The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1904-07-31

strong enough to keep the spray
from flashing into the boat.
This wonderful Scolopendra, hardly
heavy enough to withstand a good
kick from human foot, is fitted with
a twenty horsepower engine that
makes 1000 revolutions minute.
Another 35-foot boat, not yet
named, is only feet and 3 inches
wide. Her planking is actually only
1-8-inch thick Her skin is sewed to-
gether, and this narrow, snake-like
thing, practically only a magnihed
canoe, is to have an eighty horse
power hend inside her, with I,1oo
revolutions minute-enough, appa-
rently, to tear the thing apart the
moment it begins to whirl.
Last week, the writer inspected one
of the latest creations, a 4o-foot ma
hogany thing. 1t was of the most
approved design-haring shark-nose
bow, almost fiat bottom and hid
eous square stern, exactly like the
foot-end of a coffin. The stuff of
which she is made is 3-16-inch thick.
A gentle little motor of $50 horse
power was ready to go into her
Don't sit on her gunwale," said
the builder
Asked how so frail thing could
possibly withstand the tearing vibra-
ton of $50 horsepower motor, the
builder said, laughing:
She'll stand it long enough to win
few races She isn't built to become
an heirloom, nor to take her owners
out to sea, you know
The good old principles of flotation
and displacement have experienced
strange sea changes in this latest de-
velopment of the auto-engine She is
made not to float on the water, but
to sit on it.; not to cut through the
water, but to slide over it. When
she is hustling at her full speed of
| fifteen, nineteen, twenty miles an
hour, she throws herself out of the
water like leaping porpoise, and the
more of her stays out of water the
better. All that her driver" wants
in the water is the stern, with the
whirring propeller
1t is sport-exhilaratin intoxicat-
ing, delirlous, mad sport. With none
of the dust of the land, none of the
danger comparatively of collision, no
tires to burst and hurl the driver to
shocking death before he knows what
struck him, the auto-boat is going to
be wonderful implement of mod
ern civilization. She is so shoal in
draft that she can float in any duck
pond. She is cheaper to build than
any automobile carriage, unless rec
ord-breaker is demanded. Her chief
cost IS her engine.
If land-automobiling is destined to
remain for some time at least the
sport only of the rich, water-auto-
| mob1llng IS sure to become the sport
Of the masses. Already the waters
everywhere are full of craft, from
fltty-dollar rowboats up to ten
thousand-dollar sailing yachts, fur
nished with "kickers." Power boats
are being built at prices as low as
one hundred dollars complete
AS yet the American water-auto has
not equalled the French contrivance
in point of speed. On the Seine, the
Lutece has made twenty and three
quarter miles an hour La Rapee IL,
26-foot boat weighing 700 pounds
with engine and all, made nineteen
miles an hour. The Mercedes, built
in France and fitted with a German
motor, has a record of 2IN miles.
In America two bitter contestants
for the blue ribbon of the marine
turf are the Japansky and the Hard
Boiled Egg, the latter the property of
that human meteor, w. K. Wander
bllt, Jr. 1t is said that the "beautiful'
name of his water-auto was invented
by Mrs Vanderbilt, and is based on
the fact that "she can't be. beaten"
Mrs. Vanderbilt certainly, demon
strated this when she took the wheel
herself off New Rochelle and drove
the Hard Boiled Egg across the line
winner in her class, making nineteen
miles IN one hour and twenty min
utes
The Japansky, belonging to larger.
class, made the same distance that day
in one hour and nine minutes.
Mr. Vanderbilt set the style for the
drivers" of auto-boats by,,driving his
little monster in sleeveless silk Shirt
open at the neck and with a yachting
cap on. Before that the. auto-boat
drivers had rather. leaned. to the au-
'tomobile cap and leather coat, and
some OF them grieved Bitterly be-
cause they couldn't wear goggles One
OF them tried it, but the spray soon
made him unable to see through his
windows
The noble Partisan, always fore
IiOot III vi ldlldllC eplSOQeS, carried the
most extreme automobile tactics out
on the water at recent great race
when one of the auto-boats blew up
and sank just as she crossed the line.
Her three occupants blew up with her
and then went down with her and did
not come up again
The rules of yacht racing would
have forced all yachts within hail to
cease racing and to save life. The
water-autoists, on the contrary, piled
on little more power and drove
headlong over the grave of their
competitors, leaving the work of fish
ing for the three bodies to life-savers
who were not in autos