Major Oscar Theodor Gnosspelius (10 March 1878 - 17 February 1953) was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 civil engineer

Civil engineer

A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering; the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructures while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing infrastructures that have been neglected.Originally, a...

 and pioneer seaplane

Seaplane

A seaplane is a fixed-wing aircraft capable of taking off and landing on water. Seaplanes that can also take off and land on airfields are a subclass called amphibian aircraft...

 builder.

Gnosspelius was born at Brookfield House, Maghull

Maghull

Maghull is a town and civil parish within the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton, in Merseyside, England. The town is located eight miles north of the City of Liverpool and south of Ormskirk in West Lancashire. The area of Moss Side also contains HM Prison Kennet and Ashworth Hospital. Maghull had a...

 on 18 March 1878 the only son of Adolf Jonathan Gnosspelius.. He was educated in Bedford

Bedford

Bedford is the county town of Bedfordshire, in the East of England. It is a large town and the administrative centre for the wider Borough of Bedford. According to the former Bedfordshire County Council's estimates, the town had a population of 79,190 in mid 2005, with 19,720 in the adjacent town...

 and later was to study civil engineering

Civil engineering

Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including works like roads, bridges, canals, dams, and buildings...

 at the City and Guilds Central Technical College

City and Guilds of London Institute

The City and Guilds of London Institute is a leading United Kingdom vocational education organisation. City & Guilds offers more than 500 qualifications over the whole range of industry sectors through 8500 colleges and training providers in 81 countries worldwide...

 in South Kensington

South Kensington

South Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London. It is a built-up area located 2.4 miles west south-west of Charing Cross....

. Between 1899 and 1902 he was an apprentice to civil engineer Sir Douglas Fox

Charles Douglas Fox

Sir Douglas Fox was a British civil engineer.-Early life:Douglas was born in Smethwick, Staffordshire, the oldest son of Sir Charles Fox and had two brothers and a sister. Sir Charles was a civil engineer and had designed, amongst other things, The Crystal Palace in Hyde Park...

. After working at a quarry in Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 he spent time in Transvaal and Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

 carrying out land surveys, by 1908 was in Angola

Angola

Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city...

 working on a railway survey.

In 1910 he failed to make his Bleriot

Louis Blériot

Louis Charles Joseph Blériot was a French aviator, inventor and engineer. In 1909 he completed the first flight across a large body of water in a heavier-than-air craft, when he crossed the English Channel. For this achievement, he received a prize of £1,000...

-like monoplane

Monoplane

A monoplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with one main set of wing surfaces, in contrast to a biplane or triplane. Since the late 1930s it has been the most common form for a fixed wing aircraft.-Types of monoplane:...

 fly but in 1912 he had success when he designed his first seaplane, the Gnosspelius No. 2. During the first world war he was commissioned in the Royal Naval Air Service

Royal Naval Air Service

The Royal Naval Air Service or RNAS was the air arm of the Royal Navy until near the end of the First World War, when it merged with the British Army's Royal Flying Corps to form a new service , the Royal Air Force...

, later Royal Air Force

Royal Air Force

The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...

 and was employed on the inspection staff. Between 1918 and 1925 he worked in the test department at Rochester for Short Brothers

Short Brothers

Short Brothers plc is a British aerospace company, usually referred to simply as Shorts, that is now based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Founded in 1908, Shorts was the first company in the world to make production aircraft and was a manufacturer of flying boats during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s...

 the seaplane builders. During his time at Shorts he designed an ultralight

Ultralight aviation

The term "ultralight aviation" refers to light-weight, 1- or 2-person airplanes., also called microlight aircraft in the UK, India and New Zealand...

 monoplane the Gnosspelius Gull.

In 1925 he married the artist and sculptor Barbara Collingwood. She was the daughter of the author W. G. Collingwood

W. G. Collingwood

William Gershom Collingwood, was an author, artist, antiquary and Professor of Fine Arts at Reading University....

 and her family's friend Arthur Ransome

Arthur Ransome

Arthur Michell Ransome was an English author and journalist, best known for writing the Swallows and Amazons series of children's books. These tell of school-holiday adventures of children, mostly in the Lake District and the Norfolk Broads. Many of the books involve sailing; other common subjects...

, author of the Swallows and Amazons books, had proposed to her earlier.Obituary of Janet Gnosspelius, Guardian, October 1, 2010

Following his marriage, Gnosspelius was involved in prospecting in the Lake District

Lake District

The Lake District, also commonly known as The Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous not only for its lakes and its mountains but also for its associations with the early 19th century poetry and writings of William Wordsworth...

 for copper

Copper

Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...

 and other minerals. Ransome used the mining and prospecting knowledge of Oscar Gnosspelius featuring him in the 1936 book Pigeon Post

Pigeon Post

Pigeon Post is the sixth book in Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series of children's books, published in 1936. It won the first Carnegie Medal awarded for children's literature....

 as Squashy Hat and dedicating the book to him. His daughter modelled for a drawing of Nancy Blackett

Nancy Blackett

Nancy Blackett is a long, 7 ton, Bermuda rigged Hillyard sailing cutter built in 1931. The boat is now owned and operated by The Nancy Blackett Trust....

in the same book.

Gnosspelius died on 17 February 1953.