On the south coast of England, Southampton is well-known
for its transatlantic ocean liners. But, in the late Thirties,
and later the early post-war years, the area was renowned
for luxurious flying boats that matched the liners in almost
every respect, with the added advantage of being a faster
means of travel, if you could afford the fare! Catering
was prestigious 'silver service' and long haul flights were
often restricted to daytime flying with overnight stops
en-route at first class hotels.
Flying mostly
over water, the view from the observation ports on the promenade
deck was said to be spectacular at a cruising height of
1,000 feet or less. But what brought this novel means of
transportation into being in the first place? General unreliability
of aircraft engines at the time was probably one of the
reasons (it was safer to ditch on water and be towed into
port if an engine failed) and, of course, lack of suitable
runways in many parts of the world for large long-distance
aircraft. The 'free' availability of 'water runways' across
the globe solved these problems at a stroke.
Much earlier,
in 1919, Supermarine had made several attempts to introduce
a flying boat service from Southampton to Bournemouth, and
even Le Havre on the other side of the channel, but each
service was discontinued after only a short time. No further
commercial attempts were made until a Supermarine subsidiary
company (The British Marine Air Navigation Company - BMANC
- jointly owned with Southern Railway) opened a weekly service
to the Channel Islands and Cherbourg. This service operated
until 1929 using Supermarine Sea Eagle flying boats.
1924 saw four
small British airlines: Instone Airlines, Daimler Airways,
Handley Page Air Transport and the aforementioned BMANC,
join forces after the British Government offered a £1m subsidy
for them to merge into a single national airline and so,
in March of that year, Imperial Airlines (IAL) was born.
IAL made little impact on the international scene for the
next ten years until the Government announced the 'Empire
Air Mail Scheme' with Southampton and flying boats an important
part of this strategy. The cost of the venture was underwritten
by the Board of Trade with a hearty subsidy being paid to
Imperial Airways.
A typical
scene in the late 1940s as this flying boat
gradually gains height.
The
following year (1935) IAL commissioned Shorts to design
and deliver 28 Imperial (Empire) 'C' class flying boats
to replace their aging fleet of landplanes. Each flying
boat was given a name beginning with 'C' and the new aircraft
were to carry a cargo of mail and passengers in splendid
luxury. In July 1936, the first Empire flying boat 'Canopus'
emerged from Short's Seaplane Works at Rochester on the
Medway. Forty-two Empire flying boats were built by May
1940 (the last being 'Cleopatra') and consisted of thirty
one S23, eight S30 and three S26 'G'. An S25 variant later
entered service with the RAF as the legendary 'Sunderland'.
The Empire Air
Mail Service operated between Southampton, Durban in South
Africa, India and Sydney, Australia - later to Auckland,
New Zealand until 1950, but was suspended for the duration
of the Second World War. Routes were also opened to Alexandria,
Singapore and Hong Kong, as well as other outposts of the
old British Empire.
Flying boat operations
were initially run from Berth 101 in Southampton Western
Docks, later moving to a new terminal at Berth 108. IAL
also rented Supermarine facilities at Hythe on the western
shore of Southampton Water for use as a maintenance base
until the service was axed in November 1950. Today the buildings
at Hythe remain, as does some of the old terminus in the
Western Docks. To
be concluded.
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