pa was ringed by pine trees, not guardrail, when
race leader Dick Seaman crashed at 130mph. Some
things don’t change over 80 years. It may have
been June and high summer, but Spa was raining.
The circuit was soaked and treacherous.
His Mercedes W154 drifted too wide on the
fast Clubhouse corner, a left-hander just before
La Source hairpin (near what is now the Bus Stop
chicane). An outside wheel clipped the slippery
grass. The Mercedes spun, its left rear wheel hit a
stout pine tree, then its right flank hit another tree, hard.
Seaman’s right arm was broken and the 26-year-old Englishman, who
wasn’t wearing a helmet, was knocked unconscious. The immense impact
broke the tubular-frame chassis as the car folded around the tree. More
seriously, a hose linking the two fuel tanks (one in the tail, the other a
saddle tank above the driver’s knees) sheared. The W154 was a thirsty car,
averaging just over 2mpg in a race. It carried 88 gallons of alcohol fuel
which now doused Seaman’s legs, feet and lap. As the fuel spilled over the
hot exhaust pipe, the car burst into flames.
No marshals were nearby. Instead, a spectating soldier from the First
Belgian Lancers was first to reach Seaman. He tried valiantly to drag the
unconscious Englishman from the burning car.
Two marshals then arrived, their hand-pumped fire extinguishers feeble
against the flames. Two Mercedes mechanics dashed from the nearby pits
to help, jumping wire fences and running through the woods.
Eventually, Seaman was dragged free. He was alive but horribly burned,
his cotton overalls incinerated. Such was the rudimentary standard of the
emergency services, he was carried to a nearby home rather than a well-
equipped medical centre. From there, an ambulance eventually took him
to the Croix Rouge hospital in Spa.
Now fully conscious but in terrible pain, Britain’s greatest pre-war racing
driver apologised to his new wife Erica – daughter of the co-founder and
president of BMW – that he would be unable to take her to the cinema that
night, as planned.
He then apologised to Mercedes-Benz’s Anglo-German technical direc-
tor Rudolf Uhlenhaut, designer of the W154. ‘I was going too fast for the
conditions. It was entirely my own fault. I am sorry.’
Just before midnight, on 25 June 1939, Richard John Beattie-Seaman- known to family, friends and fans simply as Dick, and to the Mercedes
management informally as Der Engländer – died.
Hitler sent a six-foot-high wreath of white lilies to the funeral, at a
church near the family home in Ennismore Gardens in Knightsbridge. Two
months later, he invaded Poland. ⊲
120 CARMAGAZINE.CO.UK | MAY 2019S
125 years of Mercedes motorsportDick
Seaman,
1913-1939