PUTNAM AND COMPANY LTD

Aeronautical Books

H. F. King

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ETER LEWISritish Aircraft, ,809-'9'4he British Fighter since 1912

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)HN STROUDnnals of British and CommonwealthAir Transport, 1919-60 676 pp 365 photos 8 maps 12.95

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Ie Havilland Aircraft since 19 I 5vro Aircraft since 1908

'ETER W. BROOKS'he Modern Airliner'he World's Airliners

•. R. DUVALritish Flying-Boats '909-'952

Putnam's aeronautical series, under the general editorship of Mr John:troud, deserves' commendation for the wide range of material included,he high standard of accuracy achieved, and the fine quality of book pro­uetion. J Financial Times

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Nothing could epitomize the theme of this book to better advantage than the photograph above, showing the 1911 Monte CarloMotor Boat Exhibition. Like some amoeba at the very centre is the amazing device which Henri Fabre persuaded to becomethe first marine aircraft to fly. It was regarded, for the purposes of the occasion depicted, both as a motor boat and as an aircraft.

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© H. F. King 1966Printed and bound in Great Britain for

Putnam and Company Ltd42 Great Russell Street, London, w C I

by Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press) Ltd,Bungay, Suffolk

Set in Monotype PlantinPublished in the U.S.A. in 1966 by

Aero Publishers Inc329 Aviation Road, Fallbrook, California

Library of Congress Catalog Card number 66-20105

'We should then be deriving our boat from a betterarchitect than man . . .'

.Sir George Cayley, I809

'The method of procedure in this case is to floatthe machine on the water, drive the engine for all itis worth, put the horizontal rudder in the liftingposition, and then it either flies or it does not ...'

Lawrence Hargrave, I902

'The object of interest was the hydroplane whichWilbur and Orville Wright, inventors of the airship,were tampering with ...'

Dayton Daily News, March 2I, I907

'... like a fine bird, between water and sky in thechanging lights.'

Mr E. W. Wakefield, I9II

CONTENTS

Foreword

Lighter than Air

Flying over Water

Flying from Water

Flying in Water

Winged Hulls

Hydrofoil Boats

Planing Boats

Air Lubrication

Air Cushions

Vista

Index

IX

II

13

19

41

44

5°

65

73

79

88

89

FOREWORD

HAVING LONG been fascinated by the affinities existing between air andwater, and the craft that move in them, and with air-cushion vehicles andhydrofoils now heightening my interest, I thought it worth inquiring into therelationships between the two elements as influencing marine and aeromarinepractice.

This book emerged, and although it deals with what is past, its content iseffectively new, having lain unnoticed or unheeded while man fervidly strove

( to mount as an eagle before scudding along as a flying fish.I shared with many others a deep regret at the secession of the flying boat.

Something, I felt, was amiss or unexplained; and having always envisionedsome species of craft that would rise from the water and proceed through theair at the lower levels, I was strengthened in that belief. Today there is agrowing probability that in one form or another the marine 'aircraft' willreturn. Whether its appellation will be 'dynamic interface vehicle', 'surface­effect ship', 'winged hull', 'aerodynamic boat' or 'hovership' is not for thepresent important.

As for this book, it deals with nothing later than 1914, and I hope it willbring a recurrent tingle of incredulity to all whose blood is stirred by marineaircraft, hydroplanes and hydrofoils, air-cushion craft - all the unfamiliar andinter-related forms of rapid over-water transport that in this sixth decade ofthe twentieth century now enter our lives from the past.

London1966

H.F.K.

r

LIGHTER THAN AIR

IN A BOOK wherein we set out to rescue from oblivion some of the mostcurious heavier-than-air devices ever constructed it comes as the first surpriseto find that the natural beginning was man's first ascent in a balloon, onNovember 21, 1783.

After witnessing this event Benjamin Franklin found himse1fpondering thepossibilities ofthe new-found means oflocomotion to secure 'release from thewheel' - to use the phrase of Christopher Cockerell, whose 'Hovercraft'brought this to pass over a century and a half later.

Writing to the Royal Society, Franklin observed:'Some think Progressive Motion on the Earth may be advanc'd by it, and

that a Running Footman or a Horse slung and suspended under such a Globeso as to have no more of Weight pressing the earth with their Feet thanperhaps 8 or 10 pounds, might with a fair Wind run in a straight Line acrossCountries as fast as the Wind, and over Hedges, Ditches & even Waters.'

The idea of 'floating on air', envisioned in Franklin's letter, was againpropounded by an unknown philosopher during the nineteenth century.While this sage did not hold that man could ever fly as high, or as fast, or inany degree as easily, as a bird, he nevertheless ventured the opinion that hemight fly 'somewhat like one'. 'What,' he asked, 'is to prevent a man makingtwo balloons, flattish, and in the form of wings, which, instead of flying awaywith him ... should be so proportioned to his size and weight as that theywould not do more than raise him an inch or so off the ground, and so keephim stotting and bobbing lightly about.... Having attained this position of,so to speak, readiness to fly, there is nothing to prevent him from propellinghimself by means of fans... .'

Yet, as with heavier-than-air craft, so with lighter-than-air, man's ambitionto soar to the heights was compulsive. Only in the sport of balloon jumpingwere human beings to be observed stotting and bobbing lightly about.

I make a single exception - a very curious one, and not strictly 'lighter-thanair', though obviously stemming from ballooning practice. The followingextract from the Scientific American of December 31, 1904, together with thephotograph, tell their own remarkable and sorrowful tale.

'It may take time and the efforts of others,' the American journal reflected,'to demonstrate whether or no Peter Nissen has left anything of scientificvalue in the ideas he entertained of travelling over land and water in a balloon­shaped apparatus such as that in which he lost his life in an attempt to crossLake Michigan on November 29 last. Despite his failure to survive the

II

November 29, 19°3: Peter Nissen setting out" in his balloon-like c:ontrivance to crossLake Michigan. He lost his life.

journey, it is evident that an apparatus such as he des1gned will roll with thewind over land, water or ice, but it is too early in the history of the device todetermine in what field it might prove serviceable or useful. Man has alreadydevised and constructed so many things in which he may travel, that thisinfant of Nissen's has not yet found its place.'

Yet a vehicle that will traverse land, water or ice has today found a place ­the air-cushion vehicle. And Nissen's device was indeed an 'A.C.V.' - of akind.

12

FLYING OVER WATER

THAT IT would be safer to attempt to fly over water than over land was thebelief of some of the earliest visionaries and experimenters. Leonardo daVinci not only suggested the testing of a flying machine over a lake but advisedon safety equipment also. 'You should carry,' he said, 'a long wineskin as agirdle, so that in case you fall you will not be drowned.'

The first practical expression of this aquatic philosophy came in the 1740s,when a French marquis attempted to glide across the Seine. An inscriptionon an early print relates:

'The Marquis de Bacqueville had announced that he would cross theSeine with some wings of his own invention. On the appointed day he threwhimself from the terrace of his mansion on the Quai des Theatins. His flightwas at first fairly happy, but over the middle ofthe Seine got into difficulties,and the Marquis, falling on to a boat, broke his thigh.'

Some sixty years after the marquis' attempted crossing of the Seine theFrench general Resnier de Joue retired to his birthplace at Angouleme. Theyear was 1801 and he was 72 years of age; yet he set about constructing agliding apparatus which he attached to his person as a kind ofcorset. Launch­ing himself from a rampart 80 metres above the River Charente, he de­scended to the surface of the river without accident, and was rescued by aboatman.

In a later venture he broke a leg by falling in a field.Over a hundred years after, as we shall see, the Seine was the river from

which the first water take-off was effected; and in 1911 it was to receive thefirst amphibious aircraft on its maiden water alighting.

The French seem to have had a natural predilection for associating air andwater. At the International Conference on Aerial Navigation held in Chicagoin 1893 L. P. Mouillard submitted a paper describing 'a method of experi­menting for a soaring apparatus which I have long contemplated, and whichI most certainly would have carried out myself if the failure of my healthhad not left me too crippled to perform the necessary manoeuvres .. .' Heexplained: 'The method is not new.... It was apparently employed byDante * in his exploits over Lake Trasimene, for it simply consists in carryingon the experiments over a water-bed.... It will be necessary to make thefirst experiments in the summer, when the water is warm, for the first attemptsto soar will surely result in a succession of duckings and it will be best that

* This Dante (or Danti) experimented over Lake Trasimene (or Trasimeno) beforethe turn of the fifteenth century. Shades of Leonardo.

r

When launched in 1903 from a houseboat on the River Potomac, Samuel PierpontLangley's Aerodrome came to grief. Extensively modified, and fitted with floats, it was

made to fly by Glenn Curtiss in 1914, as seen here.

,they should not be disagreeable.... The body of the man and the aeroplane[sic] should both be so arranged as to surely float.'

Why the distinguished Mouillard paid no homage to his compatriots whoseventures were recorded earlier in this chapter I do not know.

Decades passed, but the same ideas remained. Expounding his ownphilosophy to members of the Sydney Engineering Association who visitedhis laboratory in May 1902, Lawrence Hargrave said:

'The first thing to provide for is safety: it is worse than useless to take anyrisks: a man may spend years getting to the trials stage, and then break hisneck by being too adventurous. The method of procedure in this case is tofloat the machine on the water, drive the engine for all it is worth, put thehorizontal rudder in the lifting position, and then it either flies or it doesnot... .'

It is significant also that the tests of Professor Samuel Pierpont Langley's

Major B. Baden-Powell making an over-water glide at the Crystal Palace during 190 4.Existing water chutes were found to be unsuitable, and a special staging was erected.

historic and successful models (1896) and likewise his heartbreaking full-scaleattempts with the Aerodrome of 1903 were made over water - from a house­boat on the River Potomac. And when in 1914, Glenn Curtiss eventuallysucceeded in flying the reconstructed and much modified 1903 machine, hefitted floats.

During 1904 Major B. Baden-Powell, assisted by Mr J. T. C. MooreBrabazon, was making over-water glides at the Crystal Palace. Concerningthese experiments he wrote: .

'It is ... manifest that before we can build a proper airship we must makea series of trials with some apparatus progressing through the air and carryingan ae~onaut to direct its course. Several experimenters have tried glidingmachines, which have been designed either to soar down the face of a hill inthe teeth of a wind, or to be drawn along by a string. But in addition to otherdrawbacks, these systems have the serious objection of being very dangerousto the operator. Already two ofthe principal experimenters in the line havelost their lives through some small deficiency in their apparatus, and if triedover land there is always the danger that any small mishap may result inthe machine losing its balance and precipitating its operator to the ground.Such machines, at all events as hitherto designed, cannot well be tried overwater for obvious reasons....

'One of the simplest means of giving an initial speed to any body is to causeit to run down an inclined track and to shoot off into the air at the bottom.If means are adopted to prevent the machine from leaving the track before itgets to the bottom, and if it is then projected over a sheet of water, there canbe but little chance of a serious accident.

'I therefore decided to erect such a track, and conduct a series of experi­ments. Existing "water-chutes" at once suggested themselves as ready-madetracks, but, after examining several, and even making experiments withaeroplanes on them, I came to the conclusion that such were not suitable forthe purpose....

'By the courtesy of the Management of the Crystal Palace, the magnificentgrounds of that institution have been placed at my disposal. ... Here I havehad a large staging erected.'

I illustrate one of the experiments.During 1907 Dr Alexander Graham Bell's immense 'tetrahedral kite' the

Cygnet (it had 3,393 cells), was positioned in the middle of a lake and r;isedagainst the wind by towing behind a boat.

There are very strong links here with Glenn Curtiss, the greatest name inthe development of marine aircraft; for Dr Bell was founder of the AerialExperiment Ass?ciation, of which Curtiss became 'director of experiments';and the Red Wmg, the first powered aircraft produced by the Associationwas initially flown (March 12, 1908) from the frozen surface of Lake Keuka~It had a sleigh undercarriage - of a type proposed by Wilhelm Kress in theearly 1890s. Lake Keuka was to become the scene of much of Curtiss' earlywork on floatplanes and flying boats.

Another who felt the aqueous instinct was Ernest Archdeacon, who

15

r

The Aerial Experiment Association's Red Wing, with its ski-runner undercarriage. Itwas first flown, from the frozen surface of Lake Keuka, on March 12, 1908.

sponsored Gabriel Voisin's early experiments. Gabriel relates: 'Archdeacon,who had been disturbed by the accident at Issy-Ies-Moulineux, suggested tome some trials over the Seine. I was a good swimmer and, according to theideas of my rich patron, water was the ideal shock absorber if there were an 'accident.'

The outcome was the first take-off from water, as already mentioned and aslater described.

In a chapter on 'winged hulls' I shall allude to yet another Frenchman,Monsieur Leon Levavasseur, whose 1906 hydroplane was considered byCaptain Ferber (one of the most respected French aviation pioneers) to becapable of rising from the water if 'fitted with aeroplanes and an aerial screw'.And from a boat that might fly to an aeroplane that might float in emergencywas an early departure by Levavasseur.

Colonel Harry Delacombe has related how this aeroplane - the Antoinettemonoplane, with its thick watertight wings and long boat-shaped body - cameto demonstrate its buoyancy in dramatic and historic circumstances. He wasgiving an eye-witness account of Hubert Latham's attempt to win the £1,000

prize offered by the Daily Mail for the first cross-Channel flight - on July19, 1909. Having viewed through a telescope the start from Sangatte andobserved Latham's passage over the tug in which he was embarked, he laterrecorded:

'Bad luck dogged this plucky pioneer, for after he had travelled some sevenor eight miles his motor suddenly stopped and he was obliged to descend tothe water by a series of long glides. His machine eventually took the sea withscarcely a splash, and floated on the surface like a great seagull with outstret­ched wings until we arrived near him in the tug.

'His customary sang-froid had not deserted him for a moment, for he satin the canoe-like body of his machine placidly smoking... :

Among the earliest and most fervent of British 'water fliers' was Mr E. W.Wakefield, who, in 19II, formed the Lakes Flying Company at Cockshott,Windermere, Westmorland. A letter he sent to Flight early in 1912 has itsown story to tell:

'... this new invasion of the charms of Windermere .. .' (Canon Rawnsley in a letterto The Times) - the Waterbird of Mr E. Wakefield, who stoutly rebuffed the Canon.

'~anon Rawnsl~y has written to The Times and several other papers apoe.tIc aP1?eal cal.lmg ?n all lovers of the English Lakes to rise and protestagamst this new mvaSlOn of the charms of Windermere.... He does not tellyou ofthe country's need for more trained flying men, and of better and morediverse machines; or how the United States Navy have adopted hydro­aeroplanes, or how Germany and Holland are inquiring all about the newmachine which he is so anxious to wipe off Windermere. He does not tellyou that almost everyone who has seen it flying agrees that it adds to thegreat natural beauty, like a fine bird, between water and sky in the changing

. lights: .

The.aircraft which inspired this impassioned protest was the Waterbird,a ~urtIss-type floatplane built by A. V. Roe. It was initially flown fromWmdermere on November 25, 1911 - only one week after the first Britishtake-off from water by Cdr Oliver Schwann.

As late as 19.12 a corres1?ondent of The Aero was extolling the prudence, as. ,,:ell as the delIghts, of flymg low over water. 'Except to obtain an extendedVIew,' ~e. said, 'there is no necessity to fly high, for the sensation of flight is~ore VIVId when within twenty or thirty feet ... and at the lower level it isdIfficult to imagine any actual breakage which could entail serious results... :

Yet, far from echoing these beliefs, Gustav Hamel and C. C. Turnerdeclared in 1914 : 'Nor are the dangers of hydro-aeroplaning less than those ofoverland flying ... in a big fall the damage is just as great, and there is somedanger also of being held under water if the machine is submerged or over­turned.'

This was e~ident1y true of the 'box-kite' type ofbiplane, as the actor/airmanRobert Lorrame was to find on the first flight from England to Ireland. After

B 17

a terrifying crossing of the Irish Sea, during which his engine stopped ~vetimes, he finally ditched a hundred yards from .lan~, finding ~imself strugglmgunder water, with 'a medley of hampering WIres around hIm. Yet he freedhimself and made the shore.

The argument thereafter became a~ academic one; but I hope to ~ave shownthat in the dawn of flight there was, m another of Mr. Wakefield s rapturousphrases concerning flight from water, 'something that beckoned .. .'.

18

FLYING FROM WATER

ONE OF the least forgivable perpetuations by aeronautical writers during thepast half-century is the idea that marine aircraft had their origins when landaeroplanes were given floats or hulls instead of wheels. The fact is thatOctave Chanute saw a water-borne aircraft which he considered to be capableofflight ifgiven more power (and told Wilbur Wright as much) well before the'tniracle at Kitty Hawk'.

But first I must record the earliest known serious proposal for a heavier­than-air marine aircraft. This was patented by Alphonse Penaud in 1876 andwas a true amphibian, having retractable wheels as well as wing-tip floats.

The world's first powered marine aircraft: Wilhelm Kress' twin-hulled tandemtriplane, of which Chanute told Wilbur Wright: ' ... it seems to me that it may

actually fly if a motor lighter than the present one can be obtained.'

The first powered marine flying machine (and incidentally the first full­size aircraft to have a petrol engine) to be brought to the point of testing wasWilhelm Kress' flying boat (Chanute's term). It had two aluminium floatsor hulls to which three wings were attached in tandem.

Alas for the persevering Kress, who had been experimenting with aerialdevices since 1877 and had waited something like two years to test his flyingbO:,lt, as the craft was beginning to lift from the water on a trial during 1901he saw an obstruction ahead. He slackened speed and attempted to turn; butthe machine capsized.

Still he worked on, and in a letter from Vienna, dated March 13, 1903,we find Chanute advising Wilbur Wright:

'Today I spent with Wm. Kress, who experimented with a flying boat lastyear. You may remember that pictures of it were published at the time, andthat it came to grief; turned over and surtk [sic] upon the first trial. It has

19

since been rebuilt.... It seems to me to possess some excellent points inconstruction, and that it may actually fly if a motor lighter than the presentone can 'be obtained. The latter is a Daimler weighing some 30 lbs. perH.P... .'

Poor Kress....One of my greatest difficulties has been that of isolating the first instances

of particular arrangements of floats and hulls. Penaud, as I have said, pro­posed an out-and-out flying boat, with central hull and lateral floats; but whatof the twin-hull arrangement, the floatplane with two main floats and a tail­float, and so on?

As early as 1897, it appears, Gallaudet (whose company later constructedseaplanes for the U.S. Navy) was experimenting with twin-float gliders, andthree other schemes seem to have been the proposals, or actual productions, ofLawrence Hargrave. We must note (I cite an article in the January 1964 issueof the Australian journal Aircraft) that Hargrave was formerly working withthe Australian Steam Navigation Company, 'where, in the drawing office andworkshops, he learnt much that was to be useful to him in his future career'.

Hargrave's second design for a full-scale powered aircraft was intended tooperate from water on four floats of light wood or papier mache. His fourthdesign displayed the classic twin-float plus tailfloat arrangement, which wassubsequently changed (1903) to the almost equally familiar scheme of centralfloat plus outboard floats. Of this steam-driven 'catamaran', the wings for

A twin-float glider constructed by the American Gallaudet in 1897. Gllllaudet'scompany was eventually to build seaplanes for the U.S. NavY.

20

Lawrence Hargrave's 'steam catamaran' of 1903. The wings were not built becauseHargrave was uncertain about engine performance. .

which were never built, Hargrave observed philosophically, 'My new appara­tus is merely a steamer ifit does not lift out of the water, and a flying machineif it does.'

The use of what are known today as hydrofoil surfaces to lift an aircraftfrom the water was proposed by Professor Enrico Forlanini of Milan in apatent for which he applied early in 1905. He declared:

'My i~vention has reference to ships or vessels of that kind which, insteadofplowing their way through the water, skim over the surface, thereby offeringmuch less resistance and as a consequence are capable of attaining very muchhigher speeds.

'Heretofore many attempts to produce an efficient apparatus of the hydro­pla~e.type have been made, the majority of them based upon the phenomenonexhibIted when a flat object, such as a stone for example, is thrown in such amanner as to glide over the surface of the water, rather than that of obtaininga true hydraulic flight. To this end it has been usual to make use of hydro­planes arranged, for example, in such a manner as wholly or partially to liftthe vessel out of contact with the surface of the water when said vessel ispropelled.

'The object of my invention is so to improve such devices that theirefficiency is gfeatly increased, and one of the essential features ... is that aboat constructed in accordance therewith will be capable not only of skim­ming over the surface of the water, but may be also used as a flying machine ofthe ~eroplane type, and I have succeeded in constructing an apparatus whichhas III practice given most satisfactory results.'

The last claim notwithstanding, Forlanini was unable to achieve aerial21

flight, and even in the development ofhis waterborne hydrofoil craft, as laterdescribed, he was handicapped by his lack of a satisfactory engine.

NeveJ;theless, that same year - 1905 - saw the first manned (though un­powered) flight from water, by Gabriel Voisin on June 6. His craft was afloat-mounted glider, towed behind the racing motor boat La Rapiere, andthe trial was conducted over the Seine.

The first manned flight from water (June 6, 1905) was made from the Seine by GabrielVoisin in this float-mounted box-kite glider, towed by a racing motor launch.

Gabriel tells the story in his book Mes dix mille cerfs volants (1961), trans­lated by Oliver Stewart and published by Putnam in England in 1963 withthe title Men, Women and 10,000 Kites. Thus Gabriel:. 'Now, fifty-five years later, as I write these lines, I hear once more thelapping of the water against the sides of the floats.... I had the cont~olsready. I waited for a time and then I applied elevator. My lovely ghderinstantly left the water.

'In a few seconds I was as high as the tops of the poplars along the quay. Iwent along without oscillation either in pitch or roll. We were approachingthe Sevres bridge. La Rapiere slowed and I alighted on the water withoutincident....

'I had flown from the Billancourt bridge to the Sevres bridge at an altitudeof fifty to sixty-six feet.'

Gabriel made three flights above the Seine that day. One was of600 metres;the others of 100 metres and 30 metres. His historic float-glider was ofHargrave box-kite type (poetic justice, for Hargrave came near to being thefirst man to achieve flight from water) and was mounted on two floats con­structed to his own designs.

September of the same year (1905) saw similar experiments in progress atSt Helens, Isle of Wight, by Dr F. A. Barton and F. L. Rawson. I quote someobservations made in later years by Dr Barton himself concerning the photo­graph (which is reproduced) showing 'one of the hydro-aeroplanes which I,in conjunction with Mr F. L. Rawson, made and experimented with at theIsle of Wight'. Dr Barton described the craft as having a 'triangular duct'between 'dihedral planes', adding:

22

A little-known British experiment of 19°5: the water-borne aircraft built by Dr F. A.Barton and Mr F. L. Rawson at St Helens, Isle of Wight. It was fitted with a 'flying jib'.

'The machine rested on the water on light pontoons 26 ft. long, and weigh­ing only 20 lb. each, and in addition to the dihedral wings, had on each sidetwo main horizontal planes in front and two at the rear, all moveable....

'Two vertical fixed planes and a small flying jib were placed in the bows toassist the action of the rudder in the stern.'

How vividly that 'flying jib' epitomizes 'air and water'.'The engine and 7 ft. propeller,' he went on, 'was arranged for on the

steering deck, which was low down on the pontoons just behind the mainplanes. .

'The photo. shows the machine just being lifted out of the water after atrial on the open sea on September 26th, 1905.'

Towing tests behind a launch were unsuccessful, and the intended 35-h.P.engine was never installed.

Three days after the float-glider trials over the Seine, Gabriel Voisin and.Lo:us Bleriot met by chance and Bleriot suggested going into partnership.ThIS was agreed; and so largely to Bleriot's ideas (and much to Gabriel'salarm) a powered aircraft was built, the essential features of which were twoellipsoidal wing cellules arranged in tandem. Gabriel relates a tale ofdoubt andwoe, the last indignity being the necessity of giving up the floats, which heknew so well, and of replacing them 'with "skids" equipped with buoyancybags'.

The initial test took place in 1906, on Lake Enghien. 'It was disastrous,'

23

'Disastrous' was Gabriel Voisin's description of trials in 1906 with this BleriotfVoisincontrivance, having ellipsoidal wing cellules. It is seen on Lake Enghien.

says Gabriel; so after further trials and errors, and by common consent, theidea of trials from water was given up.

I briefly introduce at this point a water-borne wing-flapper and a marinehelicopter. The flapper was the American Gammeter Orthopter of 1907,which had (or certainly was to have had) canvas-covered rubber floats, be­cause the inventor 'intended to experiment over water'. The helicopter wasfirst envisaged in 1905 by E. H. Mumford and J. Pollock Brown, who were incharge of tank-testing for William Denny & Brothers at Dumbarton. Twomachines were built. The first made a successful ascent - from the grounsi ­in 1912, and the second is said by Mr Peter Lewis, in his book British AircraftI809-I9I4, to have shown considerable promise in its tests on the Clydebefore a storm wrecked it in 1914.

Reverting to the development of 'conventional' marine aircraft, we areconfronted with some remarkably unconventional engineering, and in illus­trious company, for during 1907 the Wright brothers were themselvesoccupied with the problem of flying an aeroplane off the water, using not onlyfloats but hydrofoils also. The story was later told in a letter from Orvilleto Commander Holden C. Richardson. Thus:

'In 1906 after our Government and some of the European governmentshad shown little inclination to take our invention seriously we thought a wayto impress them of its importance would be to make a flight over the paradeof battleships to be held at the Jamestown Exhibition in 1907. At that timewe contemplated assembling a new machine at our old camp at Kitty Hawk,flying it from there to Jamestown, and after taking an unexpected part in theparade, flying it back.... As such a project could not be carried out safelyin a single flight we decided to put hydroplanes and floats on the machineso that starts and landings could be made from the water.

'As soon as the weather permitted in 1907 we began experiments with thehydroplane on the Miami River at Dayton.... The cambered steel hydro­planes, located a few inches beneath the forward and rear ends of the floats,

24

and extending between them, do not show in the picture [in the DaytonHerald of March 21, 1907] as they are under water.... In these tests on theriver we used the motor, transmission and propellers from our 1905 aero­plane.... That motor when functioning properly developed a little over 20horsepower. But the experiments ... terminated before we succeeded ingetting more than two thirds of that power.

'With 14 horsepower the apparatus quickly raised until only the bottom ofthe floats dragged on the water. But we failed with this power to get thefront edges of the planes entirely out of water and thus let the planes skim ontheir rear edges as we had expected. Just as the front edges reached thesurface the planes seemed to lose a part of their lift with a consequent sinkingback into the water. This was due to the loss of the lift on the upper sidewhen the water ceased to flow over the top, but we did not understand thecause of it at the time....

'Immediately following these experiments negotiations with a foreignsyndicate called us to Europe, so that the project of flying at Jamestown hadto be given up.'

I present with particular relish a contemporary report of the trials whichappeared in the Dayton Daily News:

'The balustrades of the Third Street Bridge were lined Thursday morningwith curious spectators.... The object of interest was the hydroplane whichWilbur and Orville Wright, inventors of the airship, were tampering with inpreparation for its initial experimental run.

'Although the inventors, who are being branded as geniuses, would notstate the exact purpose of the hydroplane it was intimated that it is to be usedin connection with their airship....

Almost unbelievable - although this photograph, jointly with reports in the text, beartestimony - is the fact that the Wright brothers were trying out hydrofoils for their

aircraft as early as 1907. The scene is the Miami River, Dayton, Ohio.

25

Although the Wrights were unable to appear at the Jamestown Exposition of 1907,Mr Israel Ludlow was there with this strange device. It was towed by a torpedo boat.

'The present machine which is uniquely constructed from water boilers,an old gasoline engine and numerous strips of wood and sheet iron, with thewater planes of copper, made its sail down the Miami River amid the en­couraging cheers of the assembled spectators.'

The non-appearance ofthe Wrights at Jamestown must rank as one ofthebigger disappointments of history. Yet an aeromarine craft was presentnevertheless. A multiplane affair on floats, shown in a photograph, this wasconstructed in the Aeronautical Building at Jamestown by ten soldiers placedat the disposal of Mr Israel Ludlow, its originator, by the U.S. Government.Mr Ludlow had previously built a series of gliders, and by 1904 was towingthem behind cars, with Charles Keeney Hamilton, later to become one ofAmerica's best-known airmen, as pilot. At Jamestown Mr Ludlow's remark­able creation was towed by a torpedo boat, but the intended two petrolengines Were apparently never installed and the craft was eventually wrecked.

A powered aircraft resembling Mr Ludlow's was entered, early in 1909, forboth the aeroplane and motor-boat meetings at Monaco. Called an aeroscaphe,and piloted by Monsieur Ravaud, it had a seven-cylinder Gnome and wasabout 25 ft long. There were tWo concentric peopellers aft. This craft neverleft the water and ultimately came to grief.

Seen here on a iand chassis, this 'a~roscaphe' was entered by Roger Ravaud for theaeroplane and motor-boat contests at Monaco in 1909. It came to grief.

26

A remarkable British aeromarine contrivance of 1908/9 was the Humph­reys Waterplane, built at Wivenhoe, Essex. A contemporary description ran:

'Amidships and incorporated in the lower plane is fitted the most originalfeature of this machine in the shape of a kind of coracle hull ofvery thin wood,in which the navigator sits. The reason for this is that Mr Humphreys haselected to start his aeroplane from the surface of the water, thereby eliminatingpractially all the danger attendant upon experimental flights from land in anuntried machine. For a fall from a considerable height need haveno terrorswith water below, and none of the fears of hedges, ditches, telegraph wires anddisturbing air currents due to inequalities in the ground. Further, it ispossible to skid on water, whereas land running gear would break or, at least,prove unresponsive to side influences.'

The Humphreys Waterplane, built at Wivenhoe, Essex, during 1908/9 by Mr JackHumphreys, who is said to have been known locally as 'the mad dentist'.

This could, in fact, have been the first amphibian, for it was intended to be'capable of arising from and alighting on both water and land'.

By late 1908 Glenn Curtiss, in America, was himself at work upon thewater. Experiments were reported in the first issue of Flight, dated January2, 1909, as follows:

'The "June Bug" has now been slightly remodelled and mounted onpontoons.... During some recent tests upon Lake Keuka at Hammondsport,N.Y., the machine, now known as the "Loon", covered 2 miles (I mile withand one against a wind of 5 or 6 miles an hour) at an average speed of 27'06miles per hour, but this was not sufficient to enable the apparatus to complet­ely rise from the water. Further experiments are now being conducted withhydroplane hulls of various types.'

This was over two years before Curtiss finally succeeded in taking off fromwater. His Loon was primitive, but the basic features of flying boats thatwere to follow many years later were discernible in the monoplane built byMajor August von Parseval, 'for approval of the German War Office' and

27

A rare photograph of Glenn Curtiss' Loon (the June Bug on floats), which failed tobecome airborne during tests in 1908.

subjected to 'preliminary trials' during September 1909. It was intended tocarry a crew of three and had a body of tubular steel. The engine was aDaimler of laO h.p.

In England, late in 1909, design work was in progress at the Thames BankWharf Motor Works, Westminster, on a type of monoplane 'hydro-aeroplane'having 'catamaran hydroplane hulls'.

I would give much to see a picture of this craft - if, indeed, it was evercompleted.

Gabriel Voisin provides yet another link in this chapter through hisfriendship with Henri Fabre, the first man to leave the water in a powered'seaplane' (a term coined by Winston Churchill).

'Fabre,' Gabriel recollected, 'who was living in Marseilles, was our friend.

Major August von Parseval was responsible for this flying boat of 1909, amazingly farahead of its time, with its monoplane wing and tractor propellers.

28

He often came to Paris and our discussions were always about flying machines.He was building a hydro-aeroplane - a seaplane, as the type was later called ­close to the Berre lake. It can be seen in the French Musee de l'Air at Cha1ais­Meudon. It is an admirable machine, designed with the greatest care andmade like a masterpiece.'

Another distinction for a predecessor of this astonishing machine is thatit appears to have been, or to have been intended as, the world's first four­engined heavier-than-air craft. An October 1909 report (which also alludesto two floats) bears witness:

'M. Henri Fabre has completed at Marseilles, and hopes to try shortly, anew combination hydro-aeroplane. The machine is of the tandem monoplanetype, and mounted on two air chambers, so that it can start from and, ifnecessary, skim along the surface of the water. It is fitted with four 12-h.p.two-cylinder Anzani motors.'

Having, it seems, tried hydrofoils and abandoned them because they pickedup weeds and other floating debris, Fabre invented a type of float - flat­bottomed, and having a curved upper surface - with which his name wasthereafter to be associated. He arranged three of these under a tail-firstapparatus, one at the forward end and two aft, under the wing. The samedisposition of planing surfaces had been tank-tested by Britain's great navalarchitect William Froude during the early 1870s.

A contemporary description of the Fabre floats ran as follows:'These particular floats are so designed that when the machine is moving

either through the air or on the surface of the water, or with the floats com­pletely submerged, there is always a vertical lift on them due to the speed.When a hydroplane is travelling over a rough sea, if its speed is sufficiently

Close-up of the first powered aircraft to take off from water - Henri Fabre's Gnome­engined creation which was said at the time (1910) to be 'more hydroplane than

aeroplane' .

29

-high and the waves large enough, there will come a moment when the forwardpart will be submerged in a wave into which at that moment the main body isjust entering; that is to say, in spite of the vertical lifting effect due to thebuoyancy of the float, there is also a contrary vertical force acting on its uppersurface, which "'tends to cause such portion to dip, and the whole of the hullto pass under water. When this vertical downward thrust is greater than theupward thrust, a wreck would almost inevitably result, and the aim of thepresent invention is to prevent this.' .

It will have been gathered that Fabre's approach to the problem of gettmgclear of the water was as much marine as otherwise, and it was said of hismachine that it was 'more hydroplane than aeroplane'. It might even besuggested, in our aeromarine context, that it was as much a sailing craft asa hydroplane, for the wings were covered with 'simili-silk', such as was usedfor light boats, and when the craft was on the water this covering could beclewed up to prevent damage by sudden gusts. The general effect was thatof a boat under bare poles. And yet the airframe appeared so heavy, and thefloats so small, that it seemed remarkable that it would float - far less fly.

Mr E. Holt-Thomas sagaciously expressed himself in June 1912 :

'It has always seemed to me that too little attention has been paid to theflying part of the hydro-aeroplane machine, i.e., to the planes of the water­plane. What I mean is this; no matter how good the floats may be, an efficientwaterplane can only be evolved by using an efficient aeroplane. The floatsshould be regarded as a landing chassis and a landing chassis only.... I haveknown Monsieur Fabre for a very long time, and we have often discussed hisearly experiments at Marseilles ... he was quite convinced that he mustevolve an extraordinary machine to get over the holding power of the water;whilst I was convinced, and I think events prove me right, that if he had takena very efficient biplane and attached floats to it, he would have flown success­fully two years ago.'

'Successfully,' of course, was a relative word; but, while paying due atten­tion to the views of Mr Holt-Thomas, I nevertheless affirm that MonsieurFabre had indeed flown successfully two years earlier - that the world's first

Action study of the Fabre machine, with the curious 'lifting' floats almost clear of thesurface.

3°

flight by a powered aircraft from water was, in fact, made by him at Martigueson March 28, 1910, and that he was airborne at a height of about six feet fora distance of some five hundred yards. This historic take-off was MonsieurFabre's first aerial experience of any kind.

Even during the following year, 19II, the Fabre machine continued to beregarded as a phenomenon. I quote from The Yachting World:

April I2 - 'There was an alarming incident at Monaco this morning, M.Fabre, the owner of the aero-hydroplane Goeland, nearly losing his life.Goeland is a novel kind of machine.... It is driven by a Gnome engine, andthe inventor's idea is that, after skimming for a certain distance on the surfaceof the water, the plane should gradually rise up into the air. It has caused oneofthe competitors to remark that he thought of carrying a punt-gun mountedvertically on his craft in case the long-legged monstrosity looked like hoppingover him and securing the prize. [Previously it had been suggested that thecraft would compete as a motor boat, rigged so that it could not fly.]

'Since the weather conditions seemed perfect and the sea was quite smooth,M. Fabre determined on a trial run. The machine crossed the harbour inperfect style, skimming along the surface; nearing the harbour mouth, itrose up into the air to a height ofabout 30 yards, and soared along beautifully,greatly admired by thousands of spectators. As soon as it cleared the harbour,however, and encountered the full force of the wind outside, the machinebecame unmanageable and to the horror of the onlookers was swept alongat a terrific pace towards the rocks and stone walls below the terraces.Fortunately, M. Fabre, with great presence of mind, managed to throw him­self clear of the machine into the sea, and was promptly picked up, none theworse for his startling experience.'

There is now evidence that the pilot on this occasion was Jean Becue.In the application of hydrofoils to aircraft the pre-eminent name is that

of the Italian Guidoni, who began his experiments in 1910. As General A.Guidoni he told the story many years later.

'Having witnessed some of the trials of the Forlanini boat,' he said, 'I wasimpressed with the ingeniousness and the possibilities of this system. Sowhen in 1910 I designed my first seaplane, I put on it the Forlanini type offloats, but soon realised that they were no good for a seaplane. The changefrom one vane to the other gave severe bumps to the machine and producedchanges impossible to control.

'The Crocco system' [I shall have more to say about Crocco in the chapteron hydrofoil boats] 'gave a too small area owing to the size of the floats and,astonishing though it may appear, I did not know at that time of his work. Inmy first test, using a two floats seaplane, I placed the hydroplanes between thefloats; this proved unsatisfactory, because the floats would never get out ofwater, the drag at the getting-off speed being too high. Then I tried theForlanini vanes under the floats, but without success.

'My idea was then to have the hydro area divided in a multiplane with twoor three legs; the vanes would be parallel and with a side inclination, the lowend of each one being lower than the high end of the following vane.

31

-

Fabre floats were adopted for several types of aircraft. This V~isin 'canard' had nofewer than four.

33c

Seen in two elements is the Voisin 'canard' in which Maurice Colliex, during August19II, took off from Issy aerodrome and alighted on the Seine, afterwards making the

return trip. This was the first successful amphibian.

\

I

.,-"'.~

For several years after 1910 the Italian Guidoni was developing schemes for hydrofoilaircraft. Glimpsed here, beneath the floats of one of his Farmans, is a very early

installation of foils.

'This design had the advantage of the Crocco vane, because it gave a gradualvariation ofhydro area when emerging from water, and it had at the same timethe advantage of the Forlanini's, in giving a sufficient hydro area with aconsiderable depth and a reduced width.

, "Provando e riprovando" was my motto, but at the same time I tried toevolve the theory of the jumping due to the vanes....

'The first set of vanes was built of steel plate and were very heavy. I triedwood with success and aluminium, which proved the best. In order to beable to move the vanes along the float, they were mounted on rings of steelplate or aluminium. The planes I used in this first stage of research were anold Farman 1909, F.I, and similar improved machines F.2 and F.3, built atthe Navy Yard. Two monoplanes were also tested.

'Increasing the power and speed of machines, I found the wood vanesinadequate. I tried aluminium sheet vanes and then I standardised a set ofsteel vanes, which proved to be the right sort for any kind of machine, pro­vided the size, thickness and shape were designed according to the power,speed and weight. I used ordinary steel plates, reducing them at the grindingwheel and welding the legs to the surfaces.'

Yet one may search in vain the aeronautical history books of the past halfcentury for any recognition of Guidoni's work. May his own utterances,which I have quoted, save his name from oblivion.

Once again the name of Voisin presents itself, and in yet another tribute toit I record that the world's first successful amphibious heavier-than-air craftwas a Voisin canard biplane. In addition to its wheels this was fitted withthree Fabre floats, and during August 1911, piloted by Maurice Colliex, it

32

took off from Issy on its wheels and alighted on the Seine, afterwards makingthe return journey. The take-off run from water was about zoo yards.

Nor was this a 'one-off' freak, for Gabriel recalls that he delivered to theRussian Government 'eight to ten amphibious "canard" types'; and a Voisincanard 'hydro-aeroplane' was the first marine aircraft delivered to the FrenchNavy (mid-19IZ). It was housed in a special hangar aboard the battleshipFoudre.

As amazingly 'advanced' in design as was Fabre's glorious canard 'ele­mentary' was a contemporary (early 1910) flying boat, having a catamaranhull, rear elevator, variable-incidence wing and a tractor propeller driven by a50-h.P. three-cylinder Anzani. Designed by Monsieur Gabardini, it wasconstructed by MM. Seron and Lavagnau.

The Gabardini flying boat of early 1910, with its catamaran hull, variable-incidencewing, rear elevator and tractor propeller.

More elegant still was the Charpentier flying boat, work upon which issaid to have been in progress at St Malo during 1909. Likewise of catamarantype, this was to have had twin pusher propellers and a gull wing. I have noreason to suppose that it was ever completed.

Truly it seemed that the designer had found as his inspiration some beauti­ful sea bird.

Having failed in 1908 to coax his Loon from the water, Glenn Curtiss wasobliged to proceed with his landplanes; but when he made his famous Albany­New York flight in one ofthese on May 31, 1910, he fitted it with two cylin­drical under-wing floats (removed during the stop at Spuyten Duyvil), anairtight canvas bag, running the length of the strut that connected the frontand rear wheels, and a small hydrofoil. With this equipment he made someflights over Lake Keuka and landed successfully upon the water.

By the end of 1910 Curtiss had become so confident of his ability to getfree of the water that he invited officers of the U.S. Army and Navy to hiscamp at North Island, San Diego. Success came on January z6, 1911, usingtwo floats set in tandem and a forward-mounted six-foot hydrofoil. InFebruary a single Iz-foot scow-shaped pontoon was fitted (before the paintwas dry), and thereafter the machine was frequently and extensively altered,even, at one stage, becoming a triplane. In another phase it had retractablewheels.

In that same year also - 1910 - experiments with a floatplane were pro-

34

Glenn Curtiss first succeeded in leaving the water on January 26, 1911, using thisbiplane. It had tandem-mounted floats and a six-foot hydrofoil. It was later ex­

tensively altered.

ceeding in England. The aircraft was a monoplane designed by Oscar T.Gnosspelius and had Bleriot-type wings. It was first tried with twin floats andlater with a broad single float; but it never became airborne, although asuccessor flew early in 191Z.

The first British powered floatplane to rise from the water was an Avrobiplane owned by Cdr Oliver Schwann and tried at Cavendish Dock, Barrow­ill-Furness, during 191I. Like Fabre, Cdr Schwann had never previouslyflown. The engine was a Green, the power of which was increased by fittingadditional exhaust ports.

I find - to my continuing astonishment - that both air lubrication andhydrofoils were involved in these experiments.

In one installation' ... an ample air supply was led- through the floats tothe after side of the steps'; and with this set of floats the first take-off wasaccomplished - on November 18, 191I.

Seen at Barrow-in-Furness, ;nhere it first left t~e water on .November 18, I9 II ,Commander Ohver Schwann s Avro was tned With several different sets of floats.

Hydrofoils and air lubrication were both employed.

35

Of the hydrofoil installation I am able to give the following authenticdescription. The floats were 'fitted with two planes under the water. ...These were made of duralumin plate. Their span was 40 in., chord 4 in., andthe distance apart 4 in. The plates were mounted one above the other at adepth of 20 in. below the water level and at an angle of 3° to the horizontal.Each plane was slightly curved to a depth of _{ie in.' -

Apparently this British Avro was the first marine aircraft to use the 'stepped'form of planing bottom. For some years to follow most 'seaplanes' were builtto the twin-float-plus-tail-float formula, and the floats in consequence weretoo short to exploit the principle to advantage. There were, however, notableexceptions.

During 191 I the Italian Crocco built a seaplane, having - I quote Guidoni- a 'hydrovaned boat'. The vanes proved too small in area, and the machine'never got over critical speed'. Towed behind a motor boat, it did succeed ingetting off, but was wrecked.

Meanwhile, in America towards the end of 19II, Curtiss, whose 'hydros'were achieving international renown, was building what was called a 'familyhydro', and which emerged as the first of his flying boats. The maiden flightwas on January 10, 1912. A 60-h.p. engine drove twin tractor propellersthrough a clutch and chain transmissions, and the tail was carried on out­riggers from the long and capacious hull.

To the bedevilment of history, this machine has been repeatedly andprominently confused with a later type, first flown in the summer of 1912 anddistinguished primarily in having the tail attached directly to a full-lengthhull. This formula was later to become the most common for craft of thisclass; but to contend that this was 'the first real flying boat' is wholly in­correct. The earlier type mentioned not only appears to have been called aflying boat by Curtiss himself, but the means of carrying the tail was per­petuated in the transatlantic NC-4. And that was certainly so termed byCurtiss and his colleagues.

The first 'classic' type of flying boat, with the tail mounted directly on the

Glenn Curtiss' first flying boat - the 'family hydro', with its tail carried on outrig~ersand twin propellers driven through chain transmission from the hull-mounted engme.

36

The French Donnet-Leveque flying boat of 1912 was the first 'classic' machine of itstype - that is, having the tail mounted directly on the hull. Curtiss has been extensively

and wrongly credited with this arrangement.

hull, cannot, in fact, be credited to Curtiss at all, but to Denhaut, whoconstructed the Donnet-Leveque machine of this type in 1912.

Among the least-known work which I have recorded in this chapter wasthat put in hand by the Wrights in 1907, and of which Bishop Milton Wrightrecorded in his diary: 'The boys rigged up their floats and hydroplanes andtried them on the Miami.'

But the boys did not allow their trip to Europe to end their aquatic 'tam­perings'; nor have I in mind their floatplane of 1913 or the flying boat of1913-14. I allude to some almost unknown experiments undertaken in thelatter year and described by Orville in a letter which illuminates with astonish­ing clarity our aeromarine theme. To William E. Valk, Jr, a patent attorneywith the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company, Orville wrote:

'Your letter inquiring about our experiments with so-called slotted wingswas duly received. -

'Mr Octave Chanute told my brother and me that he had heard that asurface with slots cut in it would give an increased lift and suggested that wetry it in our tunnel. We did so in the fall of 1901 or spring of 1902, and foundthat a slightly increased lift resulted from the slots. The drift, however, wasmore than proportionately increased, so that we did not see any value in itat that time.

'In the summer of 1914 we experimented on the Miami river here atDayton with cambered sheet-steel hydrovanes with an auxiliary narrowcambered strip of steel placed just above the forward edge of the mainhydroplanes... .'

Having recalled earlier difficulties, and affirming that the new scheme wassuccessful in preventing the water from leaving the upper side of the 'hydro­plane', Orville went on:

37

'In 1918 or 1919 I tested this same arrangement in the wind tunnel, hopingto maintain the boundary-layer flow on the upper side and so secure in­creased lifts. But we did not secure a lift at all comparable to that secured byHandley-Page.

'Handley-Page could have..hadno knowledge of these wind-tunnel experi­ments, and it is most improbable that he had any of the hydroplane experi­ments, although we did send a hydroplane of this type to Pensacola in 1915.

'It is Handley-Page who has brought the slotted wing to a state of useful­ness, and I do not think that anything we previously may have done alongthat line ought to affect the validity of his patent.'

Could there be any more vivid example than this, not only of the theme ofthe present book, but of the interplay of great ideas?

To resume our pursuit of marine aircraft 'firsts', whether regarded as atwin-hulled flying boat or as a twin-float seaplane the Radley-England water­plane of 1913 was of such remarkably original layout that I must give it aplace. The accompanying photograph tells its own story: I feel it only neces­sary to add that the engines were three 50-h.P. Gnomes, coupled to a singleshaft, and that the craft made several flights before an alighting accident. Itwas rebuilt with several modifications, and a 150-h.P. Sunbeam engine.

I conclude this chapter by placing on record some British proposals andexperiments involving hydrofoil undercarriages.

In 191 I the Short brothers patented a scheme employing 'planes for varyingdraft'. An arrangement was described whereby a 'hydro-vane' supported aflying machine when alighting on, or starting from, the water.

'Whether regarded as a twin-hulled flying boat or as a twin-float seaplane the Radley­England waterplane of 1913 was of remarkably original layout... .' The engines were

three Gnomes, coupled to a single shaft.

38

Stimulated by work in Italy Lt C. D. Burney, R.N., persuaded the British and ColonialAer?plane Co..Ltd. to un~ertake a design and development programme for aircrafthavIng hydrofOIl undercarriages. In the upper picture the X.2 is seen on tow. The

lower view shows the X.3 hoisted almost clear of the water.

Some truly remarkable experiments were conducted jointly by the Britishand Colonial Aeroplane Co (later the Bristol Aeroplane Co) and Lt C. D.Burney, R.N. Stimulated by work in Italy - especially that of Guidoni _Burney persuaded the company to undertake a secret design and developmentprogramme. The .first design, the X.I, was for a biplane; but this wasabandoned. The X.2 was a monoplane with a boat hull which, after varioustrials and modifications, succeeded in becoming airborne. Unhappily itcrashed almost immediately, owing to the premature slipping of the tow froma Naval torpedo boat. The X.3 was larger and more refined, but never becameai~borne. In June 1914 it was taxied into a hidden sandbank and, followingWIthdrawal of Admiralty support, the experiments were discontinued.

39

The essential features proposed by Burney are set out in a patent of 191 I.

A monoplane layout is shown and the craft is described as an 'aeronauticalapparatus furnished with laterally extended wings and having a body of boat­like form provided with inclined hydropeds upon which are disposed hydro­planes....' Mention is made of propellers and rudders for use in water,situated at the lower ends of the hydropeds, the rudders being connected tothe wing-warping controls and to the aerial rudder so as to operate simul­taneously and in sympathy therewith. It is further stated: 'The propeller forpropulsion in the air is situated at the forward end of the apparatus and is putinto operation as soon as the lift produced by the combined action of thewater propellers and the hydroplanes is sufficient to enable the aerial pro­peller to be used.'

I hope this chapter may disperse some of the mists and myths which, forwell over half a century, have obscured the true history of flight, and that itmay establish some new and rightful claims to a place therein.

FLYING IN WATER

QUITE OFTEN in the early history of aeronautics is the fish exemplified as aform oflow resistance, and historian Charles Gibbs-Smith believes it possiblethat fish and boats may have brought the idea of streamlining to the mind ofSir George Cayley. The shapes of birds seem to have been a later considera­tion. An 1809 notebook entry by Cayley, quoted by Mr Gibbs-Smith inSir George Cayley's Aeronautics I796-I855 and referring to the sketch onthis page, observes:

'Trout on a scale of half an inch to one inch. Weight (being a well fed fish)13 ounces, length from nose to the centre ofthe tail, 13 inches. In the figure

Sir George Cayley's design for a solid of least resistance, based on the form of a trout( r809)·

... the girths are divided by three and reduced to a mean diameter so as togive a spindle the same girth at the respective places that the trout had. Whyshould not a boat be constructed to resemble one half of such a spindle by asection thro' the axis? We should then be deriving our boat from a betterarchitect than man, and should probably have the real solid ofleast resistance.'

The study of aerodynamic problems, using water as the medium, wasundertaken in the early 1860s by Thomas Moy, an inventor and latterlypatent agent, whose 'Aerial Steamer' lifted 2-6 in. off the ground in 1875. InThe History of Aeronautics in Gt Britain J. E. Hodgson praises Moy's stalwartsupport of the Aeronautical Society in days when mechanical flight wascommonly regarded as the futile hobby of unscientific - not to say deluded ­enthusiasts. Hodgson considered that Moy was entitled to 'a modest placewith the pioneers of modern aeronautical science and technology'. I hope laterto establish that he deserves a loftier eminence, in that, while experimentingin his 'water flying' (as he himself called it) he invented the hydrofoil boat.

In the relating of aero- and hydro-dynamics the name of Moy is notablealso for a paper of his which appeared in the seventh (1872) report of the

41

Aeronautical Society. The title wa; On the Application of Scott Russell'sWave-line to Aerial Machines, and it concerned a theory propounded by oneof Britain's foremost naval architects.

During the early 1870S the German physicist Von Helmholz was comparingthe behaviour of models in both air and water, and in Germany also someremarks were made by Otto Lilienthal in his historic treatise Birdfiight as theBasis of Aviation, first published in 1889.

'It may be of interest,' he said, 'to experiment with slightly curved surfacesunder water. Even on a very small scale we can obtain some results; as, forinstance, when we move a spoon in a cup full of liquid we can notice thetendency for the spoon to move in the direction of this curvature. We mayassume that the speculations which we have made [previously in the book]apply to a certain degree to movements under water, and the question ariseswhether there is not a gap in the theory of the marine propeller, because thecamber of the cross-section has not been given sufficient attention... .'

I have recorded that the first heavier-than-air take-off from water was madein 1905 by Gabriel Voisin in a Hargrave box-kite type of aircraft towed by amotor boat; yet two years earlier S. F. Cody had crossed the English Channelin a boat towed by a box-kite. These two events, so close in time and soparadoxical in nature, provide one of the more remarkable of our aqua-aerialassociations. And at least two years before Cody's Channel crossing torpedoboats of the Russian Navy had been towing man-lifting kites for spotting theenemy.

Doggedly experimenting with flapping wings as late as 1906 wasAntoine Mutti. Having stated his theory, he wrote:

'My conviction that the secret of a bird's flight is explained in this way isarrived at as the result of a great number of experiments both in the air andalso (more latterly) in the water. The resistance of the water being greaterthan that of the air, it is naturally easier to fly upon the water, and it can bedone absolutely without danger. I am the owner of the English patent, andof a little model of a flying boat, which I shall be glad to show to anyone who isinterested... .'

The 'little flying boat' will have a place in our chapter on hydrofoils.Discussing relative dynamic and buoyant support, Major George O.

Squier, U.S. Army Signal Corps, had this to say in 19°9:'Peter Cooper-Hewitt [the inventor of the mercury-vapour lamp, and who

was experimenting with a hydrofoil craft in 1907] has given careful study tothe relative behaviour of ships in air and water. He has made a special studyof hydroplanes, and has prepared graphic representations of his results whichfurnish a valuable forecast of the problem of flight.

'Without knowing of Helmholz's theorem, Cooper-Hewitt has indepen­dently computed curves for ships and hydroplanes from actual data in water,and has employed these curves to solve analogous problems in air, using therelative densities of the two media, approximately 800 to I, in order todetermine the relative values of support by dynamic reaction and by displace­ment for various weights and speeds.'

42

Pilcher's 'umbrella boat', with its 'cyclone sail'. It was intended to sail on an even keel,thereby lessening resistance.

Britain's own debt to maritime practice drew comment from ProfessorJ. H. Biles at a meeting of the British Association in 1911. The professor ­a naval architect of distinction - reminded his audience:

'The question of the strains produced upon the plane has been mathe­matically investigated, and was afterwards experimentally confirmed by Mr.Froude in his experiments upon the screw propeller. This covered much ofthe mathematical ground needed in the discussion of aeroplanes, althoughmathematically Froude neglected the circular motion. I would like to addthat one of the earliest practical flying men, Mr. Pilcher, was one of my ownassistants, and he was also a naval officer. We owe much to the Navy in thepast, and must look to it in the future for further assistance in respect tomechanical flight.'

To my immense satisfaction I have justification for including Pilcher's workin this 'flying in water' chapter. Obviously motivated by his gliding experi­ments, he and his partner W. G. Wilson rigged up a 'cyclone sail' for a 17-ftboat, and tried it in the Solent during 1897 (two years before Pilcher waskilled). The sail worked 'on the principle of the kite' and exerted 'a liftingeffect'. In any case, the 'umbrella boat', as it was otherwise known, wasintended to sail on an even keel, without being inclined by the wind, andtherefore to offer less resistance than when proceeding with a list. With anordinary rig, 200 sq. ft of canvas proved too much for her; but with the'umbrella' she carried 360 sq. ft and sailed much faster. Messrs Thornycroft ofChiswick were said to be building 'a light boat especially adapted for the sail'.

It is fitting to remark that Pilcher was an acquaintance not only of SirJohn Thornycroft, patentee of the air-cushion boat, but also of Otto Lilienthal,constructor of marine engines and pioneer in aeronautics.

43

WINGED HULLS

Now WE consider how aerodynamic means were used to relieve water-basedaircraft of hydrodynamic resistance, and an English clergyman first enters ourstory.

In the last years of the nineteenth century the Rev. E. Rust was tryingunsuccessfully to arouse some interest in a form of transport vehicle withwhich his mind was occupied. This was a kind of 'flying machine' whichwould be 'amphibious to air and water; that is, with a boat or ship-shapedsub-structure, so as to rest upon the water, or to travel along its surface, aswell as through the air'. The craft was to be lifted and propelled by 'featheringpaddles consisting of four fans'. These last were alternatively called 'wings'.

The boilers for the light marine engine would be supplied with water 'bypumping from the sea when afloat, or by projecting a feed pipe into the waterwhen skimming over its surface'.

That the reverend gentleman really intended his craft to operate in groundeffect (the existence of which was doubtless unknown to him) is clear fromhis declaration that: 'There would be no need to rise more than a few inches(or a few yards at most in rough weather) above the surface ofthe ocean... .'

Overland operation he considered possible, 'but only to a very limiteddegree ...'; adding that 'travelling, to some extent, might be conducted alongthe lines of the rivers and canals'. The 'principal scope' of the machine,however, would be 'to supersede the discomfort and delay of over-seatransit .. .', in competition with 'the Calais-Dover and other lines .. .'.

This is the first proposal that I have found for a transport vehicle intendedto operate 'at the interface', as the Americans say. It was submitted to, andrejected by, Lord Armstrong, whose name is nevertheless perpetuated intoday's air-cushion world by incorporation in 'Vickers-Armstrongs (Engineers)Ltd.'.

Hardly surprisingly, the first practical suggestions for 'winged hulls' werelinked with the sport of hydroplaning. During 1906 there appeared in Francea Levavasseur hydroplane built by Lein of Perreux and powered by a50-h.P. Antoinette engine. This craft is doubly interesting, first, becauseM. Leon Levavasseur was designer of the famous, beautiful and buoyantAntoinette monoplane and its engine also; second, because it was tried out bySantos-Dumont and Captain Ferber. Ferber declared it to be 'quite practical',and expressed the belief that, 'fitted with aeroplanes and an aerial screw, itcould be made to rise from the water'.

A contemporary description runs:

44

'The chief features of this craft appear to be a floating hull, occupied by themotor and crew, and a rear part, forming a propulsive tailor stem, terminatingby a sustaining surface, which is held at a constant angle to the hull in front.'Another writer declared: 'It would be a stretch of imagination to call her aboat, as she is more like a gigantic flying-fish in the act of leaping... .'

Speeds of about 50 m.p.h. were rumoured for the wingless craft. L'Autodeclared that it feared to mention the speed achieved, though this 'exceededanything yet attained by motor craft'.

I have no reason to suppose that the wings and aerial screw were ever fitted,but during the following year, 1907, details were published of the Obus­Nautilus, intended to race at Monaco. The Autocar of March 2, 1907,reported:

'Now a true hydroplane of entirely novel construction has been entered byMessrs. Conchis and Hemsen. It has two floats four metres square. Eachfloat has a fore body on parabolic lines, and is cut away aft. On each side ofthe fore body project steel plates above the water, which are intended to storethe air, as it were, when the hydroplane is travelling at high speeds, so that theair thus partially compressed tends to raise the floats out of the water....There is no doubt that this device offers the minimum of skin friction thatit is possible to get... .'

The AutomotorJournal said: 'Each of the floats is provided with two pressedsteel plates arranged laterally in such a way as to assist the floats in actingpartly as aeroplanes.'

The impact of the hydroplane sent a shock and a shudder through theyachting and motor-boating worlds. 'Mechanically propelled tea-trays' wasthe definition bestowed by one shellback.

Not surprisingly, the profusion and confusion of nomenclature which todayafflicts everyone concerned with the development of 'new forms' of vehiclewas as acutely apparent in those Edwardian times. So let us extend oursympathy to the editor of the aforementioned journal, whose heart-cry Ireprint from his December 10, 1908, issue:

'According to the latest note from the British Motor Boat Club, an in­teresting point has arisen as to the exact dividing line between a hydroplaneand an ordinary motor boat; and supposititious cases have been put, such aswhether a craft with her upper works of ordinary section, but with a steppedunder-body, would be a hydroplane or a boat.... Personally, we regarddiscussions as quite futile. For all power-craft racing purposes, a vessel iswhat she is declared to be.... For instance, a motor-punt, albeit flat­bottomed and gliding, is distinctly no hydroplane. Nor would a sharpie withher boat-shaped top be one either. Nothing, again, would make any catamarantype - which is just as much a glider - a hydroplane. Yet no one has yetdenied that classification to Santos-Dumont's combination of silken cigar­shaped gas-float [see page 61] although it presents many features of thecatamaran... .'

It was, no doubt, this turmoil among the yachting fraternity that movedRudyard Kipling in 1909 to envision a similar rumpus involving what he

45

,.

I BAT-BOATS

Flint & Mantel C:f r"~;)Southampton :.~.

FOR SALEat the end of Season the following Bat-Boats:

GRISELDA, 65 knt., 42 ft., 430 (nom.) Maginnis Motor.under-rake rudder.

MABELLE, SO knt., 40 ft., 310 Hargreaves Motor,Douglas' lock-steering gear.

IVEMONA, SO knt., 35 ft., 300 Hargreaves (Radiumaccelerator), Miller keel and rudder.

The above are well known on the SouthCoast as sound! wholesome knockabout boats,with ample crUIsing accommodation. Griseldacarries s'p'are set of Hofman racing vans andcan be hfted three foot clear in smooth waterwith ballast-tank swung aft. The others donot lift clear of water, and are recom mendedfor beginners. .

Also, by private treaty, racing B. B. Tarpon(76 winning flags) 120 knt., 60 ft.; Long­Davidson double under-rake rudder, new thiSseason and unstrained. 850 nom. l\1aginnismotor, Radium· relays and Pond generator.Bronze breakwater forward, and treble rein­forced forefoot and entry. Talfourd rockeredkeel. Triple set of Hofman vans, giving maxi­mum lifting surface of 5327 sq. ft.

Tarpon has been lifted and held seven feetfor two miles between touch and touch.

Our Autumn List of racing and family Batlready on the 9th January.

A mock advertisement for indubitable winged hulls, concocted by Rudyard Kiplingand published during 1909 in a supposed aeronautical journal of the year 2000.

Reproduced from Actions and Reactions by Rudyard Kipling by kind permission ofMacmillan & Co. Ltd.

called 'bat-boats'. These imaginary craft were nothing more or less thanwinged hulls, as clearly shown in an advertisement which Kipling concoctedfor a supposed aeronautical journal ofthe year A.D. 2000. In that same 'jour­nal', under the heading 'Bat-Boat Racing', appeared the following:

'The scandals of the past few years have at last moved the yachting worldto concerted action in regard to "bat" boat racing.

'We have been treated to the spectacle of what are practically keeled racing­planes driven a clear five foot or more above the water, and only eased downto touch their so-called "native element" as they near the line. Judges andstarters have been conveniently blind to this absurdity, but the publicdemonstration off St Catherine's Light at the Autumn Regatta has borneample, if tardy, fruit. In the future the "bat" is to be a boat, and the long­unheeded demand of the true sportsman for "no daylight under mid-keel insmooth water" is in a fair way to be conceded. The new rule severely restrictsplane area and lift alike... .'

The name Bat-Boat was eventually to be adopted, in 1913, for Sir ThomasSopwith's indubitable flying boat, with its beautiful Saunders-built hull.

By no means indubitable in character (though a very real creation) was acraft of 191 I which one may regard either as a flying boat which flew with thetip of its tail in the water or as a boat which, by means of wings, lifted every­thing clear except its tail.

A product of the Michigan Steel Boat Co., this singular craft was displayedat the New York Boat Exhibition of 1911, and it travelled from Detroit toCleveiand (some 100 miles) in two hours.

Discussing the longitudinal stability of 'skimming and hydro-aeroplanes'in 1913, J. E. Steele, B.Sc., observed that she was in the transition stagebetween the skimmer and the all-air machine, only leaving the water for an

The Flying Fish, built by the Michigan Steel Boat Co. in 19II, flew with its tail in thewater. A hydrofoil was mounted under the metal hull.

47

r'

occasional bound into the air, 'which bound is involuntary, and not one of hernatural functions'.

The hull was an aluminium tank 7 ft 2 in. long, 5 ft 7 in. wide and 2 ftdeep, with rounded-up bow. The vertical sides were carried aft past the hullfor another 10 ft, where they were connected by a cross-piece which formedthe horizontal tail. The hydrofoil was fitted under the hull to assist in liftingit from the surface. At a moderate speed, with the hull lifted out of the water,the craft planed along on its hydrofoil and tail; but at high speeds she liftedcompletely clear, except for her tail.

A speed of between 65 and 70 m.p.h. was reported for this 'winged hull' ­or what might be termed today ram-wing air-cushion vehicle or dynamicinterface vehicle.

More curious still was a craft built early in 19II by S. E. Saunders Ltd ofEast Cowes, Isle of Wight. 'Sam' Saunders, of whom I shall have more torelate, had undertaken aeronautical work for Sir Hiram Maxim, and formallyannounced his entry into the aircraft business in 1909. A news item ofNovember that year ran:

'Messrs S. E. Saunders Ltd are opening a new department for buildingeverything required for aero navigation. Mr Saunders, the head of the firm,is eminently qualified to do full justice to customers' requirements in thisnew branch of the business, as no man in the boat-building trade in thiscountry has had so much experience in wood working in which the chiefobject has been lightness of construction combined with strength. For thepast 35 years, Mr Saunders has been working in this direction, and this longexperience has taught him invaluable lessons in regard to the selection oflight woods for the particular purpose required. In addition, Mr Saundershas seen most of the aerial machines in flight and has also had an opportunity

of examining them in their sheds. He is confident that in the choice of woodsand methods of construction he can save weight without in any way sacrificingstrength.'

Then, after a little over a year, in the opening weeks of 19II:'Satisfactory floating tests were made on Monday with an aero motor boat

which has been built to the design of M. Pavaud, the French airman, a~Mess~s S. E. Saunde~s .and Co's works.... The designer has personallysupe~mtended the bmldmg of the machine, which is about 20 ft long andconsIsts of t~o flat floats carrying above them a boat-shaped hull capable ofaccommodatmg two or three persons. It is driven by an air propeller with a50 - h ·P· Gnome engine. At the bow there is a rudder above water. ... MessrsSaunders, who are builders of the hydroplanes and motor boats for the Dukeof Westminster and others, are proposing to develop at East Cowes a centrefor marine aviation, and have built a shed up the river Medina, near OsborneNaval College engineering workshops.'

When I resurrected this delightful specimen (Air-Cushion Vehicles ofNovember 1963) I quoted no fewer than four different renderings of the'd' , , 'R d' 'R d'eSIgner s name - evau, avau, 'Pavaud' and 'Payaud'. To these Iam now able to add 'Rivaud' and 'Rayaud'. But as I remarked at the timecompared with contemporary descriptions of the craft itself, the renderin~of Ravaud's name was almost unanimous. She was declared by variousobservers and authorities to be an 'aeroscaphe', 'motoscaphe', 'curioushybrid', 'aero motor boat', 'hydro-aeroplane', 'sea flier', 'aero-hydroplane','half an aeroplane and half a hydroplane', 'skimmer with aerial propeller' and'aeroquat' .

Launched in January 19II, this chimera was intended to appear at Monacolater in that year. It failed to arrive, although it may have operated in theShore~am ~istrict. The intention was to install a Gnome engine of 100 h.p.,and WIth thIS Ravaud was hoping for a speed of about 60 m.p.h.

A dynamic interface vehicle if ever there was one. Or should she, after all,have been included in the chapter on hydrofoils; because I find thatRavaud declared that the bottoms ofthe floats were (or could be) 'constitutedby blades', serving 'to raise the vessel clear of the water'.A~d in case the glorious photograph I reproduce should provide further

beWIlderment, I must explain that Ravaud is facing astern.

Monsieur Ravaud in the undeniably curious craft built for him in I9II by S. E.Saunders Ltd of East Cowes, Isle of Wight. No fewer than ten different contemporary

appellations are quoted in the text.

48 D 49

HYDROFOIL BOATS

I NAIL THE British flag to the masthead of this chapter by expressing theplain belief that a boat was first lifted out of the water by means of hydrofoilsurfaces on an English canal in I86r.

At that time Thomas Moy, whose name has hitherto been known chieflyfor his 'Aerial Steamer', was experimenting with the technique of 'flying inwater', to which I alluded in the chapter bearing that title. He was trying outa boat, towed by means unknown to me, on the Surrey Canal, which in t~e

early years of the last century linked Rotherhithe and Camberw~ll. HISapparent preoccupation was aerodynamics, and not hydrodynamIcs; but

Approximate section of the foils used by Thomas May in 1861.

recognizing that water was the easier (and the safer) medium, he conductedhis investigations into what he himself termed 'water flight'. His boat hadon its underside three 'planes', rounded above and slightly hollow underneath,and Moy, I find, has left record of how, with the boat under tow, it was raised'quite out of the water'. The planes were 'self acting as to angle of incidence'and 'assumed finer angles as speed increased'. Moy noted that the front edgesof the 'planes' threw up water; 'a kind of vacuum' was created on the afterpart and 'thrust was reduced as speed increased'.

In 1869 a Frenchman, Emmanuel Farcot, was granted a patent for variousimprovements to ships. 'My last improvement in propelling vessels,' he said,'consists in arranging along the sides a series of inclined planes, the angles ofwhich may be varied at pleasure.' He went on: 'These planes are first of allarranged horizontally, so that at the moment of starting the vessel may becarried forward with all the speed that the propellers are capable of exerting.The planes are then inclined ... and the vessel will rise a certain distance inthe water.... The motive power may therefore be reduced, as the vesselwill skim along the surface like a stone which ricochets.'

Moy and Farcot were trying to get lift; and just as several of the earlyexperimenters strove to achieve flight with wings not fixed but rotating, so,in 1876, there was a steam-powered rotary-foil hydrofoil craft. For that is themost accurate description I can give of a contrivance which was engaging the

5°

i

attention during that year of a M. de Sanderal. A rectangular flat-bottomedboat, it had at each corner a 'propeller', working horizontally in the water,the propulsive screw being at the rear and more or less out of that element.

I think it appropriate to mention here that in 1909 L. Bernasconi patenteda type of vessel having two or more pairs of propellers symmetrically disposedin relation to the centre of gravity, the shafts being inclined at an angle so thatthe vertical component of the thrust along them served to support the craft.A similar principle was proposed by L. and M. Janin and M. Tetard in 1913.A number of 'screw propellers or turbine devices' were arranged beneath thehull and supported on inclined shafts so as to cause the whole vessel to moveforward and emerge from the water. Adjustable inclined 'plates' or bladeswere fitted to increase stability and prevent rolling and pitching.

In 1878 John Stanfield and Josiah Clark of London proposed 'A new (orimproved) method of raising vessels or other moving bodies out of the water... so as to increase their speed.' They declared: 'We place a number offin blades or oblique floats on the sides of the vessel or beneath her at differentparts of her length, inclined at an angle, so that as the vessel is propelledforward, their tendency is to raise the vessel out ofthe water.... At extremespeeds her whole weight may be supported on the floats or fin blades, so thatshe skids along with only her screws submerged and her blades on the surface.. . . Very high speeds may consequently be attained... .'

Ten years later - in 1888 - an American, G. W. Napier, patented a schemefor varying the draught of ships by means of adjustable fins on each side of avessel. The fins also tended to minimize rolling. Another American, C. E.Emery, applied in 1890 for a patent referring to retractable and adjustablesurfaces, and in England during 1892 Sir Hiram Maxim patented a 'high­speed steamer'. The proposed craft was designed to 'skim the surface' andwas the outcome of 'experiments with aeroplanes'. Sir Hiram's object was tovary the draught in order to attain high speed. A vessel of ordinary form wasshown with an adjustable 'horizontal blade or fin' at the stern. 'By incliningthis blade when going at a high speed,' it was stated, 'the stern is lifted and thevessel skims along the surface.' Maxim further claimed that similar bladesmight also be used at the bow, or the latter might be punt-shaped. The pro­peller blades could be automatically adjusted by a mechanism which was thesubject of one of Sir Hiram's patents.

Though I am unable to ascertain the precise form of the craft, I recordhere that in 1893 an 8-h.p. steam engine was fitted to a Tissandier 'glider'boat, which had its propeller under water. A speed of23 kmfhr was mentionedfor this boat, which was successively fitted with several engines, including theBuchet used by Santos-Dumont to fly his airship round the Eiffel Tower in190r.

A model craft with adjustable foils was constructed in 1895 by one of thebest-known and most controversial figures in French aviation, Clement Ader.

, Ader's craft was pointed at each end. At the front there were two foils, spread­ing out from the sides and adjustable from inside to any desired angle. At therear a single plane, likewise adjustable, formed the tail.

51

And now I introduce a form of craft which is not to be found even in thebewildering catalogue of modern modes of transport, this being nothing moreor less than an air-cushion hydrofoil. It was Ader's idea, even in 1896, 'toinject compressed air underneath the surface of the three planes so that theywould work more or less upon an air cushion'. By this means he intendedthat the resistance of the boat would be still further diminished.

An abridgement of an Ader patent specification of 1904 read: 'A vessel issupported during forward motion by two lateral wings and a transversetailpiece in such a manner that it "slides" upon the water'. Ader showeddrawings of a flat-bottomed vessel, having a pointed stem and elongated stern,and with the pivoted wings and tail having channels communicating withapertures through which atmospheric or compressed air escaped, 'forming acushion between the wings &c and the water'.

During 1904 Ader was experimenting with what was described as a flat­bottomed boat 'provided with wings and taillike a bird's, which, when ex"'panded, graze the surface of the water'. The account continued: 'Air at thepressure of one-twentieth of an atmosphere is forced under the wings and

-=. ==-~------~=-==--==---..=:=.===-=--:.~---- - =:-

Contemporary drawings (circa 1904) of the astonishing 'air-cushion hydrofoil' ofClement Ader, showing the hinged 'wings' and tail, and giving a cross-section of one

of the 'wings', showing the space for the air cushion.

52

I

,I

tail, raising them and the boat until the bottom just touches the surface. Theresistance being thus diminished, the boat is driven forward rapidly by asubmerged propeller.

'Though the boat worked fairly well,' it was added, 'it is too complicatedand unwieldy for practical use, and has been presented by its inventor to theConservatoire des Arts et Metiers, where it is to be preserved as the embodi­ment of an ingenious idea.'

I shall say more about this phenomenal device in later chapters.The name ofHoratio Frederick Phillips (1845-1926) is acclaimed by Charles

Gibbs-Smith as one of the most honoured in aviation history (a descriptionthat no one would dispute), though 'his later activities' were 'shrouded inmystery'. In a hydrodynamic context at least I may be able to dispel someof this mystery, for it was none other than Phillips who collaborated with theComte de Lambert in designing the first of a series of so-called 'gliding' or'sliding' craft with which the count's name was to be associated for manyyears to follow.

Phillips had proposed in 188r a scheme for 'Improvements in boats orvessels to be driven at high speed'. Owing to the great velocity oftorpedo boatsand other fast craft, he reasoned, the water had not time to fill in the run ofthe boat, causing the stern to be depressed and resistance to be increased.

'Now the object of this invention,' declared Phillips, 'is to ensure an evenked, by which means the resistance will be reduced... .'

'This I effect by securing under the boat, and transversely of the keel .a plate or plates, so arranged that they may be set at any suitable angle .By the use of these plates the vessel will be lifted partially or wholly from thewater... .'

The contribution of Phillips in connection with the de Lambert craft must,I believe, be accorded generous acknowledgement, by reason of his inter­national reputation as an authority on aerofoil surfaces - this notwithstandinga pronouncement by Orville Wright, who said:

'Although suggestions of the hydroplane idea had been made years ago,and although Froude had made some experiments without results as far backas 1872, Comte de Lambert was the real inventor of the hydroplane. He wasthe first to produce a successful one, and all modern hydroplanes are basedupon his work. In 1897 Comte de Lambert experimented with a catamaranformed of two narrow floats, to which were attached four transverse planes,whose inclinations could be varied two or three degrees. At a speed of tenmiles an hour, the floats were lifted entirely out of the water and the machineglided over the surface on the four hydroplanes. Comte de Lambert con­tinued these experiments during the following years up to 1907, and he suc­ceeded in increasing the speed to thirty-four miles an hour.'

The Wrights were closely associated with the Comte, and Orville's loyaltyis commendable. But he might have declared with greater precision that thefirst full-scale powered hydrofoil craft (as it would be classed today) was thework of de Lambert assisted by Phillips. I have shown that the essentialhydrofoil idea was far older - and British.

53

Contemporary sketches of the steam-powered hydrofoil tested by the Comte deLambert in 1897. This craft was designed with the collaboration of the Englishman

Horatio Phillips.

For a description of the de Lambert/Phillips craft we turn to The YachtingWorld of January 21, 1898. Headed 'A Novel Craft on the Principle of theSleigh', the account runs:

'The idea of constructing a boat of such a shape that, instead of cuttingthrough, it skims over the water, is old, but until lately all experiments ofboat-builders in this direction have been without success. -

'This success has now been obtained by Count Lambert, of Versailles,who has invented a very ingenious and at the same time simple craft, which isable to skim over smooth water with great rapidity.... The boat is construc­ted to carry a small engine and one man. The buoyancy is provided by twowater-tight skiffs, connected by a light framework, which supports machineand helmsman. The bottom of the swimming frame consists of four thinplains [sic] resting on the water, not quite horizontal, but slightly oblique, sothat in forward motion the resistance of the water raises these plains, andtherefore the whole craft.

'The total weight is 6 cwts, the total surface of the sliding plains 55 sq. ft.A screw-propeller of 2 ft diameter on a slanting shaft is driven by a smallengine, fed from a water-tube boiler. The position of this shaft and screwbrings the main weight well aft and produces a lifting tendency of the forepart, in conjunction with the skimming plains, so that at a speed of 10 milesper hour the whole front part of the craft is above water, and at 20 miles onlythe back parts of the plains touch the surface ofthe water. At this high speedthe screw makes 800 revolutions per minute, the engine consuming less steam

54

Photographed on the Seine in 1906, an Antoinette-engined development of the originalde Lambert craft.

in proportion to increasing velocity, causing higher elevation of frame andskiffs, and therefore decreasing displacement of water.'

Craft of this general type continued to be developed for eight years or so;but in 1907, as I relate in the chapter on planing craft, de Lambert transferredhis attention to a type of 'glider' more appropriately described as a planingboat than as a hydrofoil.

In 1903 an Italian, Guiseppe Vigo, advanced a scheme for fitting foil-cum­stabilizer surfaces, and in 1904 an American, H. J. Noll, proposed another~mbodying rotary adjustable shafts.

The name of Enrico Forlanini has already been mentioned by reason of his1905 proposal for a hydrofoil aircraft. During that same year he built andtested a hydrofoil boat, and his work on craft of this type continued for someyears thereafter. Forlanini's place in hydrofoil technology was assessed byP. R. Crewe in a paper delivered before the Institution of Naval Architects in1958. Crewe said:

55

The Forlanin.i hy:drofoil boat of 1906. This ~reat Italian designer (he was responsiblefor several airships) also foresaw the application of hydrofoils to marine aircraft.

'Hydrofoils may be completely submerged at all design operating conditions,or ~ay pass through the water surface with change in operating condition, inwhIch case the draught may be said to control the area used for producingwater lift. Ladder hydrofoil units vary area with draught in this way.

'The original ladder unit appears to have been developed by the ItalianEnrico Forlanini in the years 1898 to 1905, with application to seaplanes inmind, and several patents in his name have been examined. A marine craftof 1·65 tons displacement was demonstrated on Lake Maggiore in 1906. Itlifted clear of the water and reached a speed of 38 knots, using a 75 h.p.engine. It is said to have been stable in small waves, but the patents show ahistory of increasing complexity, clearly arising from attempts to overcomedefects in behaviour. These included adjustment of the ladder in height andattitude relative to the hull, modification of the ladder construction, intro­duction of auxiliary ladders which were to be retractable at high speed, in­troduction of safety ladders intended to enter the water only in emergency,and use of aerodynamic damping surfaces.'

Some time during, or before, 1905 Albert de Puydt was experimentingwith a model boat having inclined planes, and subsequently in AmericaG. R. Napier put forward an idea for a craft having feathering blades pivotallyattached to the bifurcated ends of vertically reciprocating rods, arranged inpairs on each side of the boat and operated by a hand lever. Springs tended tokeep the rear edge of each blade lower than the front edge, and this tendencywas augmented on the up-stroke, and counteracted on the down-stroke, by thepressure of the water.

Napier was granted a British patent in 191 I.

56

.J

The hydrofoil boat of Crocco and Ricaldoni (1907) being driven at speed on its angledsurfaces by its variable-pitch metal propellers.

In 1907 another American, L. E. Simpson, described a hydrofoil crafthavin~ adjustable frames carrying submerged foils, and the same year sawwork m progress on another remarkable hydrofoil boat devised by A. Croccoand. O. R~caldo~i. It was 26.ft long, weighed 3,350 lb, and had a loo-h.p.engme, WIth whIch a speed ofJust over 50 m.p.h. is said to have been attained.The foil surfaces were mounted at stem and stern; the front ones were of Vform, and the rear ones were similarly arranged, although they did not joinat the inverted apex. They were made of steel.

Not the least remarkable features of the craft were the propellers. I appenda contemporary account:

'The aerial propellers are decidedly ingenious devices. They are of doublealuminium plating, and weigh each about 25 lbs. Their pitch can be alteredwhile running, and they can be reversed if need be. The propellers aremounted on frames of aluminium sheeting, which, together with the shafts,

The Crocco/Ricaldoni craft out of the water.

57

gear, transmission, and controlling devices, etc, weigh 660 lbs. Curiouslyenough, the motor - a Clement-Bayard machine - also weighs 660 lbs.'

Having, I hope, established in hydrofoil history the names of Moy andPhillips, I am now able, with the highest satisfaction, to associate 'an English­man named Thompson' with the experiments of Crocco and Ricaldoni; forthat was the description of a man who was said to have been granted a patentin accordance with which the Italians designed their craft.

I find that a patent specification of 1904, in the name ofW. P. Thompson,described a vessel having a series of fins fitted to projecting portions of thekeel, and inclined in such a manner that they would tend to raise the vesselout of the water. They could be arranged in three sets, or in one set con­tinuous along the keel.

In 1907 Thompson proposed a development of this form of craft, having'curved aquaplanes of approximately catenary shape in a transverse direction,attached to the sides of the vessel, with additional angular or curved fins,also attached to the sides, but extending outwards'.

A true American pioneer was William M. Meacham, who, on July 29,1897,at Chicago, Illinois, towed a boat, fitted with blades, until the hull rose clear.In 1906 Meacham published particulars of 'a proposed motor boat fitted withautomatically adjusted submerged hydroplanes', together with a photographofa boat on tow (note that both he and Forlanini used towing, as had Phillips)and being lifted clear of the water by 'submerged hydroplanes at bow andstern'.

Jointly with his brother Larned, Meacham had been investigating theproperties of hydrofoils since 1894, and Mr Leslie Hayward, patent managerof Westland Aircraft, has related how the two brothers applied for a U.S.Patent in September 1896. A similar proposal had been advanced, however,by another American citizen, S. A. Reeve (July 1895), and after a long andinvolved case, continuing from November 1903 till September 1904, judge­ment was given to Reeve. Eventually Reeve assigned his patent to theMeachams.

I promised earlier to include in this chapter M. Mutti's 'little model of aflying boat', with which he was experimenting in 1906; and this I must notfail to do, for it was nothing more or less than an 'ornithopter' hydrofoil.Two longitudinal floats supported the craft on the water, and beneath thesurface were the hinged wings and fixed fore-and-aft 'planes'. A contem­porary description declared: 'When set in motion, which is accomplished inthe present model by means of a coiled spring, the wings flap up and down,and are intended to lift the floats out of the water and to propel the apparatus,which is also partly supported by their action, as well as by the stationaryplanes.'

Another who proposed early schemes for hydrofoil craft was W. H. Fauber,whose name I shall be linking closely with air lubrication. In 1907 Fauberdescribed a form of vessel having a 'dependent keel', on the lower end ofwhich was a 'tubular hydroplane member, having the underside, both foreand aft, cut away obliquely'. 'Inclined edges,' declared the American, 'give

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Mutti's 'little model of a flying boat', showing the twin floats, fixed fore-and-aftsurfaces and flapping 'foils'.

the hydroplane member a pen-pointed shape, which decreases the skinresistance and the liability to collect foreign substances in shallow water.' Oneach side of the 'hydroplane' were 'balancing rudders', and additional finscould be fitted on the sides.

America's first powered hydrofoil craft seems to have been that constructedby Peter Cooper Hewitt and tested during 1907. This had a light mahoganyhull, suspended in a rigid rectangular framework of steel tubing. The frame­work carried the engine, and attached to projections from its lower extremitieswere the sheet-steel foils. Of these there were several, arranged well outboardat different levels, the four largest having their upper edges at about the samelevel as the keel of the boat. At a weight of 2,500 lb a speed of 30 m.p.h.was readily attained, and at this speed all the foils were out of the water exceptthose at the lowest level, which had a combined area of only 8 sq. ft.

By the summer of 1907 Alberto Santos-Dumont was himself at work on ahydrofoil craft. The Motor Boat described it and gave the circumstances ofits construction. Thus:

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with any kind of hydroplane anything like the speed he says is possible. Sixtymiles an hour is Mr. Santos Dumont's modest hope.'

In its issue of January 4, 1908, The Automotor Journal reported:'On December 23rd, M. Santos Dumont took his hydroplane out on the

Seine near the Ponte de Neuilly, but unfortunately the engine was not goingwell, and no high speeds were attained. Since the last trial a 50-h.P. enginehas replaced that of I2o-h.p., and a two-bladed aerial propeller has beensubstituted for the three-bladed tractor screw. The forward lifting-planehas also been increased in area.... Three months still remain in whichM. Santos Dumont may win his bet with M. Charron by accomplishing .l00kilonis. per hour.'

Santos never won that 50,000 francs, but his project - 'No. 18' as he calledit - may have inspired others; and certainly during 1909 there was a Frenchcraft called Vagabond, designed by M. Banneau, which had two tubularbuoyancy chambers, and which at full speed rose out of the water, travellingon transverse planes 'like the old Santos Dumont machine'.

The Forlanini craft of 1906/7 had been handicapped by an unsatisfactoryengine, and another was tried during 1908 and 1909, driven by steam. Thisengine proved more reliable, and although giving only 25 h.p., it propelledthe boat, which weighed over a ton, at about 30 m.p.h. During 1910 Forlaniniwas experimenting with a two-ton craft having very accurately made steelfoils and capable of carrying two to four persons. An engine of 100 h.p. gavea speed of 45 m.p.h. .

I alluded earlier to Ader's 'air-cushion hydrofoil' idea ofthe late 1800s; andI can now place on record a British proposal of 1909 for a craft having adjust­able 'planes' and in which air was to be introduced under the bottom. Ad­vanced by C. H. Clark and J. Morrison, this proposal was described as follows:

'The boat is fiat-bottomed, and underneath is a fiat plane or planes, carriedat the forward end by a transverse hinge, while the after-end is attached to a

Santos-Dumont in his 'No. 18' - a hydrofoil craft which he constructed in 1907 withthe intention of winning a prize of 50,000 francs. He failed.

6r

In 1907, Peter Cooper Hewitt, the American inventor of the mercury-vapour lamp,built and tested the hydrofoil craft seen here both in and out of the water.

--- .......-,...........-=~-"~-~ -;;::::-~~:;.~--'-:~-

'The hero of "aerography" has turned his attention to matters motor­nautical, and in M. Santos Dumont's new hydroplane some quite novelfeatures are displayed. The "hull" is cigar-shaped, with very long pointsfore and aft, and is made in wood and aluminium with stiffening rings aboutevery 2 ft; of fore and aft members there are only four, the whole frameworkbeing about 33 ft in length. Around the framework will be fitted an envelopeof rubbered canvas, which will be firmly distended with compressed air.Forward, a plane 4 metres long will hold her trim, while aft another similarplane I t metres long will steady her. ... This novel vessel is the outcome ofa challenge by M. Charron to give 50,000 francs to M. Dumont if he touches

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I

cD

Thornycroft drawings of Miranda III.

parallel, this, with the story I shall have to tell of Sir John's 1877 skimmerpatent and that of Mr Knight so many years later.)

To employ the lifting effect ofthe mudguards to the best advantage a newform of hull was evolved, and in 1909 Miranda III was built. She was 22 ftlong, her beam was 7 ft and she had a 60-h.p. engine. The bottom ofthe hullwas a continuous plane, but there was difficulty regarding disposition ofweights, which 'prevented an early planing angle'. It was then that a hydrofoilsurface was fitted under the bows, to induce them to lift. As speed increasedto about 15 knots lift was sufficient to trim the hull on the main planing surfaceand speed increased rapidly to some 27 knots. The hydrofoil, having lesslift to provide, then acted as a planing surface.

Press reports in recent years of trips in hydrofoil craft have stressed thenovelty of the experience; which adds a zest to the following first-hand accountof a demonstration by Miranda III, written in July 1909. Having observedthe craft from a distance, the author of the report was able to record that, asshe passed by, daylight could be seen for about 5 ft aft of the forward plane;and, looking aft, he was just able to glimpse through the spray that the sternwas out of the water. He was taken for a trip, and reported:

'When first [the engine] opened out, the forward plane came clear of thewater, then the after body rose gradually, the speed increasing at the sametime. At a certain point the stern came clear of the water and the bowdropped till the aquaplane [sic] just touched the surface. Simultaneously theengine, which had been running at about 1,000 r.p.m., sprang at once to

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rod by means of which it can be raised or lowered. Thus, the plane can lieclose against the bottom of the boat, or it can be set at any desired angle.

'The sides ofthe boat are extended below the bottom, forming a boxed-instep, and if two planes are used side by side a keel is fitted, having the sameprofile as the sides. This arrangement necessitates the use of ventilatingcowls communicating with air chambers, from which air has access to thebottom of the boat through ports.'

It delights and amazes me that I am able to introduce the name of Sir JohnThornycroft into this chapter - and in a context hardly less remarkable thanwere his pre-eminent achievements respecting planing and air-cushion craft.

Development of the Thornycroft hydrofoil boat began in a curious way.The characteristic round-bottomed torpedo craft that were the company'sstaple products around the turn of the century could produce discomfort andinefficiency among their crews by taking spray aboard at speed. Specimensbuilt for Russia in 1904 had broad strips, or strakes, on both sides ofthe hull,running well forward from mid-ships. In the building yard (I quote MrL. R. Tout, AMINA) these were known as 'mudguards', and in 1908 attach­ments of this sort were tried on the fast motor skimmer Gyrinus. These'appendage planing surfaces', as they were more formally known, werehollowed out in order to turn down the bow wave, with the result that thewave exerted a lifting force. Such was the reduction in resistance thatGyrinus increased her speed by about 2 m.p.h., attaining 25 m.p.h. at fullpower. (Mr Tout recalls that a few years before the war a German firmrediscovered the 'mudguard' principle and took out a patent. A striking

Miranda III, the Thornycroft boat of 1909 which had a hydrofoil surface under thebow. A report of a trip in this craft is given in the text.

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1,500 r.p.m., clearly showing how the resistance had dropped. The wholeoperation ofcorning to the surface occupied no more than 10 sec., perhaps notso much, and thereafter the boat travelled at full speed without taking anyspray aboard.'

Further development was contemplated, but never came to pass.Describing, during 1909, a 'balancing device for aerial machines', J.

Richards, of Camberwell, declared that the invention could 'also be appliedto hydroplanes'. An 'increased pressure on one plane' caused it to be raised'to decrease its inclination and to rock a beam to increase correspondinglythe inclination of the other plane'.

Work continued in America, and in 1911 Cdr H. C. Richardson wasexperimenting with a hydrofoil dinghy. Of this he reported that it had'warping blades for lateral control and a rudder and elevator combined'.Elevator and warping control were by stick, and rudder control by foot bar.

From such beginnings came the hydrofoil craft that, only in very recentyears, have been put to public use.

PLANING BOATS

'VESSELS WHICH greatly reduce their displacement when travelling at highspeeds,' said Sir John Thornycroft (who did more than anyone to developthis kind of craft), 'are generally called "hydroplanes"; but this name is notaltogether satisfactory, as the surfaces on which they glide are not alwaysplanes.' He was speaking in 1909, and he added: 'To call such vessels"gliders" or "skimmers" has been suggested as more appropriate; but theformer title suggests smooth motion, and this is not always characteristic oftheir behaviour.'

Sir John himself called them skimmers, and considered the original tohave been the surf-board.

'A single slab of wood, rounded at the edges,' he explained, 'is employed,and supports a man where huge waves form a sufficient slope to enable him,assisted by gravity, to attain the necessary start. After the start the man willeven assume a standing attitude on the board, which skims along before theadvancing wave.'

Clearly here before us is the aquatic precursor of the 'gliders' of Lilienthal,Pilcher and the Wrights. Lacking propulsive power, man comrived to be'assisted by gravity'.

Other early commentators instanced the flat, richocheting stone, or theability of a schoolboy to cross a stream of water on small, broken pieces ofice - if he stepped lively.

A craft of so-called 'shin form' was patented as early as 1837 by AbrahamMorrison of Pennsylvania, and this has been instanced as a very early planingboat. The Patent Office in London, I find, holds only drawings, and in theabsence ofa description I quote Capt H. E. Saunders, U.S.N. (Retd), that nomention is made in the specification of the phenomenon ofplaning. Neverthe­less, I place on record that the drawings show a vessel with a concave bottomand an open bow.

Certainly the phenomenon of skimming became dramatically (and verybeautifully) apparent to the eminent John Scott Russell during experimentswhich he conducted some 125 years ago. It was from these same trials thathis classic 'wave line' theory was evolved. An account dated 1840 ran asfollows:

'Mr Scott Russell has submitted to the British Association the proceedingsofthe Committee appointed last year to conduct experiments on the Forms ofVessels....

'There appeared to be three different conditions of fluid motion andE

resistance, accompanied with distinct characteristic phenomena: motionslower than that of the wave - motion on the wave - motion on wings ofwater.The last occurred only at very high velocities, when two high and beautifulfilms of water spread themselves in the air, and carried the boat as on gossamerwings along the surface....

'Mr Russell would barely venture to state what may be the result of thisexquisite phenomenon: the speed to be obtained with ease may be railwaypace: and when a ship mounts her gossamers she may truly be said to be ridingon the waves, or, for other's fancy, to be taking flight. The form best adaptedfor this very swift passage appears to be a bow exceedingly fine and sharp, I

with the stern very full and very capacious... .', I find that in a paper read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh in April

1837, Scott Russell had stated as one offive 'Laws of Dynamical Emersion andDiminished Resistance' that: 'At 43'8 miles an hour ... the floating bodyemerges wholly from the fluid and skims its surface.'

In a provisional patent specification of 1852, Joseph Apsey declared thenature of his invention to be as follows:

'... I make the vessel of such a breadth of beam with regard to her lengththat a vessel of about 1,000 tons burthern shall draw at her stationary loadline about eight feet of water; secondly, I incline the bottom of the vesselfrom amidships or thereabouts gradually upwards to about the load waterline at the fore-foot or bows; thirdly, the upper part of the bows are madevery much fuller or broader than steam ships are usually built; the mostapproved form, such as the wave line, may still, however, be retained in thatportion of the vessel which is immersed; the object of such a build of vessel isobviously to obtain a greater speed by reducing the resistance of the hull inpassing through the fluid in which she floats; and when a high speed be givento such a vessel by the steam power (for I wish to dispense entirely with sails)she will rise and skim entirely upon the surface of the water, drawing lessand less as her speed increases, so that the total resistance she experiencesfrom the fluid shall not increase in the usual excessive proportion throughthe submerged cross sectional area of the ship decreasing with the increaseof speed. The inclination given to her bottom will always have a tendencyto dip her at the stern, so that the draft there will slightly increase with thespeed... .'

~--~Two of the Rev. Ramus' hull-forms, with the original design of 1872 uppermost. Thestory of how an historic model of this type came to a fiery end is told in the text. The

second shows a later 'polysphenic' ('many wedged') form.

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There is no doubt that Apsey intended his craft to skim; though, like theman whose work I next describe, he underestimated the power required for alarge vessel to attain the skimming condition.

I must here remark that the men in this book seem fully as diverse incharacter and temperament as the modes of locomotion with which theirnames are linked; and few are more worthy of our veneration than the Rev.Charles Meade Ramus, who once held the living of Playden, near Rye, inSussex. In April 1872 he wrote this letter to the Admiralty:

'Some years ago, while engaging my thoughts on another subject, it becamemanifest to me that the speed of all vessels might be immensely increased bya very extensive alteration in the shape of their hulls.

'The change I propose is based on mathematical and mechanical principles,and I have long been convinced that my theory is indisputable, but not tillvery lately have I, by experiment in a small way, made actual proof of itscorrectness.

'The discovery will, I firmly believe, at least double the speed of steamvessels, and will effect a change in locomotion by sea which has never till nowbeen conceived.

'If your Lordships will only assure me that my discovery will be acknow­ledged as emanating from me, I will at once place it at the service of the publicfor the benefit of the country.'

On April 10, 1872, the following minute was written by Mr NathanielBarnaby, Chief Naval Architect of the Admiralty, and was countersigned bythe Rev. Ramus:

'Rev. Mr. Ramus has today communicated to me the plan of designingsteamships of great speed....

'It consists in forming a ship of two wedge-shaped bodies, one abaft theother.

'The object of this invention is to cause the ship to be lifted out of the waterby the resistance of the fluid at high speeds.

'The double wedge provides that while the bow is lifted by the foremostof the inclined surfaces, the stern is lifted by the after one, and these maybe so placed with regard to each other that the ship shall always keep herproper trim.'

The outcome was a series of model trials by William Froude, one of thegreatest naval architects of all. These were conducted, however, on theassumption that the full-scale vessel would be one of several thousand tons,and it was found that the speed required for such a craft to skim was so greatthat the idea was considered impracticable.

The full story of the Rev. Ramus' work did not become known until 1908,

when it was published in The Motor Boat, which had then been in existencefor four years. The tale is ofsuch remarkable interest, and is now so forgotten,that I reprint the most relevant parts. Headed 'Early Hydroplanes', it ran:

'It is some time since we published particulars of the earliest hydroplanemodels seen in this country, and at that time we referred to Mr B. Ramushaving been connected with the early experiments of his father. The outcome

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of this article was a very courteous invitation from Mr Ramus to visit him atPlayden, near Rye, Sussex, to see these models.

'We were shown the early models lying forgotten in the corner of a work­shop. Mere dusty old pieces of wood that one would pass by without thoughtexcept perhaps to chop up, never realising them to represent the earliest testsof a great invention....

'Ultimately the use of rockets was decided upon.... Thirty knots seemsto have been quite frequently obtained for a distance of a couple of hundredyards or so, and in one case over a very carefully measured distance the speedwas 72 miles per hour. ...

'Perhaps the most interesting model of all ... was used in many of thetowing experiments made in connection with the Admiralty, and it is a matterfor extreme regret that it has long since been destroyed - its end was a curiousone.

'It appears that it used to be a custom in Rye on some particular day of theyear to burn a boat. Usually, we understand, the boat was selected quiteindiscriminately from its moorings, taken into the town and converted intoa bonfire. On one occasion the townspeople took it into their heads to honourthe Rev. C. M. Ramus with their attentions. Late one night, when the lastlight was extinguished in his house, the crowd lifted and carried the model,which was lying in the grounds, away to the usual scene of the bonfire, andthus an interesting old relic was lost.'

A hardly less remarkable aspect of the Ramus story, and one of which thewriter I have quoted seems to have been unaware, is that this man stead­fastly advocated the construction of awesome weapons which he called rocket­rams. I am able to give a sketch of one such proposal. The craft was to bemade of 1 in. boiler plate and to measure 120 ft X 20 ft X 7 ft. Weighing140 tons, it was to have a propelling force of 175 tons. 'Time of propulsion'was quoted as 30 seconds, 'distance to be traversed' as 'nearly 2 miles', and

. 'final speed' as 500-700 ft per second.'Constant experiments on a sufficient scale', declared the reverend gentle­

man, 'will alone enable us to bring the new implement to perfection; butenough has already been done to show that a new weapon has been discovered,the power of which is illimitable. It will sweep away all existing navies, andwill, I trust and believe, render war at sea no longer possible.'

An impression of the mighty 'rocket ram' proposed by the Rev. Ramus about 1875.Measuring 120 ft in length, it was to weigh 140 tons.

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In Switzerland during the early 1880s M. Raoul Pictet was conductingmodel tests on Lake Geneva - 'dynamometric experiments' as Ernest Arch­deacon later termed them; and in 1883 he published a pamphlet Etudetheorique et experimentale d'un Bateau rapide. Pictet described his hull asbeing of 'parabolic form' (i.e. the bottom curved down towards the stern),and when the British Admiralty caused it to be tank-tested it was found to beconsiderably superior to the earlier Ramus models - approaching, in fact, pre­sent-day efficiencies.

It was Sir John Thornycroft's son, Mr J. E. Thornycroft, who, in 1908,first linked his father's name with that of Ramus. After mentioning theAdmiralty tests conducted by Froude he wrote:

'There is no doubt from the description and drawings of the boat's designby the Rev. C. M. Ramus ... that they were the same as the recently re­invented and re-christened hydroplanes.

'The Rev. C. M. Ramus' son, Mr B. Ramus, served an apprenticeshipto a ship-building firm, with a view to further developing the idea, but unfor­tunately was unable to do so....

'Shortly after the Rev. C. M. Ramus' proposal to the Admiralty, a patentwas taken out by Sir John Thornycroft for boats which were intended to skimin the surface water. From the patent specification it will be seen that herecognised the difficulty of a large vessel to get to the high speed required toskim, and proposed to raise the vessel to the surface of the water by blowingair under it.

The de Lambert planing craft ('glisseur') of 1907. This was a simplified departurefrom his earlier craft mentioned in the chapter on hydrofoil boats.

'One ofthe types proposed by Sir John Thornycroft was practically a two­wedged ship, the after wedge being made in such a way as to retain the air.'

Many decades were to pass before air cushions came into effective use,though in the meantime, as lighter engines became available, so were sports­men able to apply them to simple forms of hydroplane. But work on moreexotic craft continued. In an earlier chapter I have described the hydrofoilexperiments ofthe Comte de Lambert, assisted by Horatio Phillips. Severalvariants were built, but in 1907 de Lambert turned his attention to a 'simplerform' of craft which finds its rightful place here. It comprised a series of

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..

five box-like transverse floats, having punt-like 'bows' and mounted on twolongitudinal members, the spaces between the floats being open to the air attop and sides. A Serpollet steam engine with flash boiler drove an air pro­peller. With petrol engines and water screws this form of craft was to becontinuously developed until after the First World War.

When I come to deal with air lubrication I shall refer to Mr W. H. Fauber'sscheme for inducing air under his multi-stepped hydroplanes. But this appearsto have been less important to him than his particular system of stepping;and that he was considered a leading authority on stepped hydroplanes isclearly evident from early motor-boating literature. Yet like leading authori­ties who were to follow him (and had doubtless preceded him), he seems tohave had the haziest of notions concerning the antecedents of his scheme,for in 1908 we find him declaring that the stepped form of hull was un­patentable, having been patented some thirty years previously 'by a clergy­man'.

It came as one of my less-agreeable surprises that after the best part of acentury, with the stepped form of hull and float a commonplace of navalarchitecture, it should fall to me to unravel its history. And as patents areinvolved, I must go very warily indeed.

Presumptions, of course, can create utter chaos in any inquiry such as this.Yet who would doubt that Mr Fauber's Victorian clergyman was any otherthan the Rev. Ramus? But no patent in that name exists, although I havegiven the firmest evidence concerning what Her Majesty's Chief NavalArchitect declared to be the cleric's 'invention'. Sir John Thornycroft, as Ishall relate, did patent what was 'practically a two-wedged ship'. But as faras I know, Sir John was never in Holy Orders.

The stepped form of hull was nevertheless the subject of a patent dated1906, in the name of A. E. Knight, who declared:

'A navigable vessel or launch constructed according to this inventioncomprises the novel principle of forming the after part of the body, for aconsiderable portion of its length, more or less, as found convenient, in adifferent and higher longitudinal plane to that of the bottom of the fore part,the bottom of the after part, preferably, inclining in a downward directiontowards the after end, and a distinct joggle or step being formed in thebottom of the vessel, where the fore and after parts meet....

'When the vessel is travelling at a more or less high speed, the after bodywill be lifted more or less, out of the water, the bottom of same being thenabout parallel to the surface of the water, the forward body being corres­pondingly depressed - so that air is admitted between the surface of the waterand the bottom of the after body, remaining there in the form of a film of airwhich serves to support the after part of the vessel and keep same out ofactual contact with the water... .'

The Motor Boat of December 10, 1908, commented:'There seems to be no end to the number of people who have invented

hydroplanes of one kind or another, but perhaps the most unexpected of alldevelopments is an English patent that was taken out in 1906 for a type that

7°

differs in no essential particular from the "Richochets" of M. Maurice LeLas, experiments with which were, we believe, commenced some timeearlier. The inventor of this English patent is Mr A. E. Knight, engineer toLord Howard de Walden, and who will be remembered in that capacityaboard Daimler 1. ... Having seen the hydroplane design published in TheMotor Boat he called upon us last week, bringing his specification with him,and was very much surprised to learn of what had been done with the"Richochet" boats, while it was also news to him to learn of the efforts of 30years ago of the Rev. C. M. Ramus, and Sir John Thornycroft.... Thelikeness to the "Richochets", even to the double rudder, is positively startling.Yet the two were evolved absolutely independently.... Perhaps the mostastonishing part of the whole thing is that the official search ... failed toreveal any previous patents of the same nature.'

Sir John Thornycroft, who not only was a friend of Pilcher but at one timecontemplated aircraft construction himself, had this to say in 1909 concerning'skimmers' and the passage of air beneath them:

'Skimmers are near relations to flying machines... .''It is often supposed,' he added, 'that air passes under skimmers, but this

is only likely to take place when the water surface is broken. It is well knownthat a jet of water impinging on a surface, even at an acute angle, does not allpass under in the direction ofthe jet. A small part at a point near to the surfacehas its motion reversed. This reversal renders the passage of any air betweenthe jet and the surface impossible. If, however, the surface of the movingwater is broken or churned into foam, then that mixture of air and water willpass along the surface. What will be the effect of this seems uncertain, but thelate Lord Kelvin was thoroughly of the opinion that the friction of thismixture would be greater than that of solid water.'

I leave the modern hydro/aero-dynamicists to pronounce on this, remarkingonly that Lord Kelvin displayed infirmity in aerial matters, as when hedeclined to join the Aeronautical Society as hite as 1896 because he had not'the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning ...'.

Although in 1852 Joseph Apsey had declared his intention of dispensingentirely with sails, the wind-driven planing boat was nevertheless to come,and I produce this letter, dated October 1913, in evidence.

'I have noticed with interest,' wrote an American, Ernest Weltmer, fromNevada, Mo., 'the development in the last few years of the motor-drivenhydroplane, but I have seen nothing of any sail-driven hydroplanes.' Hecontinued:

'I am sure that if a cup defender is desired that will run away from anythingelse driven by the wind, a sail-driven hydroplane is what is wanted.

'About fifteen years ago my brothers and I used to sail boat races on theponds. It was too much trouble to make a hollow-hulled boat, so we fashionedours by taking a piece of lath, setting it up edgewise, fastening a piece ofshingle across one end, sloping upward forward at an angle ofabout 25 degrees,then fastening a cross-bar to a short mast which was stepped in the upper edgeof the lath near the front end, the end which bears the piece of shingle

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mentioned; to each end of this cross-bar was fastened another piece of shinglesloping upward forward at the same angle as the first. This was the hull ofthe boat. We stepped the mast in the edge of the lath just behind the cross­bar, attached a long rudder to the rear end, and when the sail was up the"boat" was ready to go. You can see that we had a rough hydroplane withoutriggers. When the "boat" sat quietly on the water it was barely afloat, butas soon as the sail began to draw it began to rise, and as soon as it had gotclear of the water it was "flying". These boats attained surprising speed.'

To illustrate the very advanced state attained by planing craft before theFirst World War I finally cite this account, headed 'Motor Craft at the Paris 'Aero Show', published by The Motor Ship and Motor Boat in December1913:

'Although primarily devoted to vessels of the air, the Paris AeronauticalSalon, opened in the Grand Palais last Friday morning by President Poincare,has some things of interest to the marine motorist. Gliding boats form aninteresting section of the exhibit. _Count de Lambert has two craft on view.One of these is the glider Flyer, with which M. Paul Tissandier a few daysago set up the world's record for the kilometre at roughly 60 miles an hour.The boat, which is propelled by a 200 h.p. I8-cylinder Gnome motor, drivingan aerial propeller by a double chain, has undergone no other change than theaddition of full seating accommodation. A smaller craft, with which M.Tissandier intends to undertake long journeys up the rivers Seine and Rhoneat the close of the Show, is driven by a Gobron 40 h.p. motor. It is interestingto note that an important business is now being done by the Lambert Co. ingliding boats with aerial propellers. The record-breaking boat has been sold­for passenger service on Lake Geneva, where a couple of these craft havebeen in regular service during the past summer. One of them is about toundertake a journey up the Nile, and many have been sold for service onSouth American rivers, where shifting bottoms make ordinary navigationdifficult. Bleriot has one example of a glider with aerial propeller. Nieuporthas a couple of these vessels, and Borel shows gliders with passenger accom­modation.'

Yet none of these truly remarkable 'gliding boats' was to achieve thecommercial success now promised by hydrofoil and air-cushion vessels, eventhough de Lambert-type craft were quite extensively used before, duringand just after the First World War. Nor was interest in them widely manifestamong the motor-boating community, for as late as 1938 one specialistjournal was describing a basically 1907 de Lambert type machine as 'novel'.This craft was operating on the Nile - and twenty-four years earlier LordKitchener had skimmed the surface waters of the Nile in a de Lambert ­Tissandier 'glisseur' capable of 50 m.p.h.

Perhaps the evidence I have adduced will at last unravel the confused andtangled history of planing craft.

72

AIR LUBRICATION

IN 1865 JOHN SCOTT RUSSELL, to whom I have already paid tribute, wrotethat 'a recurring proposal to lessen friction resistance is to pump air into thewater ahead of, around, or under a ship'; and as recently as 1960, P. R. Creweand W. J. Egginton - both prominent in the development of air-cushionvehicles - observed: 'The Hovercraft provides an engineering solution to theproblem of "air lubrication" of the boundary layer which has occupied theattention of a number of investigators and inventors for many years. It isunderstood, for example, that the earliest record at the Admiralty ExperimentWorks concerning air lubrication of ships is a letter dated November 23, 1875,from Wm. Froude to Dr B. 1. Tideman of Amsterdam commenting on thelatter's theory concerning the matter.'

Proposals and letters are, of course, welcome material in any book such asthis; but there is nothing like the record of actual achievement to give sinew;and, viewed against mere suggestions, that which I now relate appears largerthan life itself. The fact is that, even before Scott Russell was writing in1865 of 'proposals', a vessel with an unquestionably air-lubricated hull was inregular public service. That she was a ferry boat renders her no less eligiblefor a place in history which for more than a century she has been denied.

In this belief I am able to adduce the evidence of only one man, and helong since dead. Yet this man is the one, above all others, whose testimony canbe accepted, for not only was he an eminent engineer but he was Britain'sforemost consultant in his field, and his services were much in demand incases involving patent litigation.

This man was Sir Frederick Bramwell, who during r889 recalled that,while visiting America in 1863, he had seen an attempt to diminish the frictionof steamboats by blowing a film of air between the bottom and the surface.The vessel concerned was a New York-New Jersey ferry boat, and she was inservice 'for several years'. While this vessel 'went with less power applied tothe paddles' the power required to provide compressed air was just aboutequal to what was saved in driving the paddles, and 'the thing was notcontinued' .

Nine years later Sir Frederick made further allusion to this vessel, thoughascribing to his American visit a date ten years earlier than that already men­tioned. In this instance I quote him at length:

'When I was in New York, in 1853, there was a steamer plying from NewJersey to New York the real name of which I forget, but the nickname Iremember as that ofthe "Smoothing Iron" ... the steamer had a flat bottom

73

. . lIIU8traUOn of 8-melre Hydroplane btlng huilt tor tile Monaco Raee..,Til., 'tIC boR' "III carr, 100 h.p. Molor,ln the " B-metre " C1a~8,or 160 to 200 h.p. in "Chem!'ionnat de It. Mer" or tho "Inl.cmational" Races.)

Advertisement by W. H. Fauber for his hydroplanes, mentioning 'a strata of air drawnin between the water and the Hydroplane surfaces'.

Speed':-35 to 40 knots.

WORLD.IN

THE

Formcrt.,. Proprietor and Mana.cr,... Fauber" Manufacturing Company,

Chlea_o Ii. EI_in. ·111., U.S.A.

length :-15 10 20 metres.!II".lee furnished :-Hydroplane Torpedo 80all.

RACER. 8 rnelres: 100 h.p.: Speed guaranteed over 38 miles per hour!RACER. 16 melres; 600 b.p.; Speed guaranteed over 46 miles per hour I

ll)'l1ro'lpl"". C,ul,et. hulll to tlttler, "ooord!n. '0 Mon&t;o hAoOln. lhllel,

Hydroplane-5 metl'es, 15 h.p., for one 0" two persons. Price £240.. The explanation \~hy the'U FAUBER" !Iydroplanes are 50°/0 f<!sle,r thin ordinary boats oC the same- power and

I:et~hl-or why they Will make the same speed With Jess than hal( the power, IS very simple.

II} T~e Hydroplane under speed has Jess draught-the displacement of waler and frictional surface on the sides 'of the boatbelnS ~reatly reduced.

III Only ~ p~rt of th«: Hydroplane surfaces~beneath the boat are in actual contact with the water.IJl The fflctlonnl re!\lsla~ce. of th"t ~art of the Hydroplane surfaces in ·actu,,! contact with the water, is greatly redllced.

btc.\Uses a slrata of air lS drawn In b~tween the water and the HyJroplane s'JI'"fac!ls. -BrneU B.o.n.o. en France e~ i l'Etraroger.

Ihe FASTEST BOATS

DESCRIPTION.. The" FAUBE~"Hydrop!ane combines the ~esign and best features of tbe ordinarfi motor boat with new principles oC~lj~t~fl~:n~~~~t.ructlOn, produClOg the only practical H)'droplane Boat that b&:J Stabi ity, and will navigate rough water

'The great stability and smooth-running are due to several patentable features. tbe most conspicuous being the Of V ~'-shaped!-:Jltom, composed of concave h)'droplane surfaces arranged in such a manner as to give a gradual and easy line o( displacement"r' commencinR' i\t the bow, and widenin~and deepening towards

t..L9. ~~:a~~(e:~he;~~e~~itl~~~~~Jf~~k~~~'da~b~nsr,~~~_~J~e~o~.t~.!~ TI-9. 2r

c&shaped surface (Fig. -4) beneath the bow. ClltS into rough __wau.r without pounding, as flat Hydroplanes do. ~

Fit I shows tbe general (orm of the" V" conCi\ve

,=~' ~~~:~f.':de.'~;{~~~,:~~:~e;r~h~e;.lt~~~:n:~t~~i~::~;~ .~~~~~~ ness of (he" V" beneath the bow. must be adapted to the·· 'C'<--"",§._~~~~"""P'---

~ .r- Itng~hew;::~:'S~:~I~f;~1'the"FAUBER" Hydroplane - ~-=-=--~ ~~:~~a~~~ s~r~~~:~e~tL~~~i~~~'taii~~d~~ i:n:i:i~) ah~~~~ ~

tv~~~f~;~'g~~~t~iJ~ftln~ 1~~:,r w~t~fJra~~:~~~~ii~~~;;e~ ~u:~~cl~:bo~~~ opposite side, tbe surfaces on. the low side thus'This new element called" Hydroplane Stability," is not found in flat Ihdroplane surfacu- it being quite evident (rom a

~ud)' of Fi~;: ~~~b represents theu~~~~t~(erall~:~r~t~r~c;a~~~ftt.h:~Jhl~:~S~~ihii~~~~~~~~~:~e~aler beoea.th, tends to~ partially lifted out of the waler, '·ery little displacement stability ~ ."t,..

&remains-whereas tbe II FAUBER" Hydroplane has not only Jo 0 ~i;~b~~~;.t"stability, but tbe n.ew element, II Hydroplane

Even on smooth water.. flat surraces ha\'e a brutal contrct,. causing the boat 10" see-saw." and, in rough wat.er, to pound to a.

~.:.:.:..:=::::= disaJ:reeable and dan'gerous extent. , _ __ _ _

~ -=- .. __ . welr~:·:'Oa::~:::t':r,o~~~=hb:~:el~h:9;~~"o~'n':J~ ..~:9F~-=-=-- Ing" and "See-eawlng" action of flat-bottomed-.:~-- hydroplanes, la a. fault: not: 'to be fou ..d with

. the II FAUBER" H)'droplane.. ,-. The H)·droplanr. lille the Screw-propeller, invoh'es n:'lny com.plicated problems. and the present space is rar too limited.:or the uplanalion of a number or the 5pedal feature~ which combine to make the" FAUBER" Hydroplanes $0 praclicaf.

With the coming of the hydroplane the principle of air lubrication wasquickly adapted to these craft. In 1908 Mr W. H. Fauber, an American resi­dent in France, claimed as an advantage for the type of craft which he evolvedthat 'the frictional resistance of that part of the hydroplane surfaces in actualcontact with water is greatly reduced because a strata of air is drawn inbetween the water and hydroplane surfaces'. It was later claimed that 'the

75

and was provided for about two thirds or three quarters of its whole length,measured from the stern forward, with four or five very shallow strips (onecan hardly call them keels) running longitudinally, and closed at their forwardends. Into each of the channels thus made there was injected air by an airpump, under a slight pressure, only just sufficient to overcome the "head"water, and thus air travelled along the channels and escaped at the stern. Inorder to keep down the species of ebullition, there was a projecting work atthe stern which earned for the boat the name of "Smoothing Iron".

'The object of the invention was to substitute air friction for water friction.I saw it at work, but I was never on board of it, and my recollection is that Iwas told that about the same result was got out for the total horsepoweremployed as would have been obtained if none of the power had been devotedto working the air pump, and if it had all been employed to the paddles of anordinary water-skin-friction boat.'

Thereafter, as Scott Russell observed as early as 1865, came recurringproposals for schemes to lubricate hulls with air, perhaps the best-knownbeing that of the Swede Gustaf de Laval, whereby a stream of air bubbles wasforced from tubes. Some fifteen years later the American Culbertson patenteda scheme which appears similar to that declared by Sir Frederick Bramwellto have been implemented the best part of half a century earlier.

My second mention of Clement Ader's 'swing-wing air-cushion hydrofoil'(and I shall make three in all, for abundant reasons) concerns the referenceshe made to air lubrication in his 1904 patent. 'The wings and tail,' he said,'are so arranged that a body of air can be supplied to their underside, whichserves as a lubricant for diminishing or almost doing away with the adhesionbetween such surfaces and the water, thus facilitating the propulsion... .'He further proposed air lubrication for the propeller. 'For reducing thefriction of the screw propeller in the water,' he said, 'it is made with channelshaving openings on the rear side of the blades, and the propeller shaft is madetubular and communicating with the said channels at the rear end, while theforward end is open to the air. On the rotation of the propeller a suction isproduced by the water on the rear side of the blades, causing air to be drawnthrough the tubular shaft and to issue through the perforations of the channels,so as to serve as a lubricant between the surfaces of the propeller and thewater.'

Writing from the yard of a leading French boatbuilder late in 1908, M.Emile Cardon declared: 'I patented - soine months ago - a very simplearrangement, by which, without extra expense, I direct large quantities ofgas underneath the hull with beneficial use to the motor.

'I make use of the hot exhaust piping to convert water to steam, and withthis steam my apparatus discharges large quantities of gas under th;, water.

'For instance, with a 100 h.p. motor there is heat enough in the gas goingout to vaporise 35 kilos of water per hour, and this 35 kilos of steam, goingthrough my apparatus, impels about 140 cubic metres of gas under the waterper hour; just the quantity to have permanently a sheet ofgas under the hydro­plane, which diminishes the surface resistance by 80 per cent.'

74

numerous steps, in conjunction with the concave surfaces of the planes and thesystem of air tubes, introduce more air under the bottom of the boat andintroduce it at lower speeds, thus obtaining the hydroplane effect earlier'.

The Labor-Fauber hydroplane of early 1909 had eight short planes, in theform of concave steps, and seven air ducts leading from the sides of the boatto the bottom of the hull.

Work somewhat similar in nature was in progress in England at the sameperiod, involving the famous naval architect Linton Hope. Jointly with a MrRathbone, he patented in 1909 a craft contemporarily described as follows:

'At first glance the design seems to resemble the Fauber, but in reality it isnot so. In the first place, the Fauber sections are all hollow Vs, and the stepsare carried right forward; in the present design, however, the steps do notcommence until about a third of the length from forward, and in place of thehollow V, flattened aft, the ordinary form of a racing launch is retained. Thesteps simply follow the normal lines of the hull.

'Again, in profile the Fauber planes are true planes; in the Hope-Rathbone,they are given a form approximating to the section of an aeroplane wing. Atspeed, naturally, the after part of each plane only will be in contact with thewater, but it is expected that the special form will assist in lifting to the surfaceat the start, and will give the very great structural advantage ofmuch shallowersteps, without reducing the angle of the "working" part of the plane. Forthe rest, there are air tubes to prevent any drag being set up behind thesteps.'

In 1909 also the Thames Bank Wharf Motor Works built a hydroplane forLt Noel Sampson which had 'two ventilators' in the turtle deck providing airto the steps, as did 'two ventilators on each side'; and during 1913 a Mr D.Hanbury owned a Thornycroft hydroplane called Silver Heels, which hadsix large pipes, three of which were forward and led into a false bottom locatedimmediately before the step. This bottom acted 'as an air chamber'. Thethree after pipes, it was reported, led 'straight to the water'.

The state of air lubrication in respect ofdisplacement craft was summarizedthus during 1911:

'The latest development is that a provisional installation is to be fitted tothe Belgian Government's cross-channel mail steamer, La Flandre, whichhas been placed at the disposal of the inventor - a certain M. Gustave Quan­none - by the Belgian Admiralty. The inventor has been working on thescheme for over eight years and has had two full-size installations at workalready - one aboard a powerful tug and another on the Belgian HydrographicSurvey steamer, La Belgique. The trials of the latter boat proved sufficientlyconclusive to induce the Government to place a larger and faster vessel at theinventor's disposal to make further tests.... Already it has been clearlyshown that a considerable economy is possible - even when all allowance bemade for the power necessary to work the air-blowing machinery. The testscarried out on La Belgique showed something like 12 per cent coal economyfor the same speed when the air-blowing apparatus was working....

'Apart from the experiments to be conducted on a large steamer, the in-

76

ventor is stated to be considering an installation on a fast motor launch of thedisplacement type....'. It was furthe: remarked that if the tests showed that for the same consump­

tIon of fuel an lllcreased speed could be obtained, there could hardly be anygreat objection to the invention. Disadvantages suggested in the past hadbeen that the piping on, or orifices in, the vessel's skin would tend to slowthe boat and (more weighty, perhaps) that the air would form bubbles, whichwould cling to the sides of the vessel and interfere with the efficiency of thepropeller. The last suggested disadvantage, it was noted, could apparentlybe got over by arranging the piping so that the air flowed along the buttocklines, in a way, and came to the surface underneath the ship's counter andclear of the propeller.

Nor was the principle of air lubrication unknown to early subscribers toFlight, for in the issue of July 13, 1912, we read:

'If it be granted that frictional resistance depends on the body L111lIlersedin water being wetted by the fluid, it at once follows that if any means can bedevised by which the body is no longer wetted, or even if we can reduce theextent or degree of the wetting, the frictional resistance will be reduced. Onemethod is to coat the body with a smooth metallic surface such as copper,aluminium, etc, another is to coat it, so to speak, with a layer of air, thefrictional resistance then being "air-air", instead of "water-water". Someyears ago such an experiment was actually tried by Sir Frederick Bramwell,who described it as peculiar and "soda-watery", but the important point isthat the resistance was "materially" lessened.'

Thus, by virtue of his own researches, as well as the reminiscences of hisyouth, Sir Frederick Bramwell has a place in this chapter.

I have already mentioned Cdr Schwann's Avro seaplane, which had air­lubricated floats in 191 I. Other early floats having provision for air to beducted to the steps were those of the Wright 'hydro-aeroplane' displayed atthe exhibition organized by the Aero Club of America in New York duringMay 1912. A 'special feature' was the provision of three air-tubes runningvertically through each float, with the object of delivering air to each of thethree steps.

Thus, well before the First World War the Wrights had experimented withboth hydrofoils and air lubrication.

The practice of inducing air under floats was exemplified at the OlympiaAero Show of 1913, when the Grahame-White Aviation Co. Ltd exhibitedtheir oo-h.p. Hydro-biplane, the floats of which were described as follows:

'Two main floats ... are employed. A feature of their design is that thefirst half of the float is flat on the under surface while the rear portion isconcave, having a maximum camber of 4 in. Air is projected below the afterportion of the floats, so that the machine may glide the more easily over thewater, by tubes, about 2 in. in diameter, into which air is forced by miniaturescoops.'

How effective this sort of arrangement proved in practice I do not know;nor was Algernon E. Berriman, the contemporary technical editor of Flight,

77

any more knowledgeable, for when his admirable book Aviation appearedlater in 1913 he observed:

'In some stepped floats, air is admitted through a vent to the instep withthe object of "lubricating" the after section with an air film. I have no in­formation as to its efficiency.'

Writing about seaplane floats in 1918, Naval Constructor H. C. Richardsonremarked: 'Ventilation of the steps facilitates quick planing and is useful, butis not essential if there is ample reserve of power.'

And that seems to explain why air lubrication was never to become commonpractice in marine aircraft design.

In closing this chapter I must record that in 1912 a proposal was advancedfor discharging the engine exhaust 'through a series of holes in the tread ofthe step', and I find that some such scheme was implemented in America onthe Hamilton hydro-aeroplane. This was reported as providing 'a goodforced gas film and an engine silencer'.

Astonishing though it may seem, there was correspondence in the ScientificAmerican during 1905/6 discussing the 'novel idea' of air lubrication, andsuggesting experiments 'on a small scale'; and, surely, quite incredible is thefact that within recent months one great American concern has put forwardproposals for a 'radically new principle of boat hull design', virtually identicalwith that of a century earlier - and suggested for ferry service on the sameNew York-New Jersey run!

AIR CUSHIONS

IN ASSIGNING any particular scheme to the present chapter, instead of tothe former one dealing with air lubrication, I have taken as my criterion theintention to lift a craft pneumatically: that is, to induce, and more or lesscontain, a cushion of air between the craft and the surface.

Although the benign phenomenon we nowadays call surface effect, or, morecommonly, ground effect, and upon which the air-cushion craft of todaydepend, must have influenced many of the early gliding experiments, it seemsnever to have been consciously felt, even though as early as November 1901Wilbur Wright was declaring his intention of testing 'the effect of placing aflat surface just under the lower curve to see what effect proximity to theground may have had in our kite tests'.

There are, it is true, repeated references to the Wright brothers skimmingthe ground; but this was explained by Wilbur in an address delivered to theWestern Society of Engineers on June 24, 1903.

.'Fo,r the purpose of reducing the danger to the lowest possible point,' hesaId, we usually kept close to the ground. Often a glide of several hundredfeet would be made at a height of a few feet, or even a few inches sometimes.It was the aim to avoid unnecessary risk.'

The ~rst recorded utterance on the possible effect of the ground's proximityseems, III fact, to have been a negative one, although of the greatest historicalinterest. This occurred during a discussion following the address alreadymentioned. Replying to a Mr Warder, Wilbur said: 'It may be that youmisunderstood my statement in regard to my brother's experiments in lowgliding. I did not mean that he touched the ground; he kept 5 or 6 inches offthe ground. Of course now and then he made a mistake and touched theground.' This prompted the said Mr Warder to inquire: 'In these glides thatyour br~ther made close to the ground, do you not suppose there might havebeen a lIttle more pressure than at 10 or 20 feet above the ground?' To whichWilbur answered: 'I do not think there is very much difference. We havefound, by experimenting, that if you hold a surface stationary - almosttouching the ground, it will have less lift than when it is up in the air. Ingliding I do not think there will be very much difference.'

Could it have been W. R. Turnbull who first observed and recorded thebeneficial influence? It appears more than likely on the evidence of a letter,dated June 2, 1907, written by Orville Wright to Octave Chanute. Onepassage ran:

'We have received a copy of the paper by W. R. Turnbull. I think the

79

We have already noted that the principle of creating a cushion of airbetween the bottom ofthe boat and the surface ofthe water had been patentedby Sir John Thornycroft in 1877. I quote the Specification for 'An ImprovedMethod of Reducing the Friction of Vessels when Travelling on the Water'.

'According to my Invention,' declared Thornycroft, 'in order to reduce thefriction of a vessel when travelling on the water I interpose a layer or body ofair between the bottom of the vessel and the surface of the water, which air Iconfine within a cavity of the bottom of the vessel so that the air shall becarried along with the vessel over the surface of the water, and air being indirect contact with the exterior of the bottom of the vessel and with the surfaceofthe water below it. To this end the bottom of the vessel is formed with anexternal cavity into which air is forced so as to displace water from the cavity,and the air is maintained at such pressure as to keep the cavity filled, or nearlyso, with air, such air as may escape being replaced.'

--d~L-----L-----t---L=+;0 II ,1 J 1;' I

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paper quite interesting, though his different measurements do not agree veryclosely with ours. On page 301, he speaks of an increase [in] lift when thesustaining surface is brought in close proximity to an under plane. Underpractically the conditions he used for measuring, we got exactly the oppositeresult.'

Yet twenty years later ground effect was to aid the Wright's compatriotLindberg in making his solo Atlantic crossing.

Although there is no air-cushion vehicle in nature, a tangible cushioningeffect is produced over water by natural means - yet another echo of our air­and-water theme. I quote from Naval Architecture of Planing Hulls by the'American Lindsay Lord:

'When the distance between crests is around half the length of the hull, orless, a considerable air cushion operates beneath the plane ... effectivelycutting down frictional resistance. This reduction in friction is pure gain upto the point where the size of waves causes sufficient plunging to add newwetted surface plus added wave-making.'

The original drawings (1877) of Sir John Thornycroft's air-cushion hulls. The craftof near-circular plan form is shown with a semi-immersed propeller.

80

A contemporary engraving of H.M.S. Lightning, the Royal Navy's first torpedo boat.For this vessel an air-cushion hull was designed by Sir John Thornycroft and tank­

tested in model form.

The foregoing is a description of what is called today a plenum-chamberair-cushion vehicle. Two distinct forms of hull were shown in the patentdrawings. One was 'practically a two-wedged ship, the after wedge beingmade in such a way as to retain the air'. The other was of relatively conven­tional form, with a hollow bottom forming the air chamber, and resemblinga model which Sir John tank-tested as an alternative hull for the Royal Navy'sfirst torpedo boat H.M.S. Lightning, delivered in the year of the patentspecification.

Sir John described how he 'tried models intended to carry air under themin a hollow', continuing: 'This construction is favourable to high speed,for the angle of the surface rubbing on the water can be considerably reducedby the adoption of this plan, so reducing the resistance due to gravity on theincline. At the same time the friction due to air on the supporting water ismuch less than that due to water on a solid; and if the air could be cqrriedwith the model, the power required to force it under would be small, andwould only amount to that necessary to make up waste. It may be safely taken

F 81

IT

I, ,

I

that when air goes under a vessel without forcing, it will fail to give anysupport. It is evident that the air under a vessel to serve this purpose musthave a pressure above that ofthe atmosphere.' Later he added: '... in a vesselin which the support is due to air in a hollow, the centre of pressure mustcoincide with the centre of gravity of the area of the hollow. It is much moreadvantageous to have such a definite centre of support than the ever-shiftingposition ofthe centre of the lifting force due to contact with the water surface.The practical difficulties, however, to be overcome in producing a typeembodying this principle are many. Care must be taken, for instance, to avoiddisturbing the water surface by the surfaces which must surround the hollow I

containing the air. If this be not done waves will form and increase therubbing surface, besides taking up energy in their formation. With a modelthe author designed to overcome these difficulties the resistance has notproved very small, but it was observed that the wake of the model indicatedvery little disturbance of the water surface. This model was very wide andnearly circular in plan, and it skimmed at quite a low velocity. It may beinteresting to state that this form ofmodel was made in 1873. A similar modelwas towed from a launch at about 8 knots; this speed was more than sufficientto make it rise to the surface. When air was forced under it the resistancewas greatly reduced, but it was never very low. At the best it fell to a valueof about one-quarter the weight of the model. At a lower speed - about 5knots - a greater resistance was recorded.'

Models constructed and tested by Sir John Thornycroft to investigate the possibilitiesof the air-cushion. In the foreground is one representing H.M.S. Lightning, and

immediately behind is another of the same vessel designed to be lifted by air.

82

Sir John concluded: 'It has often been proposed to force air under a vesselof ordinary form, and Ericson is said to have tried this, but found it was not asuccess. In a skimmer, however, if the air can be carried with the model forthe most part, there must be an advantage in this system, and perhaps itmight also be used with advantage in very shallow vessels, not intended toskim, but having a very large surface of bottom, and not requiring the air tobe pumped against much head of water.'

Another man of massive stature in the dawning of the air-cushion age wasClement Ader, and in this third and last citation of his 1904 specification Istate his proposals fully, in his own words. 'When a cushion of compressedair,' he said, 'is retained under the wings and tail, these are made concave onthe under side, and the space thus formed is preferably divided into com­partments by suitable ribs, and compressed air is forced by pumps into thesaid cavities through conduit pipes, so that the wings and tail rest by means ofthe air cushions upon the water.'

Elsewhere Ader stated: ... 'in place of a pump a fan may be employed';and he also used the phrase ' ... the frictional contact of the water with thewings and the resulting resistance to forward motion are done away with'.

Early in 1906 semi-confidential demonstrations were given of a modelboat, broad-beamed and flat-bottomed for most of her length. It was impliedin one report that the craft was 'suspended' pneumatically and that a sizeablecraft designed along the lines ofthe model was nearing completion at 'a certainThSlmes-side yard'. There is negligible doubt that this was the boat describedby one who saw her in the Saunders yard at Goring-on-Thames as being 33 ftlong by 8 ft beam and having a bottom sloped up at the forward end. A sketchshowed that there were two sidewalls (to use current terminology) togetherwith a centre 'wall', and spaced between these were fourteen smaller walls(plates, fins or fences), all these extending the full length of the hull. Throughthe bottom of the boat between the 'plates' were a number of holes, slantedaft, and these were to be connected with 'an air compressor, fan or reservoirdriven by a motor engine'.

'The boat depends for her propulsion,' said the observer, 'on the reactionof the jets of air from the orifices striking the water. At the same time air isprevented by the fins from escaping to the sides of the boat, and so forms aspecies of air bed between the water and the bottom of the boat, upon whichthe latter rides.'

It must be noted that this was intended to be an air riding (or air-cushion)craft, and beyond all reasonable doubt it was constructed according to aBritish patent issued to F. W. Schroeder. The vessel was meant to be 'lifted'by air, and the intention was that it should 'practically slide or skate' over thewater, and not through it.

The year 1908 saw at least two air-cushion proposals advanced in GreatBritain. A patent specification of that year, describing 'Hulls, lubricating',declared that, in order to reduce the violent rise and fall of the fore part ofhigh-speed vessels in rough water, a constant supply of air was directed bymeans of a cowl into a bellows-shaped chamber, extended by springs. An air

83

Original drawings (1906) of the craft proposed by F. W. Schroeder. An actual boatdesigned on the same principle is described in the text.

valve was fitted in the upper part of the cowl shaft, compelling the air, whencompressed by the movement of the vessel, to pass out through pipes to theunder surface of the hull. The sides of the vessel would preferably projectbelow the bottom in the form of side keels to retain the air.

In another context the inventor - none other than 'Sam' Saunders himself­claimed that when the boat was at full speed the air rushing into the bellowschamber would form a cushion that would absorb shocks, and that the com­pressed air escaping would form a cushion on which the boat would ride.

Saunders-Roe Ltd are today foremost in the production of air-cushioncraft; and, although these are ofthe Cockerell 'hovercraft' variety, it is nonethe less remarkable that well over half a century ago one of the founders of thecompany should have foreseen the two great benefits offered by the air cushion- reduction of drag and a smoother ride.

Late in 1908 the design was announced of a craft following 'roughly theRicochet principle' but having an exceptionally deep step placed very farforward. The sides were boxed in, and 'the better to retain air under the boat'there were two keels forming three channels, running from step to stern. Thedesigner wished to remain anonymous, but invited correspondence addressedto 'E.G.S.' Hydroplane. And early in 1909 there was completed in Maynard'syard a hydroplane hull described as a 'distinct departure', the sides of thestep being boxed in and having a tunnel stern, the tunnel being 'worked inright from the step'. The idea was to retain as much air as possible.

I have traced yet other air-cushion craft constructed or proposed before

84

the First World War. In these it was forward motion which induced theformation of the cushion.

In June 1906 news had come from Australia of a novel form of boat which,although an experiment, was reported to have proved very successful. Acontemporary report ran: 'She is fiat-bottomed and somewhat resembles aThames punt, with an increased freeboard. Air is taken in under the bows,on which she partly floats, after the manner of an aquaplane. The form hasbeen found to give great stability, and a speed of about II miles per hour hasbeen obtained. Her length is 23 ft overall, with a beam of 4 ft, and a remark­able feature is an almost total absence of wash.'

On the same principle was a craft which became widely known in the U.S.A.as the Hickman Sea Sled, the bottom of which was concave for much of itslength with a view to 'trapping air and forming an air cushion' (I quote a 1913report). A particular advantage claimed for the cushion was that it reducedpounding.

It is instructive, after some fifty years, to cite the views of a present-dayexpert concerning the superior speed qualities of the Sea Sled. In his bookFast Boats, Mr John Teale comments:

'The reason for the increased speed is a little obscure, though it is borneout in practice. However, what probably happens is that, in calm water, theinward bow-wave formations from the two bows converge into the invertedV and become trapped under the bottom together with the air forced in by theboat's progress. The transom is flat and fully submerged. All this provides acertain amount of lift. The boat will thus rise in the water and will be ridingwith a small part of the hull actually in the water and a fairly large portion ina mixture of air and water from the trapped bow waves. Though the wettedsurface will be greater than in a conventional hard-chine boat, the wettingwill be done by this mixture rather than purely by water, with a loweredfrictional resistance effect. The faster the boat travels the greater the liftbecomes, until at some point, presumably, the craft will rise completely outof the water and rise solely on the cushion of air. It would then be a hover­craft, rather than a boat!'

Nor was the idea ofriding on an air cushion, which had been proposed andtested by Sir John Thornycroft in the 1870s, forgotten as the years went bywithin his own family and company, for in 1908 a design was prepared for ahollow-bottomed craft having an open bow for the admission of air. Certainlyin 1909 such a punt-like craft was being tested by Mr Tom Thornycroft ­and before his death he was able to recall it for the edification of BritishHovercraft constructors Britten-Norman Ltd, of Bembridge, Isle of Wight.

A patent of 1909, in the name of H. P. Dinesen, described a form of ship,under the bottom of which was a chamber filled with air and closed at thefront, back and sides. The ship was driven by an internal-combustion engine,and the invention consisted in discharging the combustion gases into thechamber so as to replace the air, which escaped during the movement of thevessel. The recess under the hull could be compartmented to diminish lossof gas when heeling. Air under pressure was supplied to the chamber when

85

The punt-like open-bowed air-cushion craft which was tested by Mr Tom Thornycroftin I909.

the ship was stationary. A form of flexible rubber skirt was also proposedfor retention of the air.

The use ofa pump or fan to force air into a chamber, which in turn s:Hppliedair to the under-surface of a flat-bottomed craft, was described in 1909 byG. F. Whitmore; and in the same year J. C. Hansen-Ellehammer proposed aform ofvessel having one or more spaces in its underside to which compressedair was supplied by 'a propeller or fan'. 'Ribs' were provided on the undersideto keep the air under the hull when in a seaway, and to act as runners on ice.

The essential feature of a patent specification of 1909, in the name of AlexHolmstrom, was a form ofpropeller; but his specification showed two of theseapplied to what Holmstrom called a high-speed boat. 'In addition to theresistance of the air being overcome', it was stated, 'air is simultaneouslyswept under one or more awnings [sic] whereby a lifting effect is produced.Thereby it is made possible, with suitable motive power in the boat, to attaina high speed not hitherto possible, with the slightest frictional resistance toair and water.'

The essence of the 'ram wing', as it is known today, was to be seen in aproposal by H. M. van Weede, advanced in 1911. 'The invention,' he said, 'ischaracterized by forming the hull of an arched shell open at bow and stern, sothat the air taken in at the larger front end of the arch will be compressed asthe boat moves forward because of the reduction in the cross sectional areaof the arch towards the rear, with the result that the boat will skim along thesurface of the water.' Van Weede showed in detail the shape of the bottom ofthe boat, and referred to 'the mass of air constantly contained in the bottomcavity, whereby the frictional resistance is materially lessened'.

The containing of air within a cavity qualifies this as an air-cushion pro­posal.

I had not expected to be able to include in this book of 'air and water' theannular-jet devices of J. Robertson Porter, but I find (and the fact appearsnot to have been recorded previously) that in 1913 this man proposed aversion capable of operating from water. Porter declared:

'This invention relates to aeronautical machines of the type in which a86

hollow pear-shaped body is enclosed within an outer parachute surface,forming with the said body an annular air channel through which air is drawnby means of a fan or propeller; there being also at the top of the machine anannular and flat or slightly curved surface disposed horizontally and formingin its centre a flared inlet communicating with the aforesaid annular airchannel.'

Porter went on to mention 'an annular hollow float, designed to affordgreater stability when the machine alights on water'.

'Before starting a flight,' he said, 'the engine is run for a while to heat theair in the hollow body, so that when the machine is free, the combined liftingeffect of the heated air and the propeller causes the machine to rise. Owing tothe assistance afforded by the heated air in the hollow body, the power re­quired to lift the machine is reduced in proportion to the size ofthe machine.'

These devices of Porter's were regarded by him as helicopters, but theyhad much in common with today's annular-jet A.C.V.s. Porter even seems tohave been conscious of ground effect. He actually employed the expression'annular jet' and described how this formed an air 'curtain'. A species offlexible skirt was also mentioned in connection with his devices - surelyamong the more remarkable of those which I have sought in this book toestablish in historical perspective.

One of the annular-jet devices of J. Robertson Porter on exhibition at Olympia in I9 I ,.The 'flexible skirt' is seen to advantage.

VISTA

JOHN JACOB ASTOR (1864-1912) was an American capitalist and iilVentor,a member of the world-renowned family. He was drowned in the Titanicdisaster.

In 1894 he published a book called A Journey in Other Worlds, a Romanceof the Future and mainly concerned with an interplanetary journey in the yearA.D. 2000. There were incidental allusions to the Terrestrial Axis Straighten­ing Company, flying machines, magnetic railways, cars (and policemen with'instantaneous kodaks'), television - and air-cushion ships. These last werecalled 'marine spiders' and had 'large, bell-shaped feet' through which 'apressure of air' could be 'forced down upon the enclosed surface of the water'.(This is suggestive of the Bertin system of 'petticoats', though the 'bells'swung backwards and forwards for propulsion.)

Astor wrote of his 'marine spiders': 'Although, on account of their size,which covers several acres, they can go in any water, they give the best resultson Mediterraneans and lakes that are free from ocean rollers, and, underfavourable conditions, make better speed than the nineteenth-century expresstrains... .'

He further relates how delegates returning from a conference boarded a'water spider' at Key West. This craft was six hundred feet long by threehundred in width, and its deck was a hundred feet above the sea. It bore itspassengers 'over the water at a mile a minute, around the eastern end of Cuba,through Windward Passage, and so to the South American mainland... .'

With this inspiring vision of what is yet to be, glimpsed in the reign ofQueen Victoria, I am content to end these excursions into the near-forgottenpast - in the sister elements of air and water.

88

\

INDEX

r:

INDEX

IIII

Ader, Clement, 51, 52, 53, 74, 83Aerial Experiment Association, 15, 16

Red Wing, 15, 16Antoinette monoplane, 16Apsey, Joseph, 66, 71Archdeacon, Ernest, 15, 16Armstrong, Lord, 44Astor, John Jacob, 88

Bacqueville de, Marquis, 13Baden-Powell, Major B., 15Banneau, M., 61Barnaby, Nathaniel, 67Barton, Dr F. A., 22, 23Becue, Jean, 3 I

Belgique, La, 76Bell, Dr Alexander Graham, 15Bernasconi, L., 51Berriman, Algernon E., 77B.G.S. hydroplane, 84Biles, Prof. J. H., 43Bleriot, Louis, 23, 72Borel,72Brabazon, J. T. C. Moore, 15Bramwell, Sir Frederick, 73, 74, 77Bristol Aeroplane Co., 39British and Colonial Aeroplane Co.,

39Britten-Norman Ltd., 85Brown, J. Pollock, 24Burney, Lt C. D., 39, 40

Cardon, Emile, 74Cayley, Sir George, 41Chanute, Octave, 19,37, 79Charpentier flying boat, 34Charron, M., 60, 61Churchill, Winston, 28Clark, C. H., 61Clark, Josiah, 5 I

91

Cockerell, Christopher, I I, 84Cody, S. F., 42Colliex, Maurice, 32, 33Conchis and Hemsen, 45Cooper-Hewitt, Peter, 42, 59, 60Crewe, P. R., 55, 56, 73Crocco, A., 31, 32, 36, 57, 58Culbertson, 74Curtiss, Glenn, 15, 34, 35, 36, 37

June Bug, 27Loon, 27, 28

Daily Mail cross-channel prize, 16Dante, 13Delacombe, Colonel Harry, 16Denny, William, and Brothers, 24Dinesen, H. P., 85Donnet-Leveque flying boat, 37

Egginton, W. L., 73Emery, C. E., 51Enghien, Lake, 23, 24

Fabre, Henri, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33Farcot, Emmanuel, 50Farman biplanes, 32Fauber, W. H., 58, 70, 75, 76Ferber, Captain, 16, 44Forlanini, Prof. Enrico, 21, 31, 32,

55, 56, 58, 61Foudre battleship, 34Franklin, Benjamin, I I

Froude, William, 29, 43, 67, 73

Gabardini flying boat, 34Gallaudet, 20Gammeter Orthopter, 24Gibbs-Smith, Charles, 41, 53Gnosspelius, Oscar T., 35

Grahame-White Aviation Co. Ltd.,77

Guidoni, Gen. A., 31, 32, 36, 39Gyrinus,62

Hamel, Gustav, 17Hamilton, Charles Keeney, 26Hamilton hydro-aeroplane, 78Hanbury, D., 76Handley-Page, F., 38Hansen-Ellehammer, J. c., 86Hargrave, Lawrence, 14, 20, 21, 22Hayward, Leslie, 58Helmholz, von, 42Hickman, 85Hodgson, J. E., 41Holmstrom, Alex, 86Holt-Thomas, E., 30Hope-Rathbone, 76Humphreys Waterplane, 27

Jamestown Exhibition, 24, 26Janin, L. and M., 51Joue de, Resnier, 13

Kelvin, Lord, 71Keuka, Lake, 15Kipling, Rudyard, 45, 46, 47Kitchener, Lord, 72Knight, A. E., 70, 71Kress, Wilhelm, 15, 19

Labor-Fauber hydroplane, 76Lakes Flying Company, 16Lambert, Comte de, 53, 54, 55, 69,

70 ,72

Langley, Prof. S. P., 14-15Latham, Hubert, 16Laval, Gustav de, 74Lein of Perreux, 44Levavasseur, Leon, 16,44Lightning, H.M.S., 81, 82Lilienthal, Otto, 42, 43Lindberg, 80Linton Hope, 76Lord, Lindsay, 80Lorraine, Robert, 17Ludlow, Israel, 26

Maxim, Sir Hiram, 48, 51Maynard's yard, 84Meacham, Larned, 58Meacham, William M., 58Michigan Steel Boat Co., 47, 48

Flying Fish, 47, 48Miranda III, 62, 63Morrison, Abraham, 65Morrison, J., 61Mouillard, L. P., 13-14Moy, Thomas, 41, 50Mumford, E. H., 24Mutti, Antoine, 42, 58, 59

Napier, G. R., 56Napier, G. W., 51Nieuport, 72Nissen, Peter, II-I2

Noll, H. J., 55

Obus-Nautilus, 45

Parseval, Major August von, 27, 28Penaud, Alphonse, 19,20Phillips, Horatio Frederick, 53, 54,

58,69Pictet, Raoul, 69Pilcher, Percy, 43Porter, J. Robertson, 86, 87Puydt de, Albert, 56

Quannonne, Gustav, 76

Radley-England waterplane, 38Ramus, Rev. Charles Meade, 66, 67,

68, 69, 70, 71Rathbone, 76Ravaud, Roger, 26, 48, 49Rawnsley, Canon, 17Rawson, F. L., 22, 23Reeve, S. A., 58Ricaldoni, 0., 57, 58Richards, J., 64Richardson, Cdr. Holden C., 24, 64,

78Roe, A. V., 17, 35, 36Rust, Rev. E., 44

Santos-Dumont, Alberto, 44, 45, 51,59,60,61

Saunders, Capt. H. E., 65Saunders, S., 47, 48, 83, 84Schroeder, F. W., 83, 84Schwann, Cdr Oliver, 17, 35, 77Scott Russell, John, 42, 65, 66, 73,74Short brothers, 38Silver Heels, 76Simpson, L. E., 57Smoothing Iron, 73, 74Sopwith, Sir Thomas, 47Squier, Major George 0., 42Stanfield, John, 5 I

Steele, J. E., 47Surrey Canal, 50

Teale, John, 85Tetard, M., 51Thames Bank Wharf Motor Works,

28,76Thompson, W. P., 58Thornycroft, Sir John, 43, 62, 65,

69, 70, 71, 80, 81, 82, 83

Thornycroft, J. E., 69Thornycroft, Tom, 85, 86Tideman, Dr. B. 1., 73Tissandier, 51, 72Tout, L. R., 62Turnbull, W. R., 79Turner, C. C., 17

Vagabond, 61Vickers-Armstrongs (Engineers) Ltd.,

44Vigo, Guiseppe, 55da Vinci, Leonardo, 13Voisin, Gabriel, 16, 22, 23, 24, 28,

32, 33, 34, 42

Wakefield, E. W., 16, 17, 18Warder, 79Weede van, H. M., 86Weltmer, Ernest, 71Whitmore, G. F., 86Wilson, W. G., 43Wright brothers, 19, 24, 25, 37, 53,

77,79

Sampson, St. Noel, 76Maggiore, Lake, 56 Sanderal, M. de, 51

92 93