1950 Silver Cup
Detroit River, Detroit MI, September 4, 1950


Such Crust I Wins Speed-Boat Prize
Schafer Craft Victor When Miss Pepsi Fouls After A Record 107.654 Run
by Clarence E. Lovejoy

bullet Silver Cup to Have 5 Heats
bullet Such Crust I Wins Speedboat Prize
bullet Such Crust I Wins Silver Cup
bullet Statistics

Detroit, September 4 [1950] — Capping the holiday week-end orgy of speed-boating that saw record upon record broken in the Harmsworth regatta Friday and Saturday by Lou Fageol in Stanley Sayres' Slo-mo-shun IV, another boat late today stole the show in the Silver Cup event and hoisted a new speed mark.

Miss Pepsi, rejected by the Harmsworth selection committee as an unreliable oil-eater and not made a member of the American defending team, waited until the last event on today's cold, windy program on the Detroit River and then surpassed, with a 107.654 miles and hour performance, Slo-mo-shun IV's best five-mile lap speed of 106.175.

Chuck Thompson Drives

With Chuck Thompson, a former outboard drive, behind Miss Pepsi's wheel and his mechanic, Harold Beardslee, alongside, the pair just about convinced this regatta-excited automotive city that only a match race some day soon will settle the argument about which is the world's fastest speed boat of all time.

Today was to have been the time for the stupendous regatta duel, but the two roaring monsters came together in only the first of the five heats of ten miles each for the Silver Cup. The Slo-mo-shun won, with a first lap of 106.175 m.p.h. and a heat speed clocked at a sizzling 104.318 m.p.h. There were nine starting craft, the biggest field in years. Miss Pepsi was second at a speed of 96.772.

The Slo-mo-shun had to call quits. A propeller shaft strut and bearing which racked Saturday, throwing dangerous sparks against Fageol's feet and ankles, was found after the first heat to be cutting into the shaft whirling at better than 2,500 revolutions per minute. At any instant it might break and this would mean a maimed or killed driver and a wrecked boat. Slo-mo-shun left the river to her rivals and will head back to her home port of Seattle.

Loses By 25 Points

Although Miss Pepsi went on to take, apparently, the next four 10-mile heats, another boat edged her out of the Silver Cup by 25 points in a fantastic outcome to a thrill-packed afternoon.

On the second heat Miss Pepsi, owned by Walter and Roy Dossin of Detroit, was detected missing two course buoys on the mainland side of the river.

Thompson later said he thought the odd-shaped floats were pieces of floating wreckage. But the committee had to disqualify Miss Pepsi in this heat and the final point standing for the cup brought 1,525 to Jack Schafer's Such Crust I, driven by Danny Foster, who had four seconds and a third place. Miss Pepsi's score was 1,500 points.

Late tonight Chairman Chester Ricker and other committee members were deliberating on a written protest filed after the race by Walter Dossin.

After several hours of deliberation, the committee announced the protest had been disallowed.

(Reprinted from the New York Times, September 5, 1950)

Final Results
1. U-1 Such Crust (1)
2. U-99 Miss Pepsi (2)
3. U-11 Such Crust II
4. G-13 Tempo VI
5. U-27 Slo-mo-shun IV
6. U-50 Gale
7. U-16 My Darling
8. U-3 My Sweetie (1)
DNF U-4 Miss Great Lakes

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