Q. E. D.

Slim as a lancet, her trim superstructure melting into as slick an air-flow contour as any Hollywood futurist ever conceived, the 112-foot triple-screw yacht Q. E. D. poised one afternoon last week ready to glide down her skids for a maiden wetting in the ebbing waters of Manhattan's malodorous Harlem River. Beneath the concave bows of this fuselage-shaped ship stood her owner and chief designer, round, rubicund Hollander Anthony Herman Gerard Fokker, an old hand at aircrafting, a brand-new hand at shipbuilding.

He was about to send down the ways a $200,000, seagoing sampler of his seagoing notions. Light (70 tons), fast (26 knots), she was powered by three engines totaling 2,000 horsepower, to be replaced later with a central Diesel for cruising, two light, air-cooled airplane engines for speed. Newfangled were Designer Fokker's automatic stabilizer, a vertical variable-pitch fin that works like a steerable centre board; and a stainless steel anchor that fits itself into the ship's bottom about 20 feet from the bow.

To 200 guests gathered for the launching, Aircrafter Fokker, speaking in a rich Dutch accent, explained in part the proposition his Q. E. D. was designed to demonstrate.

"I wish to prove," he began, "that my ship, by introducing new principles, will revolutionize and give new impetus to the shipbuilding industry. . . . I hope it will be obsolete within two years. That is the way we build airplanes. No sooner do we complete them than they are obsolete. That is good. That is progress. Today there are too many yachts that outlive their owners. . . ."

Tony Fokker might have gone on to explain that he had his eye on a shipbuilding business to replace a U. S. aircraft career that ended when the Department of Commerce grounded his transport planes after the mysterious Rockne crash (TIME, April 6, 1931). But at that point a telephone extension buzzed. He caught up the receiver. From across 3,500 miles of sea came a familiar voice. "Hello, momma," boomed Fokker happily, and in mingled English and Dutch described to his mother in Holland the scene on New York City's Harlem.

Presently he replaced the instrument. A bell rang aboard the Q. E. D. Mother Fokker's call had been the launching signal. A wicker-jacketed bottle of Zuyder Zee water burst against the yacht's bow, workmen knocked away the keel blocks, loosed the hawsers, and the Q. E. D. started down the ways. But before more than a few feet of her hull had entered the water, she came to a dead stop. Her stern was stuck in gooey Harlem mud, there to list forlornly until the next high tide floated her up, long past midnight.

When Anthony Fokker bowed out of U. S. aviation in 1931 he was by no means out of business. He was still building Fokkers in Holland, and for the last two years he has been assembling Douglas aircraft abroad under a cross-licensing agreement making him the Douglas manufacturer for Europe. War scares abroad have boomed his business to a reputed $500,000 monthly. He is currently seeking a license to build Fokker ships in Canada.

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