Gar Wood Speedster
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The Gar Wood Speedster is a model of 16 ft
racing boat Boat racing is a sport in which boats, or other types of watercraft, race on water. Boat racing powered by oars is recorded as having occurred in ancient Egypt, and it is likely that people have engaged in races involving boats and other wate ...
produced and offered from 1934 to 1938 by
Garfield Wood Garfield Arthur "Gar" Wood (December 4, 1880 – June 19, 1971) was an American inventor, entrepreneur, and championship motorboat builder and racer who held the world water speed record on several occasions. He was the first man to travel ...
under the "Gar Wood" brand, and powered with various single six-cylinder flathead marine engines. Of the fourteen original Speedsters, three have been widely researched due to their famous owners – "Miss Behave" and "Miss Chief" from 1935, and "Miss Persia" from 1936. Today, more reproduction Speedsters than original boats exist worldwide, with reproductions starting as early as the 1960s.


Design and construction

The Speedster is next to the much larger Baby Gar model from the 1920s as the most well-known and sought-after boat model of the Gar Wood brand, yet it was only produced fourteen times in its production period and was the smallest racing boat built before World War II by Gar Wood. It was using the standard 16 ft runabout as a base, which was introduced one year earlier in 1933. The Speedster was Gar Wood's maritime version of the European sports cars, which in the early and mid 1930s raised considerable attention in the United States. At the same time, the Speedster was seen by many as the smaller version of Gar Wood's famous Miss Americas, his large racing boats packed with several
Miller A miller is a person who operates a Gristmill, mill, a machine to grind a grain (for example corn or wheat) to make flour. Mill (grinding), Milling is among the oldest of human occupations. "Miller", "Milne" and other variants are common surname ...
V-16 or
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V-12 engines, with which he captured six times the world's water speed record and won several times the prestigious Gold Cup and the famous
Harmsworth Trophy The Harmsworth Cup, popularly known as the Harmsworth Trophy, is a historically important British international trophy for motorboats. History The Harmsworth was the first annual international award for motorboat racing. Officially, it is a cont ...
. The Speedster was made of African mahogany and was a single, aft cockpit racer, powered by various six-cylinder engines during its production period. In its first year of production, the Speedster was offered at a price of US$1,195 (thus, more than double the price of e.g. a standard
Ford V8 Ford engines are those used in Ford Motor Company vehicles and in aftermarket, sports and kit applications. Different engine ranges are used in various global markets. 3 cylinder A series of Ford DOHC 12-valve inline-three engines with Twin Indep ...
at that time), fitted with a standard
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engine. In its final year of production, the entry price of a Speedster increased to US$1,565 and US$2,045 for the Racing Speedster model, the latter featuring a canvas deck, a two blade propeller and fitted with the largest engine (a 175 hp
Gray Grey (more common in British English) or gray (more common in American English) is an intermediate color between black and white. It is a neutral or achromatic color, meaning literally that it is "without color", because it can be composed o ...
Fire Ball) available. In most of the fourteen original Speedsters, a six-cylinder
Gray Grey (more common in British English) or gray (more common in American English) is an intermediate color between black and white. It is a neutral or achromatic color, meaning literally that it is "without color", because it can be composed o ...
marine engine was installed, yet other engine options were available with
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Crown, Gray Marine 244, Gray Fire Ball and Lycoming 223, bringing it to a maximum speed of about . As an option in the first two years, it was possible to equip the Speedster also with a 225 Scripps V-8, but none of the original Speedsters were ever equipped with an eight-cylinder engine directly at the factory. Fitting a 225 cubic inch engine into the Speedster was though important and also used by Gar Wood for marketing purposes (here, promising a top speed with the V-8 engine of up to , as in October 1934 the new 225 racing class was established by the
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, for which the Gar Wood Speedster could now be entered. Today, the special design of this boat with aft seating is commonly known as a Gentleman's runabout or racer.


History

Before the original Gar Wood factory records were rediscovered in the mid-1990s, it was assumed and widely published (among others in the Rusty Rudder Journal and Classic Boating's 1991 issue) that
Edward J. Noble Edward John Noble (August 8, 1882 – December 28, 1958) was an American broadcasting and candy industrialist originally from Gouverneur, New York. He co-founded the Life Savers Corporation in 1913. He founded the American Broadcasting Company ...
, president of the Lifesaver Candy company, was the customer who persuaded Garfield Wood to produce a small fleet of racing boats for himself and his friends to run on the St. Lawrence river. Hence, even today, many different authorities and various media source from this first research idea established in early 1991. Yet, although this theory was considerably conceivable, it could never be assured and based on the old factory records, the same researchers (Anthony Mollica and Bill Northup) corrected their findings accordingly: It was more likely that the customers, who influenced Gar Wood in building the Speedster, were the Bourne and Thayer families of the Thousand Islands instead, buying three of the fourteen produced original Speedsters in 1935. Although
Edward J. Noble Edward John Noble (August 8, 1882 – December 28, 1958) was an American broadcasting and candy industrialist originally from Gouverneur, New York. He co-founded the Life Savers Corporation in 1913. He founded the American Broadcasting Company ...
did own a Baby Gar model, he never in fact owned a Gar Wood Speedster, though his daughter, Mrs June Noble Larkin, did. Thus, despite Gar Wood boats were highly prestigious (a Gar Wood boat had a price mark-up of about 1.5 to 2.5 over a comparable Chris-Craft model of same size) and the brand even used their famous customers since the 1920s as a reference in their advertizing, the only famous person known to have owned a Gar Wood Speedster as its very first owner was
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi , title = Shahanshah Aryamehr Bozorg Arteshtaran , image = File:Shah_fullsize.jpg , caption = Shah in 1973 , succession = Shah of Iran , reign = 16 September 1941 – 11 February 1979 , coronation = 26 October ...
. Based on the factory production records, the first model ever produced was the prototype used by Phil Wood, Garfield Wood's brother in late July, 1934. It was powered with an 85 hp Chrysler Marine engine and it still exists today. This was the boat that was used by Gar Wood for all of its sales material (showing reporter Charles Lussier and Gar Wood's Plant Manager Ed Hancock on board) and the first public appearance in a Motor Boating article in October 1934. Another eight boats, including "Miss Behave" and "Miss Chief", were produced in 1935. One of these was sold to
Algiers Algiers ( ; ar, الجزائر, al-Jazāʾir; ber, Dzayer, script=Latn; french: Alger, ) is the capital and largest city of Algeria. The city's population at the 2008 Census was 2,988,145Census 14 April 2008: Office National des Statistiques ...
(powered with a 92 hp Chrysler) and one to
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. Except the Algiers boat, all of these were powered with a 115 hp Gray Marine engine. Another single Speedster was produced in 1936 and delivered to Paris and onwards via
Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
to
Persia Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
. Another four Speedsters were produced but not sold until 1939 (one Speedster, which sold to
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) and 1941 (two sold to
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, one to
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). One of these four boats was powered with a 165 hp Lycoming engine, which was the largest, factory-installed engine ever fitted into an original Speedster. Of the fourteen original Speedsters, only seven are known to have survived. Of all Speedsters built, most known and researched is the history of the following Speedsters:


Miss Behave

In 1935, Miss Behave was one of four Speedsters originally delivered to Fitzgerald & Lee, Gar Wood's highest volume dealer before WWII, based in Alexandria Bay. Miss Behave, then called in fact "Miss Step", was purchased by the Bourne and Thayer families together with Miss Me and Miss Chief and it is today exhibited at the
Antique Boat Museum The Antique Boat Museum is a located in the 1000 Islands on the St. Lawrence River, in Clayton, New York, United States. The Antique Boat Museum is the premier freshwater boating museum in North America. The ABM's collections hold over 320 uniqu ...
in Clayton, New York. Miss Behave was originally powered with a 115 hp six cylinder flat head Gray marine engine, owned first by George Bourne, fourth son of
Frederick Gilbert Bourne Commodore Frederick Gilbert Bourne (December 20, 1851 – March 9, 1919) was an American businessman. He served as the 5th President of the Singer Manufacturing Company between 1889 and 1905. He made the business "perhaps the first modern multinat ...
, based on
Dark Island Dark Island, a prominent feature of the Saint Lawrence Seaway, is located in the lower (eastern) Thousand Islands region, near Chippewa Bay. It is a part of the Town of Hammond, in St. Lawrence County, New York. A historic landmark on the is ...
. It is one of the few original survivors, donated to the museum by Mrs. June Noble Larkin. Mrs. Noble Larkin, daughter of
Edward J. Noble Edward John Noble (August 8, 1882 – December 28, 1958) was an American broadcasting and candy industrialist originally from Gouverneur, New York. He co-founded the Life Savers Corporation in 1913. He founded the American Broadcasting Company ...
, bought the boat before 1968 together with her first husband, David Shiverick Smith, from its second owner (who also changed the name from Miss Step to Miss Behave) Fred McNally, and kept the boat after the divorce in 1968, when she got remarried to Frank Yoakum Larkin. Most of the reproduction speedsters built today are based on the original drawings of Miss Behave, taken during her restoration by the Turcotte Brothers in the early 1990s. Miss Behave's sister boat, "Miss Me", was owned by Alfred Severin Bourne, third son of
Frederick Gilbert Bourne Commodore Frederick Gilbert Bourne (December 20, 1851 – March 9, 1919) was an American businessman. He served as the 5th President of the Singer Manufacturing Company between 1889 and 1905. He made the business "perhaps the first modern multinat ...
with its fate currently still uncertain.


Miss Chief

Another original 1935 Speedster from the Fitzgerald & Lee delivery was Miss Chief, originally purchased by Alexander Dallas Thayer, who was married to Marjorie Bourne and hence he was son-in-law to
Frederick Gilbert Bourne Commodore Frederick Gilbert Bourne (December 20, 1851 – March 9, 1919) was an American businessman. He served as the 5th President of the Singer Manufacturing Company between 1889 and 1905. He made the business "perhaps the first modern multinat ...
. Featuring hull number 5703, Miss Chief is next to Miss Persia one of the five original Speedsters currently listed with the ACBS. It was originally powered with a 115 hp six cylinder
Gray Grey (more common in British English) or gray (more common in American English) is an intermediate color between black and white. It is a neutral or achromatic color, meaning literally that it is "without color", because it can be composed o ...
Marine engine, yet features today a 150 hp six cylinder Chrysler Spitfire engine. Miss Chief switched owners many times during its history: After A.D. Thayer, a second, unknown owner sold the boat to Randy Arnot, then to Bill Banister (when it got renamed to "Bandito"), further on to Don Price (renaming it to "Miss Chief"), on to Bob Fergus in the mid-1990s. Fergus sold the boat onwards to country-singer and classic boat collector
Alan Jackson Alan Eugene Jackson (born October 17, 1958) is an American singer-songwriter. He is known for blending traditional honky-tonk and mainstream country pop sounds (for a style widely regarded as "neotraditional country"), as well as penning many o ...
and it was later sold at the Antique Boat Auction in Clayton, NY, on August 1, 2009 for US$112,000 to its current owner, who replaced the bottom and preserved it back to its original looks of 1935. Miss Chief is currently the only Speedster that has a "twin", i.e. another Speedster with exactly the same name - other than that, the differences between these two twins are considerably high: The second Speedster called Miss Chief is a Wellington reproduction Speedster built in 1983 with a green fiberglass hull and green interior compared to the red, wooden hull and red interior of the original Miss Chief.


Miss Persia

In 1936, only one Speedster was likely produced for the important Spring exhibition at the
Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...
Boat Show in May that year, where the Speedster model was shown for the last time at a Gar Wood fair stand due to decreasing interest by the Gar Wood dealers in the proceeding years. A few weeks later, on June 24, 1936, it was transported to
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, sailing eastbound on July 1 on board the to Garfield Wood's French distributor Theobald M. Quinn to Paris. From here, it was delivered onwards to the Swiss Gar Wood distributo
André Couteau
This boat (model 606) was purchased by
Reza Shah Reza Shah Pahlavi ( fa, رضا شاه پهلوی; ; originally Reza Khan (); 15 March 1878 – 26 July 1944) was an Iranian Officer (armed forces), military officer, politician (who served as Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces Logistics (Iran), ...
as a present for his son
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi , title = Shahanshah Aryamehr Bozorg Arteshtaran , image = File:Shah_fullsize.jpg , caption = Shah in 1973 , succession = Shah of Iran , reign = 16 September 1941 – 11 February 1979 , coronation = 26 October ...
, who studied at
Lake Geneva , image = Lake Geneva by Sentinel-2.jpg , caption = Satellite image , image_bathymetry = , caption_bathymetry = , location = Switzerland, France , coords = , lake_type = Glacial lak ...
in Switzerland until May 1936. Originally, this model was powered with a six-cylinder 125 hp Gray marine engine and, thus, was the original Speedster with the second-largest engine ever built. It was re-powered in 1947 with a seldom six-cylinder 1M-245 R
Packard Packard or Packard Motor Car Company was an American luxury automobile company located in Detroit, Michigan. The first Packard automobiles were produced in 1899, and the last Packards were built in South Bend, Indiana in 1958. One of the "Thr ...
Marine racing engine, which was used by Mohammad Reza likely until 1950, at that time being part of the
Ramsar Palace The Ramsar Palace or Marmar Palace is one of the historic buildings and royal residences in Iran. The palace is in Ramsar, a city on the coast of the Caspian Sea. History The Ramsar Palace was established on a land of 60,000 square meters in 193 ...
inventory, located at the
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, the summer residence of the royal family. Its remains were rediscovered in 2016 and since, its hundred percent factory-correct recreation named "Miss Persia" is well documented and today part of a German collection, again powered with its rare six-cylinder
Packard Packard or Packard Motor Car Company was an American luxury automobile company located in Detroit, Michigan. The first Packard automobiles were produced in 1899, and the last Packards were built in South Bend, Indiana in 1958. One of the "Thr ...
Marine racing engine. Further, to the very detailed history of the above original Speedsters, the following two original Speedsters have been with their long-time owners for decades according to the records of the ACBS:


Nostalgia

Nostalgia was one of the 1935 boats, delivered to the Bennett Boat Company in Mayfield, NY, then running on
Great Sacandaga Lake The Great Sacandaga Lake (formerly the Sacandaga Reservoir) is a large lake situated in the Adirondack Park in northern New York in the United States. The lake has a surface area of about at capacity, and the length is about . The word ''Sacandag ...
. Today, it is located in
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.


Dream Chaser

Dream Chaser (previously known as Prima Donna) is Phil Wood's 1934 prototype, hence the oldest Speedster ever built with hull number 5589, featuring today a Gray Phantom Marine six cylinder engine with 115 hp. After the Chicago Boat Show in 1935 it was shipped to its new owner in Windsor, Ontario (Canada). After many years in one single collector hand, it is now owned by a Gar Wood collector from
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and resides on Lake Rabun.


Reproduction Speedsters

Several companies and individuals based in the US and abroad produced exact copies of the Gar Wood Speedster. Commonly known as reproduction companies are the three Miss Behave Inc. Speedsters built by Rogers Marina in Alexandria Bay in 1963, fifteen Wellington versions in the 1980s built in Wilson, NY, and the six 16 ft replicas of the Turcotte Brothers based in Watervliet, NY, during the 1990s. Main differences between the above three small reproduction series can be found in the quality of reproduction, the engines installed and the original Speedster that served as a base: While both the Miss Behave Inc. and Turcotte Brothers' Speedsters were based on the original Miss Behave, the Wellington versions were based on Nostalgia. Further, while the three Miss Behave Inc. Speedsters used general available hardware, the Turcotte and Wellington versions used both exact copies of the original Speedsters' hardware. Also, the Wellington versions were all featuring a fiberglass bottom, sides and transom, marking the biggest difference to the original Speedsters. Finally, the craftsmen behind Miss Behave Inc., David Rogers Sr. and Jr., chose to equip all three Speedsters with a 188 hp Universal "Little King" V-8 engine supplied by Universal Motor Company based in Oskosh, Wis. Contrastingly, the Wellington Speedsters featured a Crusader Marine V-6 engine with 165 hp only, while four Turcotte Speedsters were delivered with V-6 and two more with V-8 marine engines.


Miss Conduct

Another fine example of an individual reproduction speedster was Alan Schinnerer's "Miss Conduct" rebuilt between 1983 and 1985, which according to its hull number 5496 was based on an original Gar Wood 16 ft split-cockpit runabout of the same year. It is powered by a 244-cubic-inch
Chrysler Stellantis North America (officially FCA US and formerly Chrysler ()) is one of the " Big Three" automobile manufacturers in the United States, headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan. It is the American subsidiary of the multinational automoti ...
Fire Ball six-cylinder flathead engine, producing 175 hp and achieving a top speed of . In the late 1980s, this boat won best of show prizes at the most prestigious boat shows in the US and thus can be seen as one of the best reproduction speedsters ever built. At an estimate of US$30,000–40,000, it finally sold to its new owner at a price of US$70,400 at an
RM Sotheby's RM Sotheby's, formerly RM Auctions, is a classic car auction company headquartered in Blenheim, Ontario, Canada. With offices across the United States and several European countries, the company's services include restoration, private treaty sale ...
auction in 2015.


Miss Demeanor

Further, a few individuals around the world built replicas based on the drawings which were taken from Miss Behave during the restoration process. One of the most featured examples is the Swedish reproduction Speedster "Miss Demeanor", which was built in a home garage over a period of nearly two years between 2010 and 2012. Miss Demeanor is powered with a 220 hp
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V-6 engine, reaching about 40kn, and its private reproduction shows the fascination and impact the Gar Wood Speedster expresses even after more than 80 years on people worldwide. Today, more reproduction Speedsters are existing than original Speedsters with a total of sixteen 16 ft Gar Wood Speedsters registered at the Antique and Classic Boat Society, consisting of 4 Wellington Speedsters, 2 Turcotte replicas, 5 Speedsters of unknown origin and 5 original Speedsters with unique, confirmed hull numbers (September 2018). Overall, it has been researched that just about thirty 16 ft Gar Wood Speedsters exist worldwide (September 2018).


See also

*
Garfield Wood Garfield Arthur "Gar" Wood (December 4, 1880 – June 19, 1971) was an American inventor, entrepreneur, and championship motorboat builder and racer who held the world water speed record on several occasions. He was the first man to travel ...


References

{{Reflist


External links


Antique Boat Museum

Official Gar Wood Boats Society - Info on Miss Behave

German Gar Wood Speedster Collection - Info on Miss Persia

New York Heritage Research Portal Gar Wood Collection

The Antique & Classic Boat Society
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