Seaport or airport? Poole can do it all.

Watching boats glide across Poole Harbour, it’s hard to imagine the waters doubling up as a runway. But high-speed take-offs and landings were a standard sight – as normal as launches and dockings – during the 1940s and 50s.

The famous flying boats splash-landed in Poole, connecting Britain with countries across the globe. Flights from Hong Kong and Australia could take four to five days.

For around 8 years in the 1940s flying boats made Poole the centre of world travel, BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation) established itself in Poole harbour and later became British Airways.

Come Fly With Me

VIPs who travelled on the flying boat service from Poole included comedian and singer George Formby and his wife, Beryl, on trips to entertain the troops, and hangman Albert Pierrepoint who was travelling to Gibraltar to execute two spies.

They also transported mail from troops and prisoners of war and were employed in the
‘Mercy Flights’ to repatriate British POWs from East Asia at the end of the war.

Audio Transcript

A friend of mine worked for Imperial Airways and they said come so I went over to Poole and I joined them and that suited me fine because I love being out of doors.

You had your coxswain who taught you how to sling lines and how to drive a boat in. It all sort of seemed to come naturally, you know. You did it. But I did do some work on the passenger launches, which were longer and had cabins on them, you know.

But somehow I was one of those people that one bit of cold, dusted to hit me, you know? So I was always on the what they call the riggers boat. And that was when I had to take the engineers out to the aircraft and to sort the engines out and or we had to change the buoys. I might have to tear an aircraft to another buoy. Or you put a line on the stern of the aircraft and you had to pull it round, so it was against the tide, you know. Tie it up to another buoy. It was all great fun.

Poole Pottery was our headquarters and there was a pub up the road - it was the Riggers Loft really there, part of the pump we used.

You did a 12 hour shift. You had to be on at 6:00 in the morning. And we can leave at 6:00 at night or 6.00 in the evening and leave at 6:00 in the morning. It depended what time the aircraft were coming in you see.

It's surprising the trips they did, especially down to West Africa. Down to the Mediterranean or Gibraltar, and they would bring the servicemen back. Bill Montgomery, who's always very good. He used to bring us back bananas. And then we went up to Pembroke Dock. We had people like Vera Lynn coming in. We were only out there for two or three months. Because we had to leave Poole Harbour clear. There are a lot of MTBs before we left and lots of landing craft. It was really building up for D-Day.