CHALLENGES:
Bill Ritner owned a Bob Paterson designed and built marathon boat, WA WA SK-247. This hull, powered with a hemi engine, was last known to live in the New Jersey area. Is it still alive? Does anyone know anything about it? Please contact this writer.

RACE SITES:
  July 8 thru 11 Detroit, MI Chrysler Jeep APBA Gold Cup.
Last chance! Send your letter to me if you intend to participate in the historic Detroit Gold Cup.
  August 6, & 7,  Lake Tahoe CA 
Contact Lake Tahoe Yacht Club General Manager, Keith Fields @ PO Box 7620 Tahoe City, CA 96145 or phone (530) 581-4700 Fax (530) 581-4771

RACING HISTORY FROM NEW JERSEY:                  Edison Hedges - Record Breaker
Altogether, Edison Hedges with his Eagles held twelve world records established in the years 1932 thru 1938. Most of his Eagles were powered with Universal Motors. “There is no secret formula for winning speedboat races and putting world records into the headlines.” So said Edison Hedges, an Atlantic City barrister, motorboat racing enthusiast and former legislator. Eloquent Eddie as his friends like to call him, named most of his boats Eagles - Flying Eagle, Little Eagle, Universal Eagle, Mysterious Eagle, and just plain Eagle. But to confuse the issue, in 1937 he did have a boat which he called Senator. 
It seems that Edison Hedges became interested in motorboats “years ago, when the little puddle jumpers were as much a novelty as the airplane, and interest was started in Mays Landing, the point from which speedboat racing was revived in Jersey.” He started in outboards, outgrew them mentally as well as physically, and turned his attention to the smaller, lower-priced inboard hydroplanes and runabouts. With these he was successful in competition and on the mile straight-away where only Time runs against you and your boat.
 During this time he set four records in the 125 and 135 cubic inch displacement hydroplane class, five in the 91 cubic inch class and one each in Class A, B and D runabouts. He began the business of kicking around world records in July 1932, and continued it to 1938. Only in 1934 did a record escape the talons of one of his Eagles. At that moment in 1939, his 91 cubic inch hydroplane Flying Eagle held the world record for 5-mile competition in the class with a speed if 42.836 miles an hour. Six years prior to that when Hedges drove another Flying Eagle 37.672 M.P.H. for a record in the 125 -inch class, he thought he was really moving.
Hedges was an amiable, polished chap with a brimming enthusiasm for motorboat racing. He trailed his boats around to every Eastern regatta worthy of the name and was actively interested in helping the American Power Boat Association make small hydroplane racing thrive. He helped in this respect by bargaining off his boats to prospective members of the 135 and 91-inch classes and then building new ones. At Northeast, Md., in the summer of 1938, virtually every entry in these classes were either a Hedges boat or one that had been his.
Now here comes an interesting Eddie story. In September, 1937, Earl Lofland and Anthony Orth, of Wilmington, were on their way to Atlantic City for the late-season races in that district with a large moving van containing two boats, one of which was supposed to be a mysterious creation. Seven miles from its destination, the truck caught fire and was burned to the frame, boats and all. Lofland took one look at the Universal motor that he had in his boat and abandoned it at the roadside. Along came Hedges, on his way to Mays Landing. He spotted the broiled motor, heaved it into the back of his car and took it home to see what could be done about it.
Something, apparently, could be done and was done. That discarded motor, rescued from the junk pile by Hedges, powered Flying Eagle on her flight to two world records within two weeks that August and September. Lucky, eh? Well, then how about this? When Flying Eagle did 42.836 m.p.h. for the 91-cubic inch record at Stone Harbor in September 1938, Hedges started and finished the race with the oil pressure gauge showing zero, indicating that the engine was getting no lubrication. Nothing happened except that the motor went faster than ever before.
 Hedges made his first record at Albany in 1932 with one of the first 125-inch hydroplanes, which were then puttering around courses at 30 miles an hour. While Hedges was preparing for this race, along came a couple of salesmen for a new type of racing fuel. Would Mr. Hedges let them try it out in his new boat? He would and did. Several carburetor adjustments were necessary before the new fuel did its stuff and it made such a difference that Hedges hesitated to believe the tachometer. So off he went to Albany for a five-mile race. He got a good start, arrived alone at the first buoy and forthwith began to worry about having beaten the gun. When he finished, far ahead of the nearest competitor, he eased up alongside the committee stand and asked: “What is the matter? What went wrong?” Imagine his surprise when the answer came: “Nothing is wrong except that you have broken the world record by about seven miles an hour.” 
How’s this for backyard ingenuity! Most of Hedges spare time was spent in Cape May where he and his mechanic, Ben Risley, engaged in exhaustive engine testing. They experimented with cylinder heads of various designs and material. They worked out fuel mixtures and spark adjustments for maximum combustion efficiency. They tried propellers of different pitches and diameters. By these methods they toiled slowly and tediously toward higher speeds. Now here is the part that I like. Hedges thought that much of testing that went on in the boat could be done by other means. So he built a homemade engine-testing machine (Dyno). They went to the junkyard and purchased a frame from an old car. They mounted the engine in the car frame along with fuel tank, gages, and most important a tachometer. Mounted on the engine was a modified wooden airplane propeller. This would provide the engine with the same resistance that the boat propeller encountered in the water. The idea proved workable and saved considerable effort. Remember this was done in the thirties and their homemade dyno machine worked perfectly with only one draw back. The pitch of the airplane propeller controlled the rpm at wide-open throttle. So all testing was limited to that rpm. 
 One of Mays Landing’s early racers, Edison Hedges carved his own mark in Eastern New Jersey’s hydroplane racing history.

VINTAGE HOT BOAT OF THE MONTH:
1946, Edison Hedges driving the Clarissa, B-3. The Clarissa was formerly known as the LY BEE. On November 17, 1945, Tommy Hill, owner and driver of the 135 cu. in. LY BEE set a straight-way record at Salton Sea, CA with a speed of 80.178 mph. 

©1999 Tom D'Eath