FLYING BOATS

The motor launch ferried us across the tranquil waters of Lake Naivasha in Kenya. Giraffe browsed from flat topped thorn trees, while hippopotami occasionally broke the lake surface with characteristic snorts, before subsiding again, to leave their ears and inquisitive eyes visible to our passage

- JEFFERY KEMPSON

FURTHER OUT ON THE LAKE, a large moored four-engine Short Solent flying boat’s shining metal hull and wings gleamed in the bright sunlight.

The aircraft had an upper and lower deck, with a small cocktail bar on the lower deck, near the boarding entrance. The fuselage was divided into ship-like communal cabins, with four on the lower deck, and two on the upper. All thirty-nine passenger seats were large, comfortable, and upholstered in luxurious green leather.

Uniquely, the aircraft also contained a viewing promenade enabling passengers to stand at large side windows and gaze down onto vistas of wild game and other passing spectacles.

Being unpressurised, the cruising altitudes were in the region of nine to ten thousand feet, at a speed of about one hundred and eighty knots.

We disembarked from the large launch and entered the door of the impressive flying boat. Once the passengers were boarded and seated, each of the four Bristol Hercules radial engines were started.

Then the mooring was cast off and the aircraft began to taxi across the water. The seat pocket ahead of me bore the logo of BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation), the successor to Imperial Airways. Below this the company moto read; “We take good care of you.”

The engines were then individually run at higher power as their magnetos were checked as well as other performance parameters, and the variable pitch propellers exercised.