Saro Cutty Sark

The Saro A.17 Cutty Sark was a British four-seat amphibian flying boat built by Saunders-Roe in the interwar years and named after the clipper ship. It was a shoulder-winged monoplane with an all-metal hull and plywood-covered wings, and its two engines sat on pylons above the wing, where they could easily be changed on the water. Customers fitted a variety of engines, among them 104 horsepower Cirrus Hermes and 120 horsepower de Havilland Gipsy II units, and a detachable wheeled axle let the boat be beached. It was the first new design to reach quantity production at Saunders-Roe after the 1929 renaming of the firm, and it led directly to the larger A.19 Cloud and the A.21 Windhover. Only twelve were built and none lasted long in service, yet they flew for users in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, China, Japan and the Dominican Republic.