then, the company that bears his name has gone to become not only an icon, but has also gotten into the aircraft engine manufacturing business, whilst Charles Rolls has gone down in the history books as a pioneer of British aviation.

Early Life

Charles Stewart Rolls was born in Berkley Square, London on August 27 1877 as the last of four children born to politician, socialite and landowner John Rolls, 1st Baron Llangattock, and his wife, Georgiana Marcia Maclean.

Despite being born in a prestigious area of London whilst his father was serving in Parliament, Charles spent most of his childhood at his family’s country house, The Hendre, in southern Wales.

Though the youngest of three sons and unlikely to inherit his father’s title, as the son of a wealthy landowner, Charles Rolls was given an education typical of an English nobleman, first attending Mortimer Vicarage Preparatory School in Berkshire and later Eton College.

Yet despite his noble birth and hi classmates including George Villiers, the 6th Earl of Clarendon, cricketer Bernard Bosanquet and Aga Khan III, Charles never really fit in, seeming uninterested in stereotypical upper class activities.

He’d much rather learn about, take apart and rebuild an engine than go fox hunting.

Due to his seeming obsession with engines, many of Charles Rolls’ Etonian classmates called him “Dirty Rolls” as he was constantly showing up to class stinking of oil from his most recent engine rebuild.

Graduating Eton in 1894, Charles attended a test prep school in Cambridge that allowed him to attend Trinity College, Cambridge, studying mechanical engineering and applied science.

Interest in Cars

Whilst studying at Cambridge, Charles developed a need for speed, which coupled with his love of engines convinced him to travel to Paris and purchase a Peugeot Phaeton in 1896, not long after his 18th birthday.

Arriving in London not long after, Charles personally drove it to Cambridge in a journey lasting nearly 12 hours, traveling at a speed of just over 4 mph. His Peugeot is often thought to have been the first car in Cambridge.

Shortly after his drive from London to Cambridge, Charles chose to drive from Cambridge to The Hendre, taking two and half days to drive there, incidentally making it the third owned car in Wales as well as the first car in Cambridge.

Having joined the Automobile Club of France in 1896 so he could buy his Peugeot, Charles had the idea of creating a British rival. Several of his friends, including Roger Wallace, joined with him in this endeavor and the Automobile Club of Great Britain was founded on August 10 1897.

Based out of a block of flats at 4 Whitehall Court, London, Charles and the club (now known as the Royal Automobile Club) unsuccessfully lobbied against speed restrictions being placed on motor vehicles in the Locomotive Acts.

Car Tycoon

Charles graduated from Trinity College in 1898 and spent several months working as the chief engineer on the steam yacht, Santa Maria, owned by his parents.

Interestingly, Charles had spent a large portion of his childhood onboard the Santa Maria, touring Europe with his parents, as his father was a keen yachtsman, and Charles would spend much of the voyage in the engine room observing the mechanics, learning from them.

He next secured a job as an engineer with the London and North Western Railway at their depot in Crewe, Cheshire.

Though a talented engineer, Charles soon discovered that the seemingly monotonous work of a railway engineer was not for him. Around the same time, he also discovered he was a gifted salesman.

Deciding to combine his newfound skill and the one passion in life, Charles asked his wealthy father to lend him the sum of £6,600 (£820,000 adjusted for inflation) so he could establish C. S. Rolls & Co. in January 1903.

One of Britain’s first car dealerships, Charles based the company out of Lillie Hall, a disused ice skating rink off Seagrove Road in Fulham, a part of Greater London, importing and selling French Peugeot and Belgian Minerva cars.

Due to his being one of the first car dealerships in Britain, its proximity to London and Charles’ familiarity with London’s wealthiest, the profits from C. S. Rolls & Co. soon made him quite wealthy.

Meeting Henry Royce

Yet one of the persistent problems he faced was his lack of British products. Selling French-made products in the UK to Britain’s wealthy constantly cost his customers, as many would refuse to buy his cars, simply on account of them being made in France.

Though some of them would settle for Belgian-made Minervas, not all would, arguing that they, as Britain’s wealthy, should only buy British-made goods to ensure that British workers, not French or Belgian ones, remained in work.

Not wanting to lose customers unnecessarily, Charles began to search for a British car make he could sell to those who only wanted to buy British-made vehicles.

Explaining his dilemma to his close friend, Henry Edmunds, Charles asked what he should do. As it happened, Edmunds was a director of Royce Ltd, a British car manufacturer headed by Henry Royce that needed a way to sell more cars.

Sensing a way to kill two birds with one stone so to speak, Edmunds decided to set up a now-famous meeting between Rolls and Royce at the Midlands Hotel in Manchester on May 4 1904.

Despite Charles Rolls’ preference for three and four cylinder cars, he was so impressed by the two cylinder Royce 10 that at a follow-up meeting on December 23 that year, C. S. Rolls & Co. agreed to take all the cars Royce Ltd made.

Founding Rolls-Royce

As Charles Rolls was taking all the risk in the deal, he stipulated that the cars had to be badged as “Rolls-Royce” rather than just “Royce” to reflect this new partnership. This agreement marks the beginning of what would eventually become Rolls-Royce.

The two cylinder Royce 10 quickly became known as the Rolls-Royce 10 hp and was unveiled at the Paris Motor Show (then known as the Paris Salon) in December 1904. Three more models quickly followed and were similarly exclusively sold by Rolls:

• a 15 hp (11 kW) three-cylinder at £500 (£64,000 adjusted for inflation)
• a 20 hp (15 kW) four-cylinder at £650 (£83,000 adjusted for inflation)
• a 30 hp (22 kW) six-cylinder model priced at £890 (£114,000 adjusted for inflation)

Early advertising focused on the “Rolls” part of the name, hoping to drive more of London’s wealthiest to Rolls’ Fulham showroom and to buy more of Rolls’ cars – something that seemed to do just the trick as sales for C. S. Rolls & Co. increased dramatically.

Proving mutually beneficial for both Charles Rolls and Henry Royce, the pair decided to cement their partnership on March 15 1906, by forming Rolls-Royce Ltd, essentially turning their partnership into a legal entity they both co-owned.

The money behind the company, whilst Royce was the engineering genius, Charles Rolls became the new company’s technical advisor, using his business acumen to increase the company’s production and reputation in the industry to source buyers for the cars.

Paid an annual salary of £750 (£100,000 adjusted for inflation) and 4% of the profits in excess of £10,000 (£1.3 million adjusted for inflation), netting Charles much more than he’d ever made as a car salesman.

With the partnership going from a gentlemen’s agreement to a full-blown legal entity, Charles decided that the company’s marketing focus needed to change, moving away from “Being sold by Rolls” to how quiet and smooth a ride in the car was.

By the end of 1906, Rolls-Royce cars were the go-to cars for much of London’s elite, including the British Royal Family (Rolls famously chauffeured the then-Duke of York, later King George V, in one of his cars in 1900 and the families remained from then on).

Charles even embarked on a tour of the US, hoping to convince America’s wealthy to buy his luxury cars over others like the ones Henry Ford was making. Though this trip was only partially successful, Charles Rolls met aviation pioneers Wilbur and Orville Wright.

Later that year, Rolls-Royce Limited had expanded its production so much that its original Manchester factory was too small. Charles was instrumental in securing a cheap energy deal from the Derby council that allowed the company to build a big factory there.

Interestingly, that plant, though heavily modernized and expanded, is still used by Rolls-Royce today!

By 1907, Rolls-Royce bought out C. S. Rolls & Co., cancelling its contracts with Peugeot and Minerva and rebranding it as the Rolls-Royce showroom and becoming one of the first brand specific car showrooms in Britain.

Interest in Aviation

But Charles Rolls’ need for speed didn’t end with being a motoring pioneer. By the late 1890’s, ballooning had become a favorite pastime of much of Europe’s wealthy, and Rolls was certainly no exception, making over 170 ascents between 1898 and 1910. 

His interest in ballooning allowed him to make many new friends, including Brazilian-French aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont who showed Rolls concept designs for his airships (dirigibles), first igniting Rolls’ fascination with powered flight.

Other wealthy friends included wine merchant Frank Hedges Butler and his daughter, Vera, who, in 1901, joined with Charles in establishing the Aero Club of Great Britain, now known as the Royal Aero Club, in emulation of the Aero Club of France.

Two years later, in 1903, Rolls won the Gordon Bennett Gold Medal for the longest single flight time in his favorite hot air balloon he called “Midget”. He also learned of the first flight of the Wright Brothers in December that year.

Aviation Pioneer

Increasingly becoming more interested in aviation, Charles began to toy with the idea of getting into the aircraft manufacturing industry himself, using Rolls-Royce as a kind of springboard.

To that end, in a little-known fact somewhat lost to history, Charles tried to convince Henry Royce to design an aircraft engine, but was rebuked as Royce wanted to focus solely on ramping up car production, increasing their quality, and lowering their price.

In October 1908, Charles Rolls travelled to France, where on October 8th, he was the passenger on a Wright Flyer piloted by Orville Wright that took off from a small airfield in Camp d’Auvours, 11 kilometers east of Le Mans.

Though it only lasted four minutes and eleven seconds, the flight made Charles the second British person in history to fly (behind a close friend of the Wright Brothers, Griffith Brewer). He was also hooked.

Barely had the aircraft landed when Charles placed an order for one of the six Wright Flyers being built under license by Short Brothers.

Hoping to use his friendship with the brothers to convince one of them to teach him to fly, both brothers were too busy. Instead, Orville Wright told him to buy a glider and learn to fly that way whilst Shorts built his Wright Flyer.

Taking his Orville’s advice, Charles bough a glider and spent the next 11 months teaching himself to fly. When his Wright Flyer was delivered to him in October 1909, Charles Rolls was already a competent pilot with dozens of flight hours under his belt.

In March 1910, Charles became the second person the Royal Aero Club licensed to fly an aeroplane.

When buying his Wright Flyer, Rolls’ intention had been to become the first man to cross the English Channel by air. However, Louis Bleriot beat him to it in July 1909 – before Rolls even had his aircraft.

Understandably annoyed at this, Rolls decided the only way to outdo Bleriot was to not only fly over the English Channel to France, but to turn around and fly over the Channel back to England.

On June 2 1910, Charles Rolls set off from Dover in his Wright Flyer and headed across the English Channel. 95 minutes later, he returned to Dover having flown over the Channel twice without landing, thus completing his aims.

Death

Having completed the first double-cross of the English Channel by air, Charles Rolls was the talk of the nation. He was perhaps the most famous man in the country after the King.

Wanting to capitalize on this, Rolls began performing flight displays for a fee starting in late June. Optimal flying weather for stunts.

His first few performances went down incredibly well, netting Charles yet another mini fortune and doing nothing to quell the demand of people wanting to see him in the air.

And July 12 1910 was supposed to be nothing different.

Taking off from Hengistbury Airfield in the Southbourne suburb of Bournemouth, Charles began performing his maneuvers. Suddenly, however, the tail of his Wright Flyer broke off mid-flight, causing the aircraft to crash to the ground.

Charles Stewart Rolls, the co-founder of Rolls-Royce, the Royal Automotive Club and the Royal Aero Club, was killed instantly, making him the first Briton to die in a plane crash, and the twelfth internationally.

Newspapers across the country announced his death, as his Wright Flyer couldn’t be removed for four days whilst the Wreckage was carefully taken apart.

As for Charles’ body, it was interred in the cemetery of St Cadoc’s Church, where several of his ancestors and relatives were also interred in one of a dozen family mausoleums. His grave remains there to this day, bearing the inscription:

“Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God”

Legacy

Though his attempt to convince Royce to build aircraft engines failed in 1907, when the Great War erupted in 1914, Rolls-Royce was one of the first motor companies to begin producing aircraft engines for the Vickers Vimy bomber.

In effect, Henry Royce fulfilled Charles Rolls’ request seven years late, as Rolls-Royce’s aero engine division soon became a major component of the business, ironically leading to the company’s bankruptcy and nationalization in 1971, something that was a contentious issue in Britain at the time.

With Rolls-Royce’s takeover of C. S. Rolls & Co. and rebranding the company as the Rolls-Royce showroom, marked the beginning of manufacturer-branded showrooms in the UK, and to a lesser extent the world.

Before this, car manufacturers struck deals with independent car dealerships for a certain number of cars per month or everything the manufacturer could make. In turn, this led to the quota system many car dealership franchises employ today!

Thanks to his position as both a co-founder of Britain’s most famous conglomerate and an aviation pioneer, there are literally dozens of statues of him dotted around the country, usually in places with strong ties to his life.

Following his death, a statue of his was erected in Agincourt Square, Monmouth, the town Charles considered his hometown despite his London birth. Another statue, in Dover, stands in the place Rolls took off from on his channel-crossing flight.

In 1981, St Peter’s Catholic School in Bournemouth unveiled a memorial to Rolls at the bottom of their school playing field, which had been built on the old Hengistbury Airfield. The memorial marks the place where the wreckage of his Wright Flyer was found.

Having built his aircraft in the village of Eastchurch, on the Isle of Sheppey, in Kent as many other aviation pioneers did, the village church commissioned a stain glass window of Rolls and fellow aviator Cecil Roberts, following their deaths in July and December of 1910 respectively.

On a more personal note for Charles Rolls, an often retold story is that his father, Lord Llangattock, was so devastated by the death of his youngest, and favorite, son that his health soon began to deteriorate. He died only two years later on September 24 1912, at the age of 75. 

Due to Charles’ death in 1910, as well as the death of his two older brothers, John (2nd Baron Llangattock) and Henry in 1916, meant that his family’s title became extinct.

What do you think about Charles Rolls? Was he a great pioneer or just a wealthy man living off the work of others? Tell me in the comments!