Page 51 - South Issue 12

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of his early
career was his first
steam launch, The Flying
Dutchman, which at one point was
declared the fastest boat on the river Thames.
He reached the grand speed of 17.4 MPH in it.
But his most famous invention was a new lightweight
hull which was made by sewing together layers of
plywood with copper and interspersed with layers of
canvas. His famous boat made using this method was
called The Consuta, which means sewn together. It
was not only used as the umpire boat at Henley Royal
Regatta for many years and also as the starting boat
for the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race too.
His business was growing fast and so he moved
to a larger boat shed near Goring Mill and then
commissioned Percy Stone to design a rather grand
showroom by Goring Bridge, which was opened in
1894. The building still stands
today and is now the post office, which
is where the blue plaque is located.
By 1906, he had turned his attention to speedboats
and decided to move the business closer to the sea.
And so from Goring, the business moved to Cowes
on the Isle of Wight where he built his first consuta
style fishing boat. Its success attracted the attention
of Sir Edwin Alliott Verdon Roe, aircraft designer and
manufacturer (Avro). In 1928 he invested in Saunders’
company, henceforth known as Saunders-Roe (Saro).
Famous Saro products over the years were the flying
boats Saro Cloud (1930) and Saro Princess (1952), the
Saro Skeeter helicopter (1951), the SRN4 hovercraft
(1967) and Sir Malcolm Campbell’s speedboat
Bluebird (1937). Sam Saunders himself died in 1933
but his remarkable legacy has flourished in various
reincarnations and mergers: as the British Hovercraft
Corporation it was later taken over by Westland in
1959 and in 1994 by GKN Aerospace.
Samuel died in 1933 and his plaque was unveiled in
September 2013.