Bill Hosie

Bill Hosie built a plane, a survivor from the Schneider Trophy Reign.

He seemed like a nice old guy, with his

baseball cap and his sunlit eyes.

He took the airframe, motor, and wings,

and restored all the fabric, the floats, the

struts and things

And "The Shark on Banana Skis" was set

to roar once more over Cornwall seas.

In the "27" Schneider race, it was a

Supermarine that took first place.

The year Bill Hosie was born, there were

still tall ships sailing 'round Cape Horn,

But the S5 Supermarine was the fastest

seaplane the world had ever seen,

Nearly 300 miles an hour with a Napier

Lion engine to give her power.

And her daughters flew in World War

Two, their pilots were known as the first

of the few.

When the Battle of Britain raged, the

Spitfire blazed across a history page,

But Bill Hosie had a dream to haunt the

skys with the ghost of a Supermarine

And she rose on the steppe again with the

spirit of a Schneider Trophy-winning

seaplane.

She took to the cool spring air with Bill

Hosie sitting in the pilot's chair.

She banked along the Cornwall shore, but

her tail broke away and she flew no more.

She flew from her flight of grace the year

they revived the Schneider Trophy Race

And the Supermarine S5 was the plane that

Bill Hosie made feel alive.