Motor Boat

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

a small craft whose means of propulsion is an internal-combustion engine-as distinguished from a sailboat with an auxiliary motor or a steam launch. This class of craft is limited in length to 65 feet, and when MOTOR BOAT: 40-FT. CRUISER this size is exceeded, the craft becomes a motor yacht, barge, or tug, or whatever else its type may determine. About 1885, before the successful adaptation of the internal combustion to boating, various types of expansion engines, such as the Daimler, were run by naphtha and alcohol vapor, and were, as naphtha engines. The a class, known as action of these engines was similar to a expansion, rather than the explosion of the vapor, was utilsteam engine in that ized. The liquid was heated by a flame under a boiler, and generated into a vapor which was piped to the engine. type of power plant was lighter in weight, cleaner, and easier to operate than steam, and lighter and more reliable than the then existing internal-combusfurnished to an electric motor by storage tion engines. Boats in which power was batteries were operated as a novelty at the Chicago World's Fair, and a line of small passenger-boats with this equipment began to operate on Irondequoit Bay, near Rochester, New York, about 1893, and continued to do so for years, with complete technical and commercial success. However, the perfection and adaption of the internal-combustion engine with its many advantages has forced both the electric motor and the naphtha engine into almost complete disuse as a type of power for motor boats. The advantages of the internal-com- MOTOR BOAT: 30-FT. RUNABOUT bustion engine are: its comparatively small weight per horse power, its simplicity, reliability, small size, and the fact that it can be readily ily installed in almost any part of a boat. In its commercial application, the motor boat has taken the place of the cumbersome steam engine and the unreliable sail for small passenger and freight service, for fishing, towing, lobstering, and oyster dredging. In the early days of the motor boat, more attention was paid to the means of propulsion than to the lines of the boat itself, and the boats resembled yachts, rowboats, or even ocean liners, but recent years have seen the development of a new branch of naval architecture which has created a small boat which is dry, seaworthy, graceful, and has small resistance to the water. In the pleasure boat field, the development of design has been in three distinct fieldsthe open boat, the cruiser, and the speed boat. The early tendency in designing a speed boat was to create a long, narrow, high-powered displacement craft, but of late years this type of craft has been superseded by the hydroplane, a boat which glides over the water rather than through it. Successful experiments with boats of this type date back as far as 1897, when de Lambert operated his steam-powered glider. Peter Cooper Hewitt, W. H. Fauber, Americans, and Enrico Forlanini, Italian, were largely instrumental in the modern hydroplane, There are various types of hydroplanesthe multiplane, the bottom of which is a series of small lifting planes and steps; the monoplane, which has a flat bottom and no step; and the biplane, which has a single step and two planes. The best shape and the number of planes is a subject of experimentation and controversy. The speed attained by many of these boats is remarkable. The record made at Lake George, New York, in 1917 by the "Whip-poor-will, Jr.," of an average of 69.38 miles per hour for six one-hour trials stood for a long time.