‘Jules Verne planted the idea’
IN REMEMBERANCE
Hamish Livingston Harding
Hamish Harding, the late chairman of Action Aviation, loved adventure, breaking records, cutting a good deal and his family. We recall four adventures, reported by CJI, that took him to space and the ocean depths. Words: Mike Stones
IN REMEMBERANCE
‘Jules Verne planted the idea’
IN REMEMBERANCE
Hamish Livingston Harding
Hamish Harding, the late chairman of Action Aviation, loved adventure, breaking records, cutting a good deal and his family. We recall four adventures, reported by CJI, that took him to space and the ocean depths. Words: Mike Stones
HAMISH HARDING
Hamish Harding blasted into space aboard the Blue Origin New Shepard 4 space rocket in June 2022.
HIS PASSION for adventure propelled Hamish Harding into space – 66 miles above the earth – and to the deepest point of the planet – nearly seven miles below the ocean’s surface. It took him to the South Pole and around the world on a record-breaking circumnavigation in a Gulfstream G650ER aircraft and much more.
To ask Harding about any of these missions was to make his face ignite with enthusiasm, as he recalled the adventure, the thrill of exploration, the joy of discovery and the sense of accomplishment. CJI was privileged to share in those adventures as we reported them on our website and in Corporate Jet Investor Quarterly. Here, we capture a flavour of this extraordinary man and his many missions.
The first adventure we featured was his dash around the planet at the controls of a Qatar Executive Gulfstream G650ER to claim the Guinness World Record for the fastest circumnavigation of the Earth via the North and South Poles by an aircraft. Taking off from Kennedy Space Center, Florida on July 11th, 2019, the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing, the flight in its honour was completed in 46 hours and 40 minutes, at the average speed of 465 miles per hour. Sharing the cockpit with Harding was former commander of the International Space Station, astronaut colonel Terry Virts. Accompanying the mission was an international team, comprised of nine nationalities, on the flight made as “a tribute to the past, present, and future of space exploration”.
You can join the crew on their historic flight courtesy of the film One More Orbit made to commemorate the mission. Speaking after the film’s release, Harding said: “The achievements of the One More Orbit mission prove that what appears ‘impossible’ and against the odds may actually be attainable. We hope our film will inspire viewers to reach never before heard of successes of their own.”
Obsessed with aviation from an early age, Harding learnt to fly at Cambridge University. He moved into business aviation after a successful career in IT and launched Action Aviation in 2004 to distribute Sino Swearingen SyberJet SJ30 aircraft. After the programme failed, Action Aviation became a dealer-broker, specialising in buying aircraft around the world. He even found the time to send messages to close a jet deal as he flew over the Antarctic on his pole-to-pole circumnavigation flight.
Antarctic adventure
It was to the Antarctic, he returned in 2019 on a journey to the geographic South Pole. And this time, he took his 12-year-old son Giles with him. On a mission to highlight a malaria eradication campaign in Africa, they dispensed with the dog teams used by the first expedition to reach the Pole – led by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen in 1911 – preferring instead the comfort of a Gulfstream G550 and a 1940s ski-equipped Douglas DC3.
The final frontier: Hamish Harding’s 10-minute flight into space in 2022 realised a life-long ambition.
Polar adventure: Hamish Harding and son Giles during their 2019 visit to Antarctica to highlight malaria eradication.
“My career in aviation takes me around the world so much and I have missed too many parents’ evenings and school rugby matches,” Harding told CJI. “So, when this opportunity arose to take Giles with me to the Pole, this helped to make up … in a big way.”
After flying in a Gulfstream G550 to the 3,000m ice runway of Wolf’s Fang, established by luxury travel company White Desert, the pair swapped their jet for a ski-equipped Douglas DC3 built during the Second World War. But now the aircraft sports a Basler BT-67 turbo-propeller conversion. The Hardings were joined by Prince Ned Nwoko on their mission to raise awareness about the Eradication of Malaria in Africa project, which is led by the Prince Ned Nwoko Foundation. At the Pole the team unfurled a Nigerian flag bearing the message: ‘Let’s Eradicate Malaria in Africa.’ Malaria kills 500,000 people a year in Africa alone. The visit to the Pole notched up two firsts for the team. The prince became the first Nigerian to reach the Pole and Giles became its youngest visitor. During a previous visit in December 2016, he accompanied his friend astronaut Buzz Aldrin. (Aldrin, at 86 years old, became the oldest person to visit the South Pole, although he subsequently had a medical emergency triggering a medical emergency evacuation).
Asked to recall his feelings at the bottom of the world, Harding worried about the effects of global warming. He remembered too the sacrifices of the first polar explorers. Of Amundsen and his Norwegian team, first to the Pole in 1911, who used dogs to pull their sleds and later ate them, as food supplies dwindled. And the fatal British expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott. “At least, no dogs were damaged in our polar adventure,” Harding told us wryly.
Dive buddies: Hamish Harding and Victor Vescovo on their dive into the Challenger Deep in March 2021.
The crew of the New Shepard 4 space rocket celebrate their successful return to terra firma.
The Triton submersible DSV Limiting Factor was launched into the western Pacific ahead of its dive to the bottom of the Challenger Deep. The sub spent 4.4 hours at full ocean depth.
Thumbs up from Hamish Harding. He couldn't disguise a grin after his 10,925m dive to the deepest part of the ocean.
Blasting into space
From the bottom of the world to the frontier of space. Last year, Harding joined a crew aboard the Jeff Bezos Blue Origin New Shepard 4 space rocket for a 10-minute flight into space. After zero gravity training aboard a modified Boeing 727, operated by the aptly named Zero-G Corporation, the crew blasted off from Launch Site One, near Van Horn, Texas on June 4th 2022. The rocket mission realised a life-long ambition, he told CJI. “Space flight was something I had dreamed of doing all my life since, as a small child, watching Buzz [Aldrin] and Neil [Armstrong] walk on the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969 on my parent’s black-and-white TV in Hong Kong.”
Into the abyss
Another life-long ambition was to dive to the the Challenger Deep. For this, we should blame 19th century novelist Jules Verne, he told me after his record-breaking dive. “Perhaps reading Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea as a boy planted the idea of a dive to the deepest part of the ocean. But I never thought it would be possible.”
He realised this dream aboard the purpose-built Triton submersible DSV Limiting Factor, launched in the waters of the western Pacific Ocean from the expedition yacht DSV Limiting Factor. His mission, with vessel commander and friend Victor Vescovo, was to dive to the bottom of the Challenger Deep, 10,925m below the surface of the ocean.
Their dive, in March 2021, secured two more world records. The first record was for the longest time spent at full ocean depth – 4.4 hours, breaking the previous record by 90 minutes. The second was for the longest traverse at full ocean depth – 2.86 miles (4.6km) horizontally across the trench floor. Worried about the 8m tonnes of plastics that enter our oceans every year, he also wanted to search for them in the deepest part of the oceans.
Harding knew the risks. “It would take three years to build a rescue sub,” he told CJI. (Their submersible was equipped with emergency supplies of oxygen, food and water to last four days). It was on another submersible – Titan operated by expedition company OceanGate – that Harding lost his life with four other companions on June 18th, 2023. The vessel imploded during a dive to view the wreck of the RMS Titanic in the North Atlantic, off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
Cheetahs to India
There were many other adventures. Not least, last summer leading the reintroduction of cheetahs from Namibia to India and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s tallest peak, located in Tanzania.
A quintessential English gentleman-explorer (and an astute business leader), born in other ages, Harding would have sailed the world with 16th century adventurer Sir Francis Drake. Or probed the American West with 19th century explorers Lewis and Clark.
Despite all his adventures, the smashed world records and his business success, Hamish Livingston Harding never lost his sense of wonder at the beauty of Earth. We will leave the last words to him, from last year – recalling the view from the New Shepard 4 space rocket as it soared 66 miles above the planet.
“Borderless, beautiful and fragile – Earth amid the complete blackness above, which was a clear definition of space, as I experienced it. We currently only have one home for all of us and it is not invincible. The blue atmospheric layer of 100,000 feet or so is notably thin when seen on the horizon.”
Hamish Harding spoke regularly at CJI conferences.
Hamish Harding recognition
- Living Legends of Aviation induction. 2022
- The Explorers Club. Board of trustees
- Guinness World Record for fastest circumnavigation via both Poles by aeroplane
- Guinness World Record for longest duration at full ocean depth by a crewed vessel
- Guinness World Record for longest distance traversed at full ocean depth by a crewed vessel.
Hamish Harding and Aoife O’Sullivan, partner, The Air Law Firm at our CJI London conference in February 2023.
