MILE MINUTE AT SEA.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 8911, 3 September 1907, Page 3

MIL E MINUTE AT SEA.

A New Gliding Boat. Mr Pc-ter Cooper Hewitt; a fairly well-known American ’ inventor; claims to have designed and built a boaf or ’'gliding craft, 'which will solve, the problem of' going sixty miles an hour at sea, and fcnng New York, when the model is perfected, within thirty hours o| Liverpool. One big newspaper .has devoted alpioit a page to illustrations of Mr Hewitt's boats and his claim to establishing the biggest record jn the annals of speed, In appear®***- jj r Hewitt’s rough Tlbuel, which is capable of holding two men, hardly looks like a boat, but it is a water-born structure nevertheless, and is propelled by a gasoline motor working a screw. It is really a development of the wellknown catamaran type of boat of the Fiji Islanders, hut instead of parallel iogs of smooth timber, cigar-shaped arrangements are attached to the hull of the vessel, by means of which the catamaran glides over the water. They are well-constructed steel plates taking the place of the logs in the catamaran, and these plates are attached to the craft by steel arms. Looking at Hewitt’s boat in dry dock you are quite prepared to hear him txpkin that he had started to build a flying machine of tho aeso-*. plane type, and that ho accidentally invented his gliding boat. Many people may refuse to take his idea seriously, but ho claims to have gone 88 miles an hour at sea with one man aboard, and with a two hundred feet model ha guarantees a mile a minute. Some American experts in marine propulsion say that Mr Hewitt hag hit the bull’s eye this time, and should be encouraged to continue his experiments. If he cannot apply the idea to big liners bo may, it is said, construct a craft of lightning speed which would be snapped up by tho navy for war purposes. 'To hit a boat going at sixty miles an hour would be praoticaUy impossible. Mr Hewitt intends to experiment until be obtains perfection.

Ip tbe meantime the turbine engineers of- the now Cunardors Lusitania and Mauretania, which are going to regain for England the blue ribbon of the Atlantis, need not be alarmed just. yet. Mr Hewitt may make a mile-a-mimifce gliding boat, but many problems must be solved if his inventien is to be applied to a mile-a minute gliding liner, ah bough he is hopeful of accomplishing that also before long if anybody will fled the money.