aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont built a similar catamaran vessel for testing an aircraft engine in 1907, which he termed a hydrofoil. The Tellier brothers, French aviation pioneers, made major steps towards modern airboats with their 1907 speedboat La Rapière II (Rapier II). La Rapière II was an long mahogany speedboat powered by a partially above water aircraft propeller hooked up to a 20 hp 4 cylinder Panhard-Levassor engine. The boat was steered by a conventional rudder in the water, which was hooked up to a ship's wheel. La Rapière II could achieve speeds of up to with two people on board and with 3-4 people on board. In France Jacques Schneider, of Schneider Trophy fame, developed and experimented with his own multi-passenger brand of airboat circa 1913–1914. Early airboats The first airboats to see any real use date to 1915. The British Army used airboats, which they referred to as Lambert "Hydro-Glisseurs", in the Mesopotamian Campaign of the First World War. These "Hydro-Glisseurs" were small, flat-bottomed hydroplanes with metal-clad wooden hulls propelled by a large aircraft fan that allowed them to reach speeds of up to . They were primarily used for reconnaissance on the Tigris River. The first of these airboats, HG 1 Ariel, was constructed using the engine and propeller of a wrecked Royal Australian Air Force Farman MF.7 biplane and was provided to the forces in Mesopotamia by the British Raj. Following Ariel's successful deployment in the campaign upriver to Kut in 1915–1916, Britain ordered seven purpose-built airboats from Charles de Lambert's eponymous company De Lambert. Eight of these vessels were in operation in 1917, increasing to nine by the 1918 Armistice. A dedicated repair slipway for these boats was built at the Motor Repair Dockyard in Baghdad, indicating both their importance to the British war effort and the difficulty of maintaining them. Following the war, Lambert airboats were used as ferries on the shallow waters of the upper Yangtze River, on the Huangpu River, and elsewhere. Like their military counterparts, these airboats were manufactured in France, though they were assembled in Shanghai. They had drafts of only seven inches and could cruise at up to . Lambert airboats were also used widely on the upper Missouri River and on the marshes of the Florida Everglades. Farman Aircraft, the company that built the engines for the WWI military airboats, began producing civilian airboats in the 1920s. It