Perry L. Gardner: Private Journal #8
Monday, March 14, 1988
I have been down with the flu for more than two days, with guts pains and headache. Fever got up to 99, but it is down to normal today. The gut is still sore, and I am very fatigued, but feeling more active today.
The Gold Cup boats are at Mystic through the end of May, so I am very excited about going to see them. It is a connection with my Dad. I called Mystic today to talk to someone, and they said they would have the curator call me in the next couple days.
All I have is bits and pieces of memories about what Dad told me, but just what his role was is unclear. I will write down some things I remember:
- He was apprenticed to John Hacker, I think, at Albany Boat Corporation in Watervliet, ~ 1916 or so.
- He got his honorary N.A. from Woodrow Wilson (President of Princeton), because he was impressed with his ability after designing a boat for Wilson.
- He had something to do with the hulls of the NC-4+ flying boats which, I believe were built at Albany Boat, and I believe he flew to Nova Scotia in one. Herrschoff & Lawler Yards.
- There was a magazine article in Motor Boating or Rudder written to me about the time I was born (1920) about a racing boat called Arab IV, which I assume he designed. Arab IV was a stepped hydroplane.
- He said he worked on the design of one of the first boats to do 60 mph (Arab IV).
- He worked at Luders [?] and Consolidated Boat works some time in the 1920s, although he was at Albany around 1927 or 1928, when he took me to the shop at night and built me an 8-ft flat-bottomed rowing pram, which I rowed on visits to him for several years.
- He told me about a feud with Gar [?] Wood over Gold Cup rules, where a Vee cutout in the stern was disallowed as being a step, and at the time only monoplane hulls were allowed. I don’t know whether it was his design or one he worked on for someone else. (Tarpon)
- I don’t know what his relationship was with Crouch—whether as an ally or a rival.
- Tripp was head of Albany Boat. The name L.L. Tripp is in my memory, but whether the same man, I don’t know. And what about Tripp and Aunt Pauline?
- His designs were empirical—some ideas worked, some didn’t. His search for speed on the water lead to many pioneering ideas. Reduce wetted surface, and still maintain stability and control. He condemned the sea sled as unstable.
- He entered the “Dragonfly” in the Albany-New York race in the late 1920s, but had power failure so didn’t get far. It was a three-point suspension hydroplane with three separate hulls connected by a triangular bridge platform surrounded by an open railing trussed with aircraft cables. The two foreward [?] pontoons were used later on my second boat, which used the split forward step on the front of a flat Vee hull. We only had a 20 HP Evenrude, and the boat was underpowered. We also had a bow hydrofoil designed for that boat.
- In summer of 1936, I spent a month at Diamond Point on Lake George, where I witnessed the building of the “Silver Bullet”, a 17 ½ foot 225 cu hydroplane of Dad’s design. He was supervising the construction of the Aluminum and Mahogany hull of what he termed “composite construction”—wooden frame with metal skin. It was an airfoil-shaped hull with a Vee cutout step forward and a cavitation plate after-surface. The engine exhaust was vented into the step, and there was ram [?] air for the engine coming in at the horizontal airfoil bow. It was powered by a Gray “Fireball” six-cylinder engine. The crew worked all night before the Gold Cup race but couldn’t finish it in time, so we just went and watched while [xxx] went around the course with no competition to win in Impshi ?? I think “El Largato” went out for a run also. Dad drove the “Silver Bullet” to win at Picton, Ontario, and a fourth place in the Round Absecon [?] Island race at Atlantic City and a survival win in Albany to New York race.
- His next design was a three-point hydroplane, and the most beautiful edition was “Gray Goose” owned by Geo. C. Cannon of Rockledge, Fla. It was a streamlined airfoil design of gleaming mahogany and 3-point suspension—a 225 cu inch engine. I think there was a second generation of Gray Goose, but I don’t remember exactly.
- There was also a pioneering effort he made in welded steel boats. These were runabouts of 21 feet or a little longer of welded steel—sheet metal over steel frames with stiffeners. Extremely strong and not heavy. One was dropped off a crane onto a concrete wharf in Albany with no damage. He won a prize for an essay on welded steel boats from Lincoln Arc Welding (Foundation?). All of this was during the Depression in the 1930s and boat business was poor.
- There was also his story about trying to sell MTBs to the Navy in WWI. They didn’t buy, but apparently Italy did. These boats were faster than the Navy boats of the day.
- In summary, he worked through the pioneering era of high-speed planing boats, from monoplane hulls to three-point hydroplanes.
- At some point early on, he built himself a 40-foot cruiser over in Portland, Conn. In the yard of an Afro-American friend. I don’t know whether he commuted from Meriden, or whether he stayed in Portland, or some of each. He claims to have run all the way from Meriden to Middletown—he was a cross-country runner. There was a story about getting a captain’s license and taking parties to Block Island in that boat. There was also the story about Aunt Pauline heating a can of beans without opening it, so it exploded beans all over the cabin of that boat. The boat was sold to someone in Albany, and in order to deliver it, he borrowed a 5 HP engine for the trip, which was just enough power to stand still in Hell Gate against the current.
- How he got into boating, I can only guess. It was from his grandfather or grandfathers, but whether it was all Uriah Perry, or Gardner also, I do not know.