When Barnes Wallis and Nevil Norway (aka Nevil Shute) were tinkering with designs for passenger airships at Vickers, Short Brothers had another vision for inter-continental travel.
The Short brothers had started at the end of the 19th century designing balloons filled with coal gas but they kept their eyes open and were prepared to adapt, in marked contrast to my family. The Gilbeys operated stage coaches between Cambridge and London, cornering that market with the best horses and staging posts. When the railways arrived they knew it was just a fad and that stage coaches would prevail. Fortunately an enterprising younger son went to Bristol and started importing French wines. But I digress.
When the Wright Brothers demonstrated their flying machine Oswald said to Eustace “This is the finish of ballooning: we must begin building aeroplanes at once”. I don’t expect he really used those words but Barnes who, with James, has recorded in some detail the history of Short Brothers since 1900 says so. So Short Brothers went on to become the first company in the world to manufacture aircraft and came to specialise in flying boats. (Their first commission was to build a glider for Charles Rolls.)
By the outbreak of World War I Shorts were already building a variety of aircraft but production really started to expand during the war, including two types of flying boat. When the war ended some fifty of these were being built at Rochester. Developing these aircraft was expensive but, as usual, the tax payer came to the rescue and, for once, the investment paid off. Short Brothers ‘planes were vital in defending Britain in the Second World War. However, a spin off was the Empire, a four engine flying boat designed specifically to provide an air service from Britain to South Africa, Singapore and Australia and operated by Imperial Airlines. It carried passengers and mail. The latter was where the money was made. Of course cheaper, faster jet airliners able to take more passengers supplanted flying boats and today only a few examples survive in museums.
I would love to take a flying boat. Imagine a five day journey to South Africa hopping down the east coast of Africa – so much more interesting than the Orient Express. Until then I am enjoying reading Graham Coster’s book.
https://youtu.be/NTM3j9RYK4g?si=Ukv-X2yo3EtTMia7
My mother, a Wren at the time, was flown home in a seaplane, from the US in early May 1945, to marry the man who was to become my father, who was on leave from Burma at the time. She was based in New York and Washington and flew from Baltimore to Gander in Newfoundland and on to Poole Harbour. Being the only woman on board she was granted the Bridal Suite in splendid isolation. Other passengers, including Yehudi Menuhin, and men she assumed were spies, didn’t get a look in. Happily married in Gosforth in Newcastle a few short days later before her new husband went back to Burma. An exciting life, war or not.
My father Edward on 30th July 1945 was told to report to Imperial
Airways at Airways House, Victoria at 1600 hours, with his allowed
kit. He was too unwell fly by Sunderland Flying Boat to Colombo in
what was then Ceylon. He described it as an enchanting journey.
Landing & taking off from water as waves rushed past the portholes.
They took off from Poole Harbour early on 1st August, landed at Augusta, Sicily midday to refuel, then along the Med & landed on
the Nile at Cairo, where they spent the night on an allotted house
boat after visiting his old haunts at Groppi’s & the Gezira Club. The
next day they flew to Bahrain & after a night there flew to Lake Habbanyia which had been an RAF base since World War 1. & they
reached Karachi on the evening of the 4th. On the evening of the
5th all RAF aircraft were grounded. & the next day Hiroshima was
bombed. After that it was all change.
The American diplomat George Kennan wrote of travel by “Pan American Clipper”, Boeing seaplanes, from Lisbon to New York:
“The trip took five days and nights. The crew was changed three times, but the same little group of passengers sat there day and night, getting off every few hours at refueling stops. The temperature at these stops varied wildly–in winter as much as one hundred degrees between certain of the African and South American stops and New York. I made the journey twice; and I felt each time, at the end of it, as I imagine one might feel after some sort of five-day debauch: unnerved, overtired, jittery, not myself.”