Mersey Aeroplane Co.

Around May 1912, R. C. (Robert Cooke) Fenwick and S. T. Swaby purchased rights to Plane Ltd.'s latest monoplane, for which they were the designers and constructors, and formed Mersey Aeroplane Co. to build that monoplane in space leased from Planes Ltd. at Freshfield.

Mersey Aeroplane Co. started with the new Planes Ltd. all-British 2-seater experimental military monoplane, now known as the Mersey monoplane. Its features included a 45hp Issacson motor clamped to the front with the shaft-driven propeller mounted behind the nacelle on the top tail boom, thus presenting a clear field of view in which to fire a gun straight ahead or in any direction through an arc of about 200 degrees While being flown by its designer and constructor, R. C. Fenwick, at the War Office trials at Salsbury in August 1912, the craft inexplicably went from a controlled dive into a vertical drop, crashing and killing both pilot and passenger. Despite the fact that the judges at the competition found that the aeroplane was the only one at the trials to have fit the design requirements of actual war, no contracts for the aircraft appear to have followed, and no more aircraft appear to have followed.

We can establish there was a Mersey monoplane, and there is some indication that there were two: 1912FM515 (9 June 1912) mentions that a considerable amount of flying had been done by the Mersey all-British nonoplane during the last fortnight; yet 1912FM756 (17 Aug 1912), reported that before the fatal accident to Fenwick, the Mersey aeroplane had made only two previous ascents, which would be only possible if it was not the craft flown in May and June 1912.

Sources

• Gunston, 1993, p201
• Gunston, 2005, p310
• SD197
• 1912FM448, 479, 515, 638, 756; 782, 1130
• 1913FM204
• 1914FM349
• 1917FM451
• BAS Plate XXXVI

Names	Mersey Aeroplane Co.
Country	Great Britain
City	Freshfield, Formby, Merseyside, England.
Affiliations
Keywords
Started aero	1912
Ended aero	1912
Key people	Robert Cooke Fenwick, S. T. Swaby
Wikidata id