The competition was open to all nations’ aero clubs, who were required to sponsor up to three entrants and play host the following year if they won. Any country that won the contest three times in a row would be allowed to keep the trophy in perpetuity. The rules were that of a time trial, with each aircraft taking off at 15 minute intervals and flying around a triangular course for no fewer than 150 miles. As if that wasn’t enough, navigation and mooring tests were thrown in for good measure to ensure the aircraft were reliably seaworthy and not just fragile racers. The winner received £1,000 prize money (£300,000 today) as well as custody of the trophy until the next race.

The inaugural contest was at Monaco in April 1913, with Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Britain, Switzerland and America all putting forward entries. As if to underline the still shaky reliability of a barely ten year old technology, only four aircraft actually made it to the starting line – all French! The spirit of competition was not dulled, however, and the event proved hugely popular and exciting. The winner, Maurice Prévost, won at a dizzyingly high average speed of 45.71mph in – surprisingly for the time – a monoplane. It also proved to be the first and only time that the founding country won.

In 1914 everyone reconvened at Monaco for the second race, which was won by a British Sopwith Tabloid floatplane. In a remarkable testament to the advancement of aviation in the course of one year, the average speed had almost doubled to 86.83mph.

More pressing matters were to displace the competition for the next four years and the next race was not held until 1919, at Bournemouth on the 10th September. Britain, France and Italy were the contenders but this time it was the weather that spoiled the fun, with thick fog robbing onlookers of any spectacle and allowing only a single aircraft – an Italian flying boat – to finish the course.

Venice was the venue of the next two races – again due to the 1920 event only containing entrants from the host country! – and in 1922 it looked dangerously like they could win the whole shooting match and keep the trophy forever.

That year, however, marked the entrance of a British aviation company and more importantly its brilliant young designer, whose names were to become forever intertwined with the event and its subsequent legacy – Supermarine and R.J. Mitchell. The Mitchell-designed Supermarine Sea Lion, a traditional biplane flying boat powered by a 450hp Napier Lion engine, faced off against French and Italian competitors and carried the day with an average speed of 145.71mph – almost exactly 100mph faster than Prévost’s winning time of nine years previously.

The 1923 event was held at Cowes, on the Isle of Wight, with the greatest threat to Britain’s supremacy coming from a new and powerful source – the United States. The US Navy had decided to take a hand to prove the worth of its air arm. This show of interest and backing from a national service was to prove hugely influential for the race’s future. Jacques Schneider’s original concept of reliability trials to help improve commercial flying boats, having already taken something of a back seat, was thrown out the window entirely with the arrival of the Americans’ Curtiss seaplanes (which were converted land-based fighters). 1923 arguably marked the point when the Schneider Trophy became a contest of outright speed and although the Times newspaper rather sniffily called the involvement of the military “unsporting” it paved the way for others – including Britain – to do the same in future races.

It was therefore not until 1929 that the next race took place at Portsmouth, along the Solent in a diamond-shaped course from Cowes to Hayling Island. The Italians again sent a team of aircraft – two of their newest high-performance Macchi M.67s with 1,800bhp 57-litre V18s and one M.52R – but they met their match in Mitchell’s latest refinement of his sleek monoplane design, the S6.

The S6, although similar in appearance to the S4 and S5, was largely a new design.  Biggest among the changes were the switch from fabric/metal construction to full metal (beautifully streamlined and decorated in a striking blue and silver paint job) and, more importantly, a new powerplant.  It was decided that the Napier Lion had reached its technical limits and so Mitchell turned to a different engine-maker to produce a successor – Rolls-Royce.  Within six months they produced a supercharged V12 engine that promised up to 1,900bhp – the Rolls-Royce R.  But it came at a cost.  So highly stressed and heat-producing was this new engine that early examples were tearing themselves to pieces inside 15 minutes. However by August 1929 Rolls-Royce could guarantee 100 minutes of running at full power – enough to complete the course.  To counter the excessive heat from the engine Mitchell hit upon the brilliant idea of fitting radiators into the wings and floats – the latter of which also contained the fuel tanks to help further balance the aircraft.

On the 7th September 1929 an estimated one and a half million people lined the beaches on both sides of the Solent, at Calshot Castle, on the destroyers that served as the course markers and on dozens of yachts spread out across the water.  It was an awe-inspiring spectacle and an example of how air racing had so captured the public’s imagination.  Oh to have been there!

Two of the new S6s and one S5 went up against the opposition and although the Italians put up a stiff fight in the end their Macchis proved too unreliable, with S6 N247 piloted by Dick Waghorn finishing first at an average speed of 328.26mph.  Britain had won the Schneider Trophy in triumphant style for the second consecutive time.  Could we make it a hat-trick and keep the thing forever?

As it happened we were almost denied the right to find out as by 1931, with the Depression biting, the British government didn’t want to stump up the £100,000 (£6 million today) to put it on again. It took the fiercely patriotic Lucy, Lady Houston, who saw the value of the event and Mitchell’s designs for the future of Britain’s air development, to provide the funds for the race with the Air Ministry agreeing to a new High Speed Flight. This delay meant there were only nine months until the race; Mitchell, unable to design a new S7 in time, upgraded the S6 into the ultimate streamlined racing seaplane – the S6B. Amazingly Rolls-Royce managed to coax another 400bhp from the R engine; Mitchell adding more radiators to help cope with the heat.