Thomas Sopwith

Thomas Sopwith
Position	Goaltender
Teams	Princes Ice Hockey Club
Born	January 18, 1888, London, England
Died	January 27, 1989, King's Somborne, England
Playing Career	1908 – 1910

Sir Thomas Octave Murdoch Sopwith, CBE, Hon FRAeS (January 18, 1888 – January 27, 1989) was a British goaltender. He won a gold medal with the British national team at the 1910 European Championship.

Biography

He was born in Kensington, London on January 18, 1888. The eighth child and only son of Thomas Sopwith (a civil engineer) and his wife Lydia Gertrude née Messiter, Sopwith was educated at Cottesmore School in Hove and at Seafield Park engineering college in Hill Head.

A skilled ice skater in his youth, Sopwith began his hockey career playing defense but later moved to goaltender. He played club hockey for Princes Ice Hockey Club from 1908 to 1910. After tending goal for Britain at the first European Championship in Les Avants in 1910, Sopwith took up flying and earned his pilots license. His endeavors in aviation brought his hockey playing days to an end.

Sopwith won a £4000 flying prize on December 18, 1910. He used his winnings to create the Sopwith School of Flying at Brooklands. In June 1912, he and several business partners set up the Sopwith Aviation Company, which went on to manufacture more than 18,000 aircraft for use by the allied forces in World War I, including the Sopwith Camel and the Sopwith Pup. He was awarded the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1918.

Punitive anti-profiteering taxes left him bankrupt after the war. Sopwith re-entered the aviation industry a few years later as chairman of a new firm known as Hawker Aircraft, named after his chief engineer and test pilot, Harry Hawker. After the nationalization of what was by then Hawker Siddeley, he continued to work as a consultant to the company until 1980.

He was knighted (specifically as a Knight Bachelor) in 1953. Sopwith was inducted into the International Aerospace Hall of Fame in 1979. He celebrated his 100th birthday 1988 and the occasion was marked by a flypast of military aircraft over his home.

Sopwith died at the age of 101 at King's Somborne, Hampshire, on January 27, 1989. He had been the last surviving participant from the 1910 European Championship. His estate was later sold for £ 15 million.

References

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