gcarter
12-25-2005, 12:09 PM
I love old boats.......
I don't want to own one, well maybe I do, but I'm more of a wannabe historian. It's always been fun for me to trace where power boats came from and how they've gotten to be where they are. I think I have a pretty good handle on it up till the mid 50's.
Recently someone had a comment about my avatar, thinking it was some old Chris Craft. It's not, in fact it's Gar Wood's "Miss America I", a VERY important step in American high speed power boating. It was built in the mid 20's, was powered by two warmed over Liberty V-12 aircraft engines each producing about 600 HP and had a top speed of about 80 MPH.
Well, today I was looking through the December 10th, 1926 issue of MotorBoating magazine.
There were a couple of adds I found that were more indicative of normal, upper income boaters, and what they had to work with.
The first is out of the classifieds and it features an unpowered Hacker 32' runabout, but more interesting is the 8 cylinder Sterling Dolphin at the bottom. This engine is about 9' long, weighs 3250#, and produces 200 HP at 1400 RPM! WOW! Todays cost of this engine would be $42,238.53!!!!!!!
Again, these are marine engines, not aircraft engines, which were less reliable.
Digger's brother's Packard Gold cup engine in his race boat was originally $6,000.00, or today, $63,397.00. Pretty pricey for a time when the average income was only about $1,500.00.
The second ad is of a 150 HP Kermath six. It developed this power at 1800 RPM. This particular engine was remarkably advanced. It had a single overhead cam, and four valves per cylinder, and weighed only 1145#.
Todays cost would be $24,302.00. Just think, the average worker would have to work only 16.2 years to buy only the engine of his boat!!!!:shocking:
I think I'm glad I'm alive now.
I don't want to own one, well maybe I do, but I'm more of a wannabe historian. It's always been fun for me to trace where power boats came from and how they've gotten to be where they are. I think I have a pretty good handle on it up till the mid 50's.
Recently someone had a comment about my avatar, thinking it was some old Chris Craft. It's not, in fact it's Gar Wood's "Miss America I", a VERY important step in American high speed power boating. It was built in the mid 20's, was powered by two warmed over Liberty V-12 aircraft engines each producing about 600 HP and had a top speed of about 80 MPH.
Well, today I was looking through the December 10th, 1926 issue of MotorBoating magazine.
There were a couple of adds I found that were more indicative of normal, upper income boaters, and what they had to work with.
The first is out of the classifieds and it features an unpowered Hacker 32' runabout, but more interesting is the 8 cylinder Sterling Dolphin at the bottom. This engine is about 9' long, weighs 3250#, and produces 200 HP at 1400 RPM! WOW! Todays cost of this engine would be $42,238.53!!!!!!!
Again, these are marine engines, not aircraft engines, which were less reliable.
Digger's brother's Packard Gold cup engine in his race boat was originally $6,000.00, or today, $63,397.00. Pretty pricey for a time when the average income was only about $1,500.00.
The second ad is of a 150 HP Kermath six. It developed this power at 1800 RPM. This particular engine was remarkably advanced. It had a single overhead cam, and four valves per cylinder, and weighed only 1145#.
Todays cost would be $24,302.00. Just think, the average worker would have to work only 16.2 years to buy only the engine of his boat!!!!:shocking:
I think I'm glad I'm alive now.