The Radley-England Waterplane was a twin-hulled flying boat with a parasol-mounted biplane wing. The wing was of four-bay biplane construction with ailerons fitted to the top wing only. A single horizontal stabiliser and elevator with twin balanced rudders mounted below it were carried on four wire-braced booms behind the wing. It was powered by three 50 hp (37 kW) Gnome Omega rotary engines arranged in line above the wing centre section, each connected by a roller chain to a long shaft at the rear of which was a four-bladed propeller 9 ft 10 in (3 m) diameter. To protect the occupants from the oil thrown out, the front engine was partially enclosed by an aluminium cowling.
A number of successful flights were made at Huntingdon in April 1913 with Gordon England at the controls,[1] using a temporary wheeled undercarriage. It was then taken to Shoreham for further trials. During these England ran over a buoy when landing, tearing the bottom out of one of the hulls.
The aircraft was subsequently rebuilt in a modified form. The flat bottomed hulls were replaced with a pair of clinker-built hulls made by the South Coast Yacht Agency of Shoreham, each with a pair of tandem cockpits; the Gnome engines were replaced by a single 150hp Sunbeam 150hp water-cooled engine driving a slightly smaller propeller and wing area was increased by slightly increasing the span of the upper wing.