Waterbird’s Story

With full-page coloured illustrations throughout, Waterbird’s Story is written for children aged 7 years and older. The book introduces the true story of Captain Wakefield’s Waterbird, which was the first floatplane to fly in Britain in 1911. The story leads on to the following years at Windermere including Waterbird’s successor Waterhen, the Royal Naval Air Service base at Hill of Oaks in 1916 and the Sunderlands at White Cross Bay during the Second World War.

The build and annual flights from 2022 of the Waterbird replica complete the book, which includes puzzle pages relating to the illustrations and words.

Lavishly illustrated by local artist Ursula Hurst, and written by Anne Hughes and Ian Gee, the book features Mergie, a merganser duck who is an observer of all those years, appearing throughout and imagining himself as the star.