For almost 50 years businessman, designer and inventor Walter Davies kept a remarkable scrapbook.
One of Wallie's hydrogliders at Ironbridge in July 1937, with famous coracle man Harry Rogers in attendance. Three Black Country friends took it on a holiday trip from Gloucester to Shrewsbury, but didn't quite reach the county town because of the weir.
And when speed king and national hero Donald Campbell set a new world water speed record in 1955, Wallie – this seems to have been his preferred spelling – was able to point out the similarities in the design of Campbell's famous Bluebird to the first hydroglider he had built, fully 34 years beforehand.
Nevertheless he has researched information about Walter online for the purposes of describing it for sale, and added one or two snippets extracted from within the scrapbook itself. For Wallie, all that was a given, and what he would instead highlight was the benefits of being able to operate in shallow water and having no underwater propeller to be fouled by weeds.
However, he said:"I think it is interesting that an idea which I designed so long ago, and which the Admiralty scoffed at, should now be used to set up a world water speed record." He first showed an interest in aeronautics at the age of 19 when he was awarded first prize by Birmingham Model Aero Club for the most original model.
The Express and Star's motoring correspondent Norman Ryder is given a ride at Stourport on May 2, 1928, on the day Wallie set a speed record of 35mph for a baby hydroglider. Waving his stopwatch to the group watching from the bank, he shouted:"I've done it. The record is beaten by 3mph." An early design in the shadow of the Jackfield Free Bridge during an eventful trip on the flooded River Severn in 1923.
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