Coastal Motor Boats

Martin Kelly & David Griffiths

Seaforth

£40.00

In the years before WW1, Yachting Monthly readers might have been startled by eye-catching designs for fast motorboats being developed by the Thornycroft company. Sleek rounded hulls powered by multiple 12-cylinder engines were achieving speeds in excess of 35mph to win international competitions. Soon, stepped hulls, developed on Thornycroft’s Miranda system, enabled these boats to lift up and plane. From 1914, their ‘skimmers’ were swiftly transformed into Coastal Motor Boats -- rather as Childers had foretold in Riddle of the Sands.  

Martin Kelly and David Griffiths detail the constant experimentation and testing undertaken by the company, as well as the bravery of the young men who drove them and the indefatigable care shown by their mechanics.