Friends, Families & Forays: Scenes from the Life and Times of Henry Ford

24. The Speedboat Miss Dearborn

24 The Speedboat Miss Dearborn From 1920 until 1925, Edsel Ford, then in his late twenties, was playing with speedboats as well as with foreign sports cars. He did not race them himself because it was too dangerous. Although he would often drive the boats on practice runs, for serious racing he employed such daredevils as Ray Dahlinger, Jimmy Smith, Paul Strasburg, and Johnnie Stroh — but always cautioning them to be careful. Edsel’s fleet of speedboats during that period included Goldfish, Woodfish, Comanche, 999, Greyhound, Jr., and probably others. Edsel competed in regattas such as the Niagara River Races at Buffalo in June 1921 and the Mississippi Valley Power Boat Association races at Peoria, Illinois, in July 1921. In these races, he was not the winner. It was in 1920 that Edsel had decided to compete in the International Sweepstakes on the Detroit River, also scheduled for the summer of 1921. Prominent contenders were Horace Dodge, Garfield (Gar) Wood, a Mr. Greening of Canada, and a Colonel Vincent of Packard Motor Car Company. Wood, chairman of the race committee and frequent winner of such races, was to set the specification limits for boats entering this race. Both Edsel and Henry Ford eyed the very favorable publicity to come from winning such a race in Detroit. They would build a boat that would surely win. Edsel had in mind a sleek monoplane hull with lines borrowed from some of the fastest boats in racing. Both Edsel and Henry wanted to experiment with aluminum hull fabrication — Henry was thinking of producing large amounts of aluminum at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and building Model T bodies of aluminum. When it came to the engine for the speedboat, a souped-up World War I twelve-cylinder Liberty engine likely would have been Edsel’s choice, but Henry had a different idea. He was experimenting with a small X engine. Eugene Farkas was directing the work. The X engine was to replace the Model T engine in a revolutionary new Ford automobile. 183 Previously published in the Dearborn Historian, Vol. 38, No. 1, 1998. Both the engine and the hull were built in Dearborn in secret. Work on the engine design was started by Allan Horton in the powerhouse building at Fair Lane. Later, Harold Hicks, Farkas, and Howard Simpson took part in the development. The boat was laid out full-size on the second floor of the tractor plant office building, the hull just large enough to house the engine adequately. Carl Schultz did the layout detail work, and a Swiss draftsman, Carl Marti, helped. The hull was about 33 feet long and 9 feet wide at its maximum width. There were to be no nonessential protuberances such as windshield or running lights. Everything was flush except the cleats with which the boat was tied to the dock. The headlights popped up with the touch of a button; side running lights worked similarly. 184 The Speedboat Miss Dearborn Top view of the Miss Dearborn speedboat, December 4, 1924. (189.2431) There were seats for four in the boat. Two-seated speedboats were not yet in vogue.The cockpit was forward, and the engine was in a large compartment in back of the passenger seat. Gas tanks were in the rear. The primary feature of the speedboat, however, was Henry Ford’s monster engine. This X engine turned out to be a twenty-four-cylinder of 4400-cubic-inch piston displacement. It consisted of four L-head, six-cylinder engines placed at right angles to one another driving a single ball-bearing crankshaft. It was equipped with dual ignition and magnesium pistons. The engine was designed to produce 1,000 horsepower and drive the boat at 60 miles per hour. Every part of the entire speedboat, including carburetors, distributors, reduction gears, and oil pumps, was built in Dearborn, it is said, with the exception of the fortyeight spark plugs. The boat was very aptly named Miss Dearborn. As building of the Miss Dearborn progressed, Wood heard of it and lowered the maximum cylinder displacement allowable in the race to 3,000 cubic inches and finally, on March 3, 1921, to 2,150 cubic inches. This was only half the displacement of the Miss Dearborn. So, for the Detroit River race, the Miss Dearborn was much too large to qualify. When completed, the Miss Dearborn was taken to Edsel’s Grosse Pointe 185 Three...