The airboat was known as Benoist Airboat Model XIV, no.
The world’s first regularly scheduled heavier-than-air airline took off from the Municipal Pier in St. Petersburg on New Year’s Day 1914. The airline was known as the St. Petersburg–Tampa Airboat Line. It was organized just a few months before that New Year’s first takeoff. The airline was the brainchild of Percival E. Fansler, a Jacksonville-based electrical engineer. Fansler enlisted the support of Thomas Benoist (pronounced ben-wah), an early airplane manufacturer who provided the planes-or, more precisely, the airboats. The airboat was known as Benoist Airboat Model XIV, no. 43. The model number referred to the year in which the plane was to be offered for sale (1914). The number indicated that it was the forty-third aircraft to be built from initiation of the Benoist Aeroplane Company.