In the mid to late thirties the pinnacle of gracious travel was to take a trip in one of the brand new luxury flying-boats. Air travel was only just beginning to grow up, and with the lack of proper airfields and tarmac surfaces to land on, the flying-boat was a very popular form of air transport, able to land almost anywhere and allowing large, heavily-laden aircraft to use as much take-off space as they needed.

The popularity of the newships in the sky, and the resultant shrinking of the world gave birth to a variety of new airlines with such diverse names as Servico Aereo Condor, Pacific Marine Airways, Kohler Aviation's Milwaukee Detroit Airline, and of course Pan American Airways.

In England Imperial Airways launched their fleet of Empire Line Flying-boats boasting the very last word in elegant and modern travel. These innovative aircraft from Short Brothers of Rochester, the world's first ever aircraft manufacturing company and builders of the Wright Flyer in England, were the first aircraft built with two decks. They offered spacious accommodation for their twenty-four passengers, and a gross five ton payload of passengers, freight and mail, although their eighteen ton fully loaded un-braced monoplane hulls would need all the space of an open sea-way to operate from. Passenger comfort was so important on board the big boats that Imperial Airways even researched and patented their own passenger seat which they named the Imperial Airways Adjustable Chair, manufactured by Accles and Pollock and weighing in at only 18 lbs (just over 8 kilos).

The whole trip with Imperial Airways had the air of the de-luxe, with the passengers being taken in comfort from Waterloo station in a special pullman parlour car right to the docks at Southampton, where they were conveyed by motor launch to the Empire Line Flying-boat gently riding the waves in Southampton Water. The ground-breaking design of the Short Brothers' Empire Boat was born out of plans to launch a flat-rate air mail service throughout the Empire, and the new plane was so good that twenty-eight were ordered straight from the drawing-board.

By the end of 1937 all twenty-eight of the big Boats with their 800 mile range, powered by four Bristol Pegasus 920hp engines, were in service and several of them regularly ran on the England-Australia route in a series of easy stages, flying by day and covering the journey in a little over a week. This was fast travel indeed in those days, with the planes sometimes achieving 200mph, but the air of luxurious relaxation was still maintained, with passenger comfort, quality of cuisine and level of steward service still of paramount importance; Imperial Airways regularly served six and seven course dinners in the air!

There was a midships cabin for six passengers behind the kitchen, and a promenade cabin housed a further eight passengers below a loft for bedding stowage. Cocktails were always available and the well-heeled passengers could expect personal service from their cabin stewards. No detail was overlooked in providing the very best for the new air travellers, whether on board the aircraft in the form of food and comfort, or in the special support services used to ensure the smooth running of the whole experience. Imperial Airways even provided a fleet of 60 sea-going motor launches powered by twin 100 hp engines with a respectable 35 knots top speed as mobile control vessels.

In America Pan American Airways launched their famous Clipper service using the huge Boeing 314 flying boats, but to the American speed of travel was of prime importance, and Pan American never quite matched Imperial Airways for luxury and opulence. There was no telling how far the Empire service might have gone or how big the Flying-boats would become, there were already plans for bigger and faster Flying-boats projected for 1940, when the Second World War intervened.

Suddenly the world was a different place. Imperial Airways' demise in 1940 and its replacement by BOAC saw the end of the special Empire Style of luxury air travel. Seventeen of the S23 Empire flying-boats were used by BOAC on the East Africa - Australia route with all their luxury fittings removed for extra seating, while the rest of the Empire flying-boats were used as troop carriers and formed the nucleus of the Royal Australian Air Force. A mere thirteen of the entire Imperial fleet of S.23, S.30 & S.33 flying-boats survived the war, only to be sent straight to the breakers yard, although when BOAC later replaced their remaining converted military Sunderlands they sold them to Aquila Airways for regular services to the Mediterranean.

The last ever flying-boat operated out of Britain in 1958, for the rapid advances in facilities for land-based aircraft necessitated by the war; the building of proper long tarmac runways for the heavy bombers, coupled with the high running costs of operating a sea-based service which had a relatively low return per operating mile, meant that the days of the big flying-boats were numbered. The necessary speed of evolution of technology demanded by the war, and the changed world in which Britons found themselves in those post war years - the years of austerity and the continuation of rationing - all meant that the rich leisured sky traveller had become a thing of the past and the big luxury flying-boat had become redundant.

Whether you enjoyed flying Clipper Cruises as advertised by Pan American Airways or flew in perfect comfort as an Imperial Airways brochure of the period promised, you were certainly experiencing a very special type of travel, very much of its own time. A world encapsulated in that particular between-the-wars era that would never be seen again, where the romance of travelling by luxury flying-boat would be looked back on with nostalgia even by those too young to have known them. The world of Jeeves and Wooster, bright young things and the Orient Express.