Motonautique (UIM) was established in 1922 in Belgium and headquartered in Monaco -- an emerging and now constant hotbed of powerboat racing. To this day, UIM is the overall governing body for all powerboat racing in the world. Regional associations such as the APBA in America and the Canadian Boating Federation (CBF) utilize UIM standards and categories for racing and for verifying world records and championships.
But, back to the progress in recreational powerboating. German engineer Rudolf Diesel invented the diesel engine in 1893. By 1903, Diesel had perfected the four- stroke compression-ignition internal combustion diesel engine. The first engine produced 25 horsepower and was an immediate commercial success. Diesel is still the choice of power for commercial shipping and larger pleasure yachts over 40 feet. In the modern era it has been “cleaned” up and lightened up to be installed inboard in smaller pleasure boats and, most recently, as the powerhead in several brands of outboard motors. That detail provides an interesting segue. Up until 1900, the ICE delivered its power, except for paddlewheels, by means of a screw-type propeller on the end of a shaft colloquially called a prop shaft. This prop shaft would extend from the inboard-mounted engine on a slight downward angle and protrude through the bottom of the boat near the stern. Aft of the propeller was the rudder. There were two configurations based on the placement of the engine in the boat: the straight drive inboard and the V-drive inboard.
These two configurations were the power arrangement of choice for almost all pleasure boats. But, such an arrangement in small boats, punts, and skiffs was too expensive for the average family. Thus, powered pleasure boating was only within the realm of the rich. This changed with the invention and commercialization of the outboard motor. Credit for the development of the first outboard motor is very sketchy. It may have been Gustave Trouve in France in 1881, or it may have been later in America by the American Motor Company of Long Island, New York.
Then in 1903, American Cameron Waterman connected an air-cooled motorcycle engine to a propeller by
means of sprockets. Patented and put into production in 1906 and redesigned to be water-cooled in 1907, some 3000 Waterman Porto outboard motors were sold. This is credited as the first commercially successful outboard motor.
With this development, outboard motors became accessible to the average family. They also became commercially viable and mechanically reliable in North America, and shortly thereafter throughout the world when engine tinkerer Ole Evinrude patented his 1.5 horsepower outboard motor in 1909 from his shop in Milwaukee. Good marketing from his wife Bess and a good product saw sales grow exponentially year over year.
Poor health forced Evinrude to sell out in 1913, but he kept inventing. In 1919, unable to use his own name on the motor, he established the Elto (Evinrude Light Twin Outboard) Motor Company in Milwaukee to produce a lightweight twin- cylinder, 3-horsepower outboard motor. It quickly outsold local competitors Evinrude and Johnson. But Johnson, which had introduced diecast aluminium production, kept developing increasingly bigger horsepower motors to satisfy the growing need for speed. It soon began to outsell both Evinrude and Elto. The horsepower game had begun. The Johnson 6-horsepower Big Twin of 1926 set a world outboard speed record of 23 mph. Over the years, many new outboard motor brands became available.
Several decades later came the almost literal combination of both inboard and outboard power delivery. Jim Wynne was an American marine engineer, boat designer, a perfecter of the deep-vee hull design, and one of the first offshore racers. As a racer, he was able to see the advantages and disadvantages of both outboard and inboard powered boats. In his garage in his spare time, he set about trying to marry the best parts of the two concepts. Wynne created, tested, and patented the marine sterndrive, also known as the inboard-outboard.
Volvo Penta quickly purchased the rights to its manufacture from Wynne and introduced the Aquamatic Sterndrive to worldwide acclaim at the 1959 New York Boat Show. It combined the benefits of both the
inboard and outboard propulsion units in one package -- a higher horsepower engine located inside the boat protected from the elements, and a steerable and trimmable propeller unit (the outdrive) located outside the boat.
The post-WWII economic boom gave a huge boost to the pleasure boat industry worldwide. The sizes and styles of boats, the methods and materials of manufacture, and the available niche marketing to satisfy the growing demand was huge. Nonetheless, shallow water was still the Achilles heel of the propeller.
To solve this, Keenan Hanley of Prospect, Ohio designed a waterjet -- basically a centrifugal pump which would take water in one end and expel it out the other end at a greater speed. He established Hanley Hydrojet and partnered with Kermath Manufacturing of Detroit to adapt it for pleasure boat use. The Hanley- Kermath Hydro-Jet coupled to an inboard engine and protruding only slightly below the hull was installed on a 17-foot runabout and hit the 1953 boat show circuit. It didn’t cause much excitement.
By 1954, Sir William Hamilton of New Zealand had been tinkering with the water jet idea. He modified the Hanley design to expel the water stream through a steerable nozzle above the waterline, thus removing any part of the waterjet from below the hull. This became the first Hamilton Waterjet. Hamilton Jet, along with several other water jet makers, have since grown and expanded to provide water jets to almost every sector of both pleasure boating and commercial shipping.
Other methods of delivering the power to the water include surface drives, perhaps the most notable one being the Arneson Surface Drive. There are other makers of surface drives too. One recent drive development in pleasure boats is the pod drive.
This article has only scratched the surface of the development of a huge industry but suffice it to say that powerboating has come a long way since Daimler and Maybach first installed an ICE in a boat.
Article first publish on the BoatBlurb website and republished here with our thanks. See
https://www.boatblurb.com
THE REPORT | MAR 2024 | ISSUE 107 | 123
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