Seems to have been written by Archie Fisher and recorded by Bill Staines. ^^

BILL HOSIE

Bill Hosie built a plane,
A survivor from the Schneider Trophy Reign.
He seemed like a nice old guy,
With his baseball cap and his sunlit eyes.
He took the airframe, motor, and wings,
And restored all the fabric, the floats, the struts and things,
And "The Shark on Banana Skis"
Was set to roar once more over Cornwall seas.

In the "27" Schneider race,
It was a Supermarine that took first place.
The year Bill Hosie was born,
There were still tall ships sailing 'round Cape Horn,
But the S5 Supermarine
Was the fastest seaplane the world had ever seen,
Nearly 300 miles an hour,
With a Napier Lion engine to give her power.

And her daughters flew in World War Two.
Their pilots were known as the first of the few.
When the Battle of Britain raged,
The Spitfire blazed across a history page,
But Bill Hosie had a dream
To haunt the skies with the ghost of a Supermarine,
And she rose on the steppe again
With the spirit of a Schneider Trophy-winning seaplane.

She took to the cool spring air
With Bill Hosie sitting in the pilot's chair.
She banked along the Cornwall shore,
But her tail broke away and she flew no more.
She flew from her flight of grace
The year they revived the Schneider Trophy Race,
And the Supermarine S5
Was the plane that Bill Hosie made feel alive.

Words and music by Archie Fisher,
© Archie Fisher/MCPS

Lineation changed to emphasize the rhyme. --JoeClone, 11-Feb-03.