Motorboats: A Fifty-Year Collection

by JOHN E. HUTTON

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I BEGAN my experiments with power boats nearly sixty years ago, and I must say I met with some surprising events in developing this hobby. The upper Thames, whose course is carefully controlled by a series of locks, seemed eminently suitable for small power craft. There in the late nineties I used, at times, to hire a steam launch. The early ones had coal-fired boilers from which the ash and funnel soot soon reduced one’s white suit and the girls’ frocks to the appearance of a chimney sweep. Later, flash boilers with compound engines were introduced, greatly adding to the comfort and efficiency of the craft.

All power craft on the Thames were strictly governed by regulations as to safety and speed. The latter was particularly important since the wash caused by excessive speed could, and sometimes did, swamp a punt containing a mooning couple, tied up alongside the bank.

The early power boats were regarded with suspicion, and this turned into downright opposition with the introduction of the gasoline engine. The launches of the early days were noisy and odorous, and the opposition to them came to a head when, in a lock crowded with rowboats, punts, and other craft, a launch exploded, covering the water with blazing gasoline. Fortunately damage was confined to the launch and nobody was injured, but the Authority laid down the rule that no motorboat was to be in a lock occupied by any other craft. The result of this rule was to engender still more antagonism. On a crowded Sunday, when hundreds of boats of all kinds would be waiting admission to a lock, in its turn would come a single tiny motorboat to occupy the whole lock in solitary state while the rest of the yachtsmen cursed or fretted.

My earliest Thames motorboat was built for me by Saunders of Goring, whose works at Cowes, Isle of Wight, were subsequently responsible for many of the best racing motorboats and aircraft. It was a 24-foot cabin launch, driven by a Panhard motor of some 20 h.p. and called Coquette. Saunders, who was an artist in his work, which always embraced the finest material and workmanship, had invented a unique method of construction. The hull planking, of choice mahogany, was made from thin plywood planks literally sewn together by a specially constructed sewing machine. This resulted in an extremely strong and light construction, its disadvantage being that in the event of serious damage to the planking, repairs could be carried out only at Saunders’s works. I had plenty of fun, in my salad days, in this boat which lay within an hour or so motor drive from London.

My first, experience in salt-water motorboating was in 1904 when I had built for the Harmsworth Trophy race a 40-foot cedar hull with a 150 h.p. “Huttonʺ engine. The Harmsworth Trophy was presented in 1903 by the late Lord Northcliffe, the British newspaper magnate, in international competition for motorboats not exceeding 40 feet in length, and was eventually won outright by Gar Mood, the American boat builder and racer. The hull of my boat, designed by a well-known yacht designer, looked like a big cigar and was painted battleship gray. For trials I sent her down the Thames estuary tied alongside a tug. The coast guard, seeing this odd craft, thought it was a submarine being surreptitiously convoyed to a foreign power, and she was intercepted for examination.

The gasoline motors of those early days proved a severe headache. No car engine was designed to run at full power continuously, and when they were installed in boats, bearing trouble was frequent. Hutton I was always bothered by engine failure, and the times I was ignominiously towed back to my moorings were a source of chagrin.

In the comparatively few races for motorboats held at that time, most were handicaps in which the potential speed of the high-powered racers was usually overrated so that these craft were handicapped out of the race. The only race for the Harmsworth Trophy at which my boat put in an appearance proved a fiasco since my engines, while emitting a series of deafening barks and belching clouds of dense smoke, resolutely refused to start untill he other boats were halfway round the course. In those days there were no electric starters, and engines had to be laboriously cranked by a long lever. There can be nothing more distressing in this type of sport than, after days of tuning-up and preparation, to be left at the post with a dead engine.

I recall an incident when my engine had stalled in a heavy tideway and my engineer and I, concentrating on our efforts to restart the engine, were suddenly nearly stunned by a terrific bump while the head and voluptuous breasts of a wooden female fell with a crash into the cockpit. A torrent of invective from an irate skipper of a small anchored yacht into which we had drifted informed us that we had carried away the beauteous maiden which had adorned his prow, and commented in true nautical fashion upon our lack of seamanship.

In 1906 I built another 40-foot racer with remodeled engine. While this was very far from perfect, it. did at least sometimes run; indeed, it won a race on the Mersey at Liverpool averaging 26.2 miles per hour̶not a bad speed for a displacement hull in those early days.

It was in this boat that I had the unusual experience of being reported dead! I was returning from Portsmouth Harbor to Southampton and in Stokes Bay met one of those infernally steep seas which so often, and suddenly, spring up in the Solent, It appears that the shipper of a yacht had noticed the heavy weather I was making and, losing sight of my low gray hull in the trough of the seas, thought I had foundered. When, after a very rough passage, I arrived at Southampton I was startled to see news-contents hills of the local evening paper announcing the loss of my boat with “all hands” — actually we were only two. This adventure cost me dear as, being regarded as a Jonah, 1 had to stand drinks all round in the Yacht Club that evening.

What I have never solved is why, if the yacht skipper really thought I had foundered, he did not put about to pick up survivors. Perhnps his passengers were too seasick to endure further torture.

In 19071 Saunders built me, at Cowes, another 40-foot racer with a 100 h.p. Berliet engine. The design of this hull was peculiar inasmuch as it had a “bulb” section keel in which was housed the engine, to give a low center of gravity. The effect of this was, on one occasion, startling. Running with a beam sea, the launch suddenly rolled onto her port side and stayed there, so that, for a minute, we were running on the side of the boat. My engineer and I clutched the starboard combing and, leaning outboard, presently righted the craft onto an even keel. It was unpleasant while it lasted. Worse was to follow!

As we were running, at 20 knots, down the Thames estuary, which is miles wide and in which a strong breeze against a 6-knot ebb tide sets up a very steep short wave, the propeller struck some partially submerged object, breaking one of the blades and driving the stern tube inboard. The boat rapidly began to fill, and our position was perilous. Not another vessel was in sight and we had not even a life belt on board as all our gear had been sent to a port at the mouth of the Thames where we were to engage in a regatta. Hastily scanning my chart, I found there was a coast guard station abreast of us on shore. I stripped off the white shirt I was wearing and waved it about an the boat hook because we had no mast. Fortunately the coastguardmen, who already had their glasses on me, saw the signal and set off in their launch to our aid. By the time they came alongside, the boat was waterlogged almost to the gunwales, and was being kept afloat by the air imprisoned under the lurtle decks.

It so happened that my engineer, an old Royal Navy stoker who cannot have been seasick for decades, had enjoyed a terrific binge on shore the night before and was lying very sick in the bilge alongside I he engine. As the “captain,”I thought it ethical to be the last to leave the ship; so, annoyed with my man, I yelled: “Hurry up, Keyes. Get out quickly.” To this I received the startling reply: “Oh Gawd, leave me alone, I want to be a ’ero and go down with the ship.”I dragged him by the heels into the cockpit and, with the aid of the coastguardmen, hoisted him into their launch. Twenty minutes after my boat had been taken in tow, the turtle deck blew up and she sank into a muddy bottom from which she was subsequently salvaged by the underwriters to whom I had abandoned her.

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For business reasons I had to give up further motorboat racing and amuse myself in my leisure hours with more prosaic craft. The first I had built was a 35-foot cruiser, Cormorant, with two 100 h.p. kermath engines. I did a lot of sea fishing from this boat, which I handled without a crow. To raise the anchor in the excessive tides of the Solent, I made an electric winch, operating on 12 volts.

At night I would fish for conger eels with rod and line. These Vicious brutes can bite through the sea boot of a fisherman and give a fine tug of war. When they had been gaffed, I would throw them into the cockpit, fall on them with a sack, and with a heavy double-ended wrench beat them on the lymphatic heart near the tail, which seems to stun them much quicker than beating them on the main heart; then I would sever the spinal column just behind the head. Conger eel is a very nutritious food and, in cheap restaurants, is the medium for making “turtle soup” and “sole an vin blanc”!

From the early crude craft and unreliable engines marine motors, like their land cousins, have been developed and improved to a state of high reliability. The advent of the Diesel has not only reduced the cost of fuel consumption but has added to safety by the use of less volatile oil. While in the early days we thought a 100 h.p. engine very powerful, vessels of 20,000 tons and over are now propelled by internal-combustion engines.

Of fishing launches I have seen many types, ranging from the terrible ramshackle launch which I had incautiously hired in Jamaica, with gasoline pouring freely from the carburetor into the bilge, to the sturdy little 34-foot launches used for marlin fishing in New Zealand, with their single low-speed engines. It is fortunate that these engines are reliable, as one is often 1.5 miles offshore without the slightest chance of being picked up in the event of a breakdown.

The elaborate, high-speed cabin cruisers of the American sport-fishing fleet are something else. Their ship-to-shore radios, navigational aids, and elaborate mechanical fishing seats, which always remind me of a dentist’s off ce or a barber’s shop, have, as I see it, reduced the sport to the same level as the modern safari with its luxurious caravans and iced champagne.

After experimenting with many motorboats in the interim, in 1939 in the Bahamas I laid down what 1 thought to be my ideal small vessel ̶ a comfortable cruiser, convenient for fishing, a firstclass sea boat and economical to run. Applying my previous experience, I got Mr. Worth Monroe to incorporate my ideas in a design which proved eminently satisfactory: 43 feet long by 12 feet beam and under 4 feet draught, propelled by two 75 h.p. Buda Diesels, a maximum speed of 11.5 knots with a sustained cruising speed of 10 knots. As I planned to be away from my home port for considerable periods, fuel capacity was 450 gallons, enough to drive her 1000 miles at cruising speed. The minimum headroom was 6 feet 6 inches and the bunks were 7 feet long. An exceptionally complete electrical installation with Edison battery provided power for a 6-cubic-foot Frigidaire, three pumps, fans, iron, bedwarmers, and ot her gadgets. A small tub and shower completed the amenities.

Mao-Man, so called after a beautiful blue fish I used to admire swimming in shoals in New Zealand, proved as comfortable as she showed herself to be magnificent as a sea boat. It was great fun going off to the outer islands of the Bahamas for a week or ten days, fishing and exploring the little coves and harbors in which her shallow draught allowed her entrance.

Built at Nassau (Bahamas) of the finest materials, the stem and keel being of the native “horseflesh,” she was so strongly constructed as to cause no anxiety when we were cruising under adverse conditions.

One day while traveling from New York to Montreal by train, I saw the navigational aids on the inland waterways, I made inquiries as a result of which I determined to cruise in Mao-Mao from the Bahamas to Canada and back. After a thorough overhaul and after I had filled every unwanted locker space with gin, for cocktails, and Scotch, which in those halcyon days cost but 95 cents a bottle in the Bahamas, we slipped our moorings at daybreak on a beautiful July morning.

The intracoastal waterways of the eastern American seaboard are unique in that they extend over some 1500 miles of shore. They are well posted with navigational aids — provided you can see them in mist or fog — but strict attention to the chart is imperative if the hapless master is not to find himself suddenly stuck in the mud.

The heat along the coast was terrific, the cockpit thermometer frequently registering over 100°. But worse still were the bugs which plagued us by day and by night. After we left Cape May and were cruising in the vicinity of Atlantic City we were attacked by a most venomous fly which bit pieces from our bare torsos.

From New York we took the inland water route to the St. Lawrence, that mighty river, 2000 miles in length from its source to the sea. Quebec, Montreal, the Thousand Islands, and Ottawa were our ports of call. On the return trip we visited in New York, South Carolina, and various Florida resorts before clearing for Nassau. In all we were gone nine months and covered a distance of 6790 nautical miles. It was a delightful adventure and a most economical one, as far as cruising costs go, for Mao-Mao, despite her 20 tons, averaged but 3½ cents a mile for fuel.

This trip proved to me one thing above all others: that more enjoyment is to be had from a comparatively slow, well-equipped cruiser than is possible with a high-speed semi-racing craft which goes nowhere in no time and is a nuisance to everyone except, of course, its owner.