What the?

Is that... is that a French ekranoplan whose wings didn't quite fit through that bridge? https://twitter.com/AvHistoryOgre/status/1347678772854722563
Honestly, why do you lot do this to me? I'm off down the rabbit hole again after some kind of explanation for this thing, or at least a reasonable excuse.

Here's the perpetrator, anyway - Henri Farman
The thing above, and indeed below, is La Ricocheur. We're assured bits of it can reach 125 kilometres per hour.

I hope that guy at the back with the boathook moves before they fire it up...
Realising that nobody silly enough to buy one of these was likely to actually have twelve friends, and certainly not if they kept hanging around next to that propeller, a later version was basically an aquatic hot rod for a solo pilot.
So basically it's an old-timey one of these, without the excitement of occasionally running over an alligator.

Talking of which, is anyone else wondering why there's nobody in this photo?
Farman never seems to have shifted many boats - the catalogue page above comes from an auction of "rare ephemera", which is auction house speak for "nobody needed to print it twice".

Farman's real business was aircraft...
...and looking at this Blackburn-esque rogues' gallery - one design is promisingly described as being reconstructed twice without any noticeable improvement - I can see Farman's output will repay further research by the connoisseur.
...and looking at this Blackburn-esque rogues' gallery - one design is promisingly described as being reconstructed twice without any noticeable improvement - I can see Farman's output will repay further research by the connoisseur.
...and looking at this Blackburn-esque rogues' gallery - one design is promisingly described as being reconstructed twice without any noticeable improvement - I can see Farman's output will repay further research by the connoisseur.
...and looking at this Blackburn-esque rogues' gallery - one design is promisingly described as being reconstructed twice without any noticeable improvement - I can see Farman's output will repay further research by the connoisseur.
...and looking at this Blackburn-esque rogues' gallery - one design is promisingly described as being reconstructed twice without any noticeable improvement - I can see Farman's output will repay further research by the connoisseur.
Should probably clarify that I've pulled my usual trick of confusing the designer with the company they founded - Henri's brother Maurice Farman also designed some, the prefix denoting who to blame...
And it was a Maurice Farman design in which Biggles learnt to fly - the MF 11 Shorthorn in the famous book, "Biggles Learns That The Chaps In Procurement Are Bastards"
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