Show Boat

Beribboned, bedraped, the interior of Grand Central Palace, Manhattan, last week went drydock. A 62 foot Elco cruiser, biggest boat of the show, rumbled up to the doors and towered at anchor. A 30,000 pound Diesel engine arrived and sat solemnly in one corner. Propellers, pennants, anchors, gyroscopes, all manner of gadgets ranged themselves agreeably on the shelves. The 23rd annual Motor Boat Show was declared open.

Salty observers noted that speed was the keynote. Slim mahogany hydroplanes to carry a half dozen slightly bewildered passengers were credited with 55 miles per hour. Large lumberers of the cruiser type were ticketed to do 25. Tiny spiderlike shells with outboard motors swarmed everywhere boasting varied, astonishing rapidities over 30 m. p. h. Oldsters recalled how very few years ago it was when none but the maddest special speed boats ran over 25.

An endless stream of obvious landsmen with nautical aspirations tramped bravely up the gangways and roamed the concentrated, neat interiors. Women fingered cooking utensils professionally. Experts hung at precarious angles peering into mechanical viscera. Small boys delighted to honk horns or to seat themselves surreptitiously when salesmen, displaying tasteful arrays of toilet accessories, were not looking.

A continuous splash of water played over woodwork invincibly varnished with Valspar. The hiss of Fyre-Freez extinguishing apparatus attracted knots of the curious. Small motion picture advertising machines explained to all who stood and watched the swift capacities of the various craft in water. A Chrysler marine engine artfully sliced in various vitals, backed with mirrors, turned slowly to show all who cared to gaze the working mysteries of its interior.

Rich brokers pored over faster runabouts or the flat snouted, roomy sea sleds. Small watermen gazed knowingly at single and two cylinder power plants for staunch waterfront wanderers. Children chattered over the countless, bright colored flat backed outboard boats, dragged parents by the coat tails begging them to come buy. The famed Fantail racing runabout which made such astounding speeds in the late autumn was a continuous curiosity. At an easy angle under her stern projected a bronze colored tail, raising her out of water, reducing hull resistance. Miss America V, world's record holding hydroplane, arrived but was not admitted. The show space was already overcrowded. She was removed to the show rooms of her owner Gar Wood, famed racer and manufacturer. The Greenwich Folly of George H. Townsend, President of Boyce Motometer Co., winner last August of the Gold Cup, greatest of all motor boat speed prizes, was absent. But there were numerous speedy Chris-Craft, numerous Dodge Water Cars, sometimes raised to specially built speed efficiency and raced by the only notable woman marine speedster, Mrs. Delphine Dodge Cromwell, daughter of Horace E. Dodge, famed maker of Dodge automobiles.