1910 Harmsworth Trophy - Dixie II Wins Motor Boat Race When Challenger is Disabled

Dixie II Wins Motor Boat Race When Challenger is Disabled
Duke of Westminster’s Pioneer in the Lead for Harmsworth Trophy When She
Was Forced to Temporarily Retire for Repairs
SUMMARY OF THE RACE
Triangular Course, Ten Miles, Three Times Around
Start – 3:30 P.M.

The American motor boat Dixie II, owned and piloted by Frederick K Burnham, triumphantly plowed through the water in Larchmont Harbor yesterday, flashing across the finish line in the international motor boat race ahead of the English challenger Pioneer, and asserted her right to hold the Harmsworth Trophy for another year.

Guns boomed and whistled shrieked when the crack American entry raced home first and echoing cheers rose from 200 gaily decorated vessels which were lined up at the finish.

Poor handling lost an easy victory for the Duke of Westminster’s Pioneer, flying the colors of the Motor Yacht Club of Great Britain. Dixie II finished 17 minutes 37 seconds ahead after her swifter rival had been forced to sacrifice nearly 29 minutes to make repairs.

Two other boats, the Zigorella, owned by Daniel Hanbury, and flying the flag of the Motor Yacht Club of Great Britain, and the Nameless, entered by Commodore H.H. Melville and racing under the colors of the Larchmont Yacht Club, crossed the starting line, but neither proved a factor in the contest. The Nameless gave up after covering less than three of the prescribed thirty miles and the Zigorella retired after completing a trifle more than fifteen miles.

The race was not started until 3:30. The Zigorella, Dixie and Pioneer crossed in the order named and only the fractions of a second apart. But, Nameless had difficulty in getting all her thirty-two cylinders working and limped seven lengths behind the others.

A few hundred yards from the start the Pioneer, racing half out of the water, overtook, in turn, Zigorella and Dixie II and at once assumed the lead. At the three-mile mark she had a full minute lead over the Dixie.

The stop watched which had timed the British challenger as she skimmed over her own wash down the lane made by hundreds of anchored craft showed her to be going at the rate of 40 miles an hour, while the best Dixie could do was 30. But the very speed, the tremendous speed at which she was driven, overheated her engines, and just as she was about to complete her first lap of ten miles, she was seen to slow up and then to stop altogether. Her crew were fighting to subdue a blazing carburetor.

Meanwhile the Dixie, never changing her gait, gradually made up lost ground. There was a great tooting of whistles and sounding of bells as the American boat went by, having completed the first ten miles in 29:50, but this greeting faded into insignificance when in a few minutes later it was seen that the Pioneer had once more gotten under way. The Dixie was not to be overtaken, however. She crossed the twenty-mile mark in twenty minutes and thirty-seven seconds, twelve minutes and thirty-seven seconds ahead of the Pioneer, and maintaining her advantage to the finish. Her last time was 4:25:44, or fifty-nine minutes forty-four seconds for thirty miles. The Pioneer finished at 4:43:21, beaten but not dishonored.

Laps	Leader		Second		Third
1.	Dixie II	3:49:50	Zigorella	3:59:29	Pioneer	4:05:28
2.	Dixie II	4:09:52	Pioneer	4:22:59
3.	Dixie II	4:29:44	Pioneer	4:43:21