1933 Harmsworth Trophy
St. Clair River, Algonac, Michigan, September 2 & 4, 1933

Motor Boating: Gar Wood's Challenger Sails [1933]

Motor Boating: Gar Wood's Challenger Sails America Retains Harmsworth Trophy The High Lights and the Low Downs of the Detroit Regatta Miss America X Still Supreme

Miss Britain III, this year's challenger of Gar Wood's motor boating supremacy, looks like a salmon skimming on the water. Half of it resembles a hydroplane; the other half, a submarine. Last week, Hubert Scott-Paine, the boat's designer, constructor, and pilot, watched his strange craft hoisted on board the Empress of Britain , at Southampton, England. Then he sailed with it for the United States, where he hopes to win the Harmsworth Trophy from Wood's Miss America X on Lake St. Clair, Detroit, Mich., early in September.

The trophy, emblematic of world speed on the water, has been held by Wood for the past twelve years. Scott-Paine bases his hopes for a victory on the following differences between the two boats: Miss Britain III weighs 3,360 pounds as against Miss America X’s 15,000, pounds. Miss Britain III, with a bow rudder can turn sharply at much higher speeds than can Miss America X.

But Wood has four motors which make 6,400 horsepower whereas Scott-Paine has one motor with only 1,375 horse power. Also Wood holds the world's speedboat record, 124.91 miles an hour, whereas Scott-Paine's best time is around 100 miles an hour.

Furthermore the Britisher will have to upset precedents to make the races even close. None of the challengers which have been driven against Wood in the last seven races at Detroit have been able to finish all the heats under their own power. In every case they have either capsized or had mechanical troubles.

(Reprinted from Newsweek, August 19, 1933)

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