Gar Wood early in February of the following year once more took the record with a speed of 111.71 mp.h., but the challenge did not remain unanswered for long as at Loch Lomond inJulyofthesame year Kay Don with an entirely new boat broke the record a large margin, namely, achieving 119.81 m.ph. Gar Wood also built a new boat which he called Miss America X, and at Miami, in October, 1932, regained world's honours with a speed of 12486 mph.
It is interesting to note that as speeds on the water have increased, the power employed to propel the boats has been more than doubled. For example, Gar Wood, on Miss America IX, when he averaged 1171 m.p.h. at Miami in 1932, was using two Packard engines with a total power of about 2400 b.h.p. Miss America X, his latest craft is equipped with four supercharged Packard engines, each of which gives off approximately 1,850 b-h.p, so he has a total power at his disposal of 7,400 h.p. in that boat.
When I decided at the close of 1935 io build a boat, the only engines which I had available for this purpose were two super-charged Napier Lion 1,450 h.p. motors which I had used in the Blue Bird in 1931 and 1982, and one Rolls-Royce motor of 2350 h.p, which was fitted to the car when she achieved her record of 301 mph. in September, 1935. I realized it was useless approaching the Rolls-Royce Company with a view to asking them to sell me another of their special racing engines, as I knew that they were no longer interested in ithe water speed record, in point of fact the very reverse was the case.
I, therefore, had only two alternatives, the one being to build a boat and equip it with the two Napier engines which would give me a total power of 2,900 b.h.p., and the other to build the smallest and lightest boat possible, and use the single Rolls-Royce engine.
Now, it is interesting to note that although this special Rolls-Royce engine gives off something like 2,750 h.p. when fitted to a racing aeroplane, and up to 2450 lip. in a racing car, there is only approximately 2,000 h.p. available when that same engine is fitted to a boat travelling at about 120 m.ph. The reason for the falling-off in power is due to the forced induction, which increased enormously at ultra high speeds, the wind pressure at over 400 m.ph., being so much greater than at 300 mph, and as wind resistance increased with the square of the speed, this fact will be readily understood.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.