Miss America IX takes your breath away in every respect. Just sitting there under her canvas covers, you can see the menacing silhouettes of the four rows of exhaust stacks.
Without the covers, the simplistic beauty of the gleaming mahog- any hull and pine deck is enough to make you gasp. Another gasp comes when the twin 550-horse- power Chevy big blocks fire up and settle down to a fierce, cammy and totally unmuffled idle. And quite lit- erally, as Miss America IX pulls away from her slip, the heat and fumes coming from the 12 stacks truly take your breath away, making it nearly impossible to breathe until speed picks up and the exhaust rises above the small cockpit just in front of the transom.
Some men just crave speed, and Garfield “Gar” Wood was one of them. The self-made industrialist parlayed his invention of the mod- ern hydraulic lift bed — for unload- ing coal trucks — into an industrial empire. And with that empire came the wherewithal to indulge his pas- sion for speed on water. From 1916 to 1921, he utterly dominated Gold Cup speedboat competition, while between 1920 and 1933 he also se- cured the Harmsworth Trophy for the United States no fewer than nine times. The first two Harmsworth victories came in boats built by the Chris Smith & Sons Boat Company, which Wood had acquired. And after Smith left to start Chris-Craft in 1923, the Miss America series of Wood- owned machines continued to win, with Wood at the wheel all but once.
And the New World Champion
When it left the Gar Wood boat- yard in 1930, Miss America IX was powered by a pair of 2,500-cid V-12 engines based on Packard-built Liberty aero engine block castings. At first, power output was less than 500 horsepower each, but gradually they were developed with overhead valves and supercharging to pro- duce 1,600 horsepower.
Piloting Miss America IX and with riding mechanic Orlin Johnson on the throttles, in March 1931, Gar Wood set a new record on water when he hit 102.2564 mph. With more horsepower, the following February he upped the mark to 111.712, reinstating the 30-foot ma- hogany and spruce Miss America IX as the fastest boat in the world. In addition to the records, in 1931 and 1932 Wood used the potent craft to defend the Harmsworth Trophy, although in 1931, he and arch rival Kaye Don both jumped the start and ultimately the trophy went to Wood’s brother in Miss America VIII.
By 1932, Miss America IX had been supplanted by the four-engined Miss America X and stored without engines because, as Wood historian Tony Mollica explained, “these rac- ing boats only lasted for a couple of years before they were put away. To have a boat last this long is truly remarkable.”
The exhaust stacks (top) dominate the view. Chuck Mistele (above left) gives author Stein the complete tour of Miss America IX, including a close-up look of the big-block Chevy engines.
She may have been put away, but she wasn’t untouched. In 1936, the government requisitioned the po- tent Liberty-based engines from Miss America X (originally from Miss Americas VIII and IX), which were used to prototype the power
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