This book tells the story in a small space of the development of 'Fast Boats'. As with other forms of technical evolution, such as cars, aircrafts and trains, there was always a group of enthusiasts who wanted to see who could go fastest, in this case over the water. this was an activity for wealthy sportsmen, who required proof of mastery in their chosen sport.Trophies and challenges were offered for races between power boats. Most of the story relates to the competitive urge to win the various trophies on offer, especially the American Gold Cup and the British Harmsworth Trophy, as well as on various independant attempts to win the water speed record. There are many other classes of record other than the absolute speed record, such as for single-engined craft (as opposed to multi engined), or for engines of smaller capacity than the unlimited behemoths, which includethe jet and rocket engines of later years.

Only in 1928 wwere standards set for the World Water Speed Record, still overseen by the UIM.Many attempts have been made, but the record has only been broken on relatively few occasions, and half of the drivers attempting to break the record have died in the process. Lessons learned from the quest for speed led to developments of fast surface craft for naval and life-saving purposes. Many of the resulting fast petrol boats and Air Sea Rescue craft are also described in this book.

Colour illustrations of many boats are hard (or impossible) to find, so we have taken the opportunity to picture many fast boats in this book using some of the excellent scale models produced by specialist manufacturers.

Publisher: Zeteo Publishing

Status: Current

Number of pages: 31

Colour images: 40

Black & white images: 30

Binding: SBD

Language: English

Origin: Uk