NEW SPEED BOAT

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 262, 26 January 1928, Page 16

NEW SPEED BOAT

65 MILES AN HOUR PRINCESS AT PILOT Piloted by Mrs. William B. Leeds — the former Princess Xenia of Russia—and carrying 24 persons, the new motor-boat Fantail recently made more than 60 knots for ten miles. This run, at the rate of 65 British statute miles an hour, was made on Long Island Sound, off Coldspring Harbour. A member of the Racing Committee of the American Power-boat Association was aboard to time it. British Admiralty observers, as well as the American Navy Department, were interested in the test. The Fan tail was designed by Lieutenant Johannes Plum. ex-Naval Attache of -the Danish Legation in Washington She is 38ft in length and 9ft beam. Described variously as “spindleshaped,” “shuttle-shaped,” and “very like a whale,” she is pointed at each end. Two 500 h.p. Wright Typhoon marine engines provide her locomotive power. One great secret of her speed is an aluminium, horizontal, stream-lined plane, shaped much like a whale’s flukes or a fantail, and adjusted at the stern, several inches below the surface. Skimming Like Flying Her load-weight at the recent trial run was estimated at rather less than 4,0001 b; yet when 20 miles an hour had been attained, a few seconds after

the start, the fantail arrangement lifted the boat so that she seemed to be in flight and barely to touch the water. Mrs. Leeds —whose husband not long ago came into his father’s fortune cf £8,000,000, made in the tin-plate business —is the principal backer o>! Lieutenant Plum and his speed boat Mr. Plum visualises such a speed vessel as the Fantail being dropped from the davits of a cruiser and thence flying at 65 or more miles an hour toward an enemy fleet, launching two or three torpedoes, and returning to safety—the bewildering speed of th* Fantail craft making it an almost impossible target. Princess Xenia, daughter of the Russian Grand Duke George / Michaelovitch, married in 1931, when she was 18, Mr. W. B. Leeds, jun., the 19-year-old son of the famous tin-plate millionaire.