Britain's Captain Richard Barstow Howey, 29-year-old, died in an accident in the Boulogne-sur-Mer hillclimb in northern France, on the morning of Thursday, 26 August 1926, the opening event of a three-day racing meeting. Actually a large number of spectators were lining the race course, located in Baincthun, a small town near at Boulogne-sur-Mer, department of Pas-de-Calais.
About 12h25, on the second bend of the hillclimb, the eight-cylinder 5-litre Indianapolis Ballot driven by Howey touched the side of a parked small car belonging to a spectator. The racing car lurched at an appalling speed and crashed into the middle of the crowd watching the race by the side of the road. Then the out of control Ballot smashed into a large tree and broke into an unrecognisable mass, being Howey thrown out of the car and killed almost instantly.
The result of the accident was tragic; one spectator, Louis Pieters, a 50-year-old building contractor from Paris, was pronounced dead at the scene, about ten minutes after the crash. Several others sustained severe injuries, including Mr. Duboille, 50, a Parisian friend of Pieters, who was taken to the Hôpital de Saint-Louis in Boulogne, in critical condition. A gendarme named Gaston Guillez of the Calais Brigade, and a young man named Emile Dubuisson from Boulogne, who received serious leg injuries, were also taken to the same hospital. Many others were bruised.
After the accident that resulted in the deaths of two men, the hillclimb was stopped and a second 0.5-kilometer hillclimb that had to be raced in the afternoon in the nearby suburb of St. Martin, was canceled. Henry Segrave in the Hush-Hush Sunbeam and Parry Thomas in his Leyland-Thomas who were scheduled to start after Howey at one minute intervals in the hillclimb, were stopped at the starting line. Owing to this tragic accident several other British drivers abandoned the event, including Tommy Thistlethwayte at the wheel of a Bentley 3L "Super Sport".
R.I.P
