They looked like toy launches made to float in a bathtub, but they were bigger. They stood on varnished or gilded cradles in the Grand Central Palace, Manhattan—exhibits of the annual motor boat show. Salesmen at every booth gave away folders in blue and gold, in sea-green and orange, describing in fascinating language the advantages of theirmodel’s. Well-dressed people read the literature, studied the bright little boats.
One does not have to be tremendously well-dressed to be interested in, or even to buy, a motor boat. Once any privately-owned boat over 15 feet long was called a yacht. Only millionaires, it was said, owned yachts. On board the yachts they held carnivals, debauches. This popular illusion has gone past. It is now possible to buy a 22-foot boat, finished in African mahogany, with an automobile top, side curtains, steering wheel and driving devices, for $2,500. Such a boat is the Watercar, made in four models by the Dodge Co. Or, for a little more, you can get a cruiser from the American Car and Foundry Co., a cruiser as neat as a destroyer, with a cool wind always blowing on its deck and a neat shaving of water peeling away from its bow. Perhaps it is a 35-foot cruiser you want, or a 68-foot cruiser with twin screws. It all depends. The 68-foot cruisers have two cabins, an outside cabin with an awning and an inside cabin whose leather benches can be made up as bunks at night. They have a little dining-room with benches on four sides, a bathroom up in the bow with a shower in it. The Elco Co. makes the same sort of boat for prices running from $2,000 to $37,000.
First among speedboats are the famed Gar Wood boats, the same that, in a standard Baby Gar, beat the 20th Century Limited from Albany to New York in 1925. They are 33 feet long. They go 55 miles an hour. They are equipped with big Gar Wood Super Marine Engines, 12 cylinders, 500 horse power. Three men can sit abreast on the driver’s seat behind the windshield. The most powerful Gar Wood costs $11,800.
On the floor above the boats were the engines, from little one-cylinder engines to hitch on to a rowboat, to oil engines big enough to drive a yacht. All week spectators gathered around the booth wherein, upon an altar, rested a Cummins Diesel engine. This engine used cheap fuel oil instead of gasoline, starts instantly from stone cold, “takes up no more space than a heavy-duty gasoline engine.” Big Diesel engines are used to drive ocean liners.
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