The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-12-09
ADVANCE IN
 SPEED ON WATER Is Mode of Modern Vessels on
 the Seas NEW RECORDS ARE SET Some Vessels Equal Time Made By the Average Trains-Boats of the United states-Some Swift
 Motor Boats
From the New York World.

From the New York World
 IL is a rapid age in which we live. From giant steamships, sky bootin g through the brine at 26 knots an hour, to narrow waisted motor boats and long-backed destroyers cutting through the water at speed which equals that of an express train; from buzzing aeroplanes to whizZing autos, the ever growing passion for high speed extends.
 A few years ago and the ocean pas senger was constrained to feel that he was travelling at an abnormal pace when he set his watch half hour back on each day of westward trip. Now adays the homing tourists who come flying westward on those limited trains of trans Atlantic travel, the turbine driven Lusitania and Mauretania, must set their timepieces back more than an hour each day, as the great Cu- narders in their rapid flight across tn 0 ocean run more than 25 hours from noon to noon. A knot, or nautical mile,- is S05 feet longer than statute or land mile. Therefore, an average speed of 26 knots an hour means that these vessels average close to 80 land mics an hour, or nearly 750 miles a day.
 Only a few lustrums have ebbed since Kipling's "auld fleet engineer sang his song O streams: "We are creeping on with each new
 rig, less weight and greater power, We'll have the loco boiler next and
 30 knots an houri Thirty and more"-
 Yea, considerably more. Already the locomotive boiler has been forgotten in the new means of attaining high pO fha iot cd marine gait of 30 knots surpassed. Recently the Flusser one of the new destroyers of the United States navy, set the pace at 35 miles an hour.
 Record soon Broken
 That was fast going, but the record stood for a few weeks only. It was broken by the Reid, a still newer de- stroyer of the Flusser class, which on her trial run. off the Rockland course, notched the record one knot higher. Al the time of that triumph 1t was noted that if the Mauretania and Lusitania could maintain the pace set by the Reid they would reduce their own time for crossing the Atlantic by nearly a day and a half It would be equivalent to talk ing 900 miles off the distance between Sandy Hook and Queenstown.
 The destroyer Thornton, which is of the same class as the Reid and Flusser, has also proved herself to be only trifle less speedy than her consorts, and her crew hopes to even exceed the records established by the other two when the engines have been thoroughly limbered up by undergoing that process known to marine men as shaking down." The high speed with which these destroyers have been endowed adds largely to their general efficiency. Designed for destroy ing anything from torpedo boat to a battleship, the rate of speed which they can mantain is a highly important fac tor For some torpedo boats themselves are very fast, and unless a destroyer is faster their destruction is more difficult to bring about. Then, again, high speed largely counts in a dash against larger enemy, for the swifter the dash the short CT the time the attacking boat will be under fire
 Fast Motor Boats
 The great speed of this type of craft is therefore as much utilitarian as 1t is spectacular. On the other hand, the
 oh speed that Is sought for on motor driven boats is nothing more than a fad, the qualification of a whim, and a pretty penny this speed whistle costs. In the main it is fostered by those who have the speed mania, inculcated per haps by fast autos, and who have the money to expend on these expensive toys. Blase with fast going over speed ways and wearied with the spectacle of racing machines flying around a rac- ing course, many of the rich, with the fever of fast going raging in them, have turned to swift running motor boats as fresher field.
 There are many boats of this type. Perhaps the speediest of the fast-lying lot is the Pioneer, owned by the Duke of Westminster, which was one of the