History MYTH...OR LEGEND? Jersey Devil found!

Lake Hopatcong up north from you has some pretty cool boat races every year ususlly 3 or 4 sea skiffs they are cool.Your boat is cooler.

 

I don't know if we have the same gang here??? But those stories are true, and just strange...that is why I told it like a story, hahaaaa.

My father was real crazy back in them days.....actually still is. So I have to ask bout them boats I heard. I remember the sound of em, you could here it all across town, screaming. Nobody could catch them. Keyport is not that big, only bout a mile square. I think I remember them running out of a town near by called Cliffwood beach. I'll get details... I've heard lots of rum running stories too.

Keyport was cool, there was an air/marine facilty there during the war. I took this pic of Petey's sedan one day while messing around. I try to always bring my camera with me.

Did you mean Vetnor, near AC? My mom lived there once.

 

Petey's car at the keyport Air/Marine. This place is cool. There is also a brick factory that fell into the ocean here... its amazing.

 

Check this out...


http://www.vintagehydroplanes.com/the_boats.html

 

Check this out!
http://www.network54.com/Forum/157337/message/1226174936/lonr@genext.net

 

Man... I'm hooked.

 

Man...thats crazy. I'm taking this boat straight to Ship Bottom NJ where I was concieved. Gonna meet my maker. Come catch me....

Probable not going to go too fast with that little 60.


Who's the rat?

 

Man, you catch what he said? Man... I remember an exsplosion! I still can't here outta my left ear!

"I can remember my dad, Al Bauer, Bennie Miller and some others talking about somebody from New Jersey who had 2 boats called the Jersey Devil. The owners last name was Smith. I think they were brothers. A 225 and a 266. I think one or both of them were killed (maybe murdered) in an explosion. I see a N 20 and a F 20 that were Jersey Devils. What was the story on them. I think they won a lot of races back in the 50s".

 

Great story, thanks for sharing. Awesome boat too, be sure to keep us all updated on the progress.

 

Man oh man...

 

I take it back... that boat is pretty awesome.

 

Wicked!

~Jason

 

WeIrD-O!

 

that guy looks like jeremy......that weird sunofabitch would drive that thing...he can water ski pretty good also, we can hook him up behind it...i wanna see that thing this week when i come down...crazy

 

http://www.vintagehydroplanes.com/jerseylightning.html

The Jersey Lightning is so cool!

 

This is a list of programs and if u scroll down there are some cool misc. news paper and mag articles. The 65 nationals in bakersfield california was held at ming lake which is about 10 minutes from my house.

http://www.vintagehydroplanes.com/regattapast_tableofcontents.html

 

in the 1958 Eastern Divisionals program 266 hydros there's F-20 Jersey Devil driven Geo Smith Mt Holly NJ . The brothers appear to have been George and Ron Smith
"three boats all named 'Jersey Devil' a 135cid hydroplane, a 225 cid hydroplane and a 266 cid hydroplane. We had seen the 'Jersey Devil' previously, but not three of them."
a Stude powered sibling...


good stuff DD

 

You wanted to know how fast that v8 60 would go check out 1961 and read the top of the page first. Congrats man!!! sorry just read up a little, it was the stude powered one that went 111. still alot of cool stuff on that site.

http://www.vintagehydroplanes.com/gulf100mphclub.html

more history, this site is good for you, LOL!!! I scanned around some more before posting and found this.

http://www.vintagehydroplanes.com/story_hampton1950s.html

 

When you get around to resto-ing the wood work, IMHO, you should patch the hammer holes with an opposing grain direction. Perhapse even a contrasting type of wood. Those holes represent a part of it's history, and the reason it was "lost" for the past 40 years... A part of it's "original history" so to speak.

I think it would be cool to show off these battle scars instead of hiding them.

 

Thanks for info... found some more stuff.

The Ventnor Three-Pointers

By Fred Farley - ABRA Unlimited Historian

The now-defunct Ventnor Boat Works of Ventnor, New Jersey, occupies a special place in hydroplane history. It was there that the modern three-point design concept had its genesis.

Ventnor engineers Adolph and Arno Apel , a father-and-son team, popularized the idea of a race boat that rode on two pontoon-like running surfaces called sponsons and a submerged propeller. The Apels didn't originate the three-point design, but they're the ones that made it work. And power boat racing hasn't been the same since.

The boat's three-point principle, as developed by the Apels, provided a hull that offered much less resistance to the water than was possible with the non-sponson boats.

One important object of the three-point design was to insure a maximum amount of air passing under the bottom of the boat, which in fact rode on a large compressed volume of air. This significantly reduced the coefficient of friction between the hull and the water.

A further object of the three-point concept was the use of the sponsons to help hold the boat in its correct planing attitude. The sponsons also increased stability and concentrated the air under the bottom of the boat, resulting in an air-lift to the hull proper.

Still another feature of the three-point design was a specifically designed bottom. This helped to further concentrate and entrap the flow of air gained by the momentum of the boat and also to help prevent the craft from skidding.

Not surprisingly, on the heels of the Miss Manteo II success, the tiny Ventnor Boat Works facility near Atlantic City found itself swamped with orders for three-point hydroplanes. These included S. Mortimer Auerbach's 135 Class Emanipator VI, Jack "Pop" Cooper's 225 Class Tops II (the future Slo-mo-shun I), and George Cannon's 225 Class Gray Goose 2d. So successful were these and other Ventnor three-pointers of that era that the Apels applied for (in 1937) and were granted (in 1938) a patent on their ingenious design from the United States Patent Office.


Thanks for your help!

 

Wild info here...

Strangely, only one owner-Jack Rutherfurd-elected to exploit the Ventnor three-point breakthrough in the Gold Cup Class in 1937. Rutherfurd named the craft Juno, which used the same naturally aspirated Packard that had formerly powered Ma-Ja II. The hull of Juno was originally intended to go to China as one of the Chinese government's "Suicide Fleet" of torpedo-carrying motor war craft. But more about that later.

 

The modern three-point concept had had its origin when representatives of the Chinese government contracted with Ventnor for a fleet of high speed suicide boats. The Chinese wanted a hull that would travel in the area of 50 to 60 miles per hour and carry a 500-pound bomb in the bow. The driver would take this, ram an enemy ship, and blow it up.

Over a dozen of these crafts were built by Ventnor, a company that secondarily manufactured a line of water skis.

As production of the suicide boats got underway, a serious problem was encountered. The 20-foot rigs proved to be terribly erratic. At high speeds and in the corners, they tended to dig in and plow on account of all that weight in the bow.

Perplexed, Adolph and Arno Apel took a pair of Ventnor water skis and juryrigged the skis with some two-by-fours on the sides of the boats with the hope of improving the riding characteristics. When they tested, they found that the skis came down, absorbed the weight, and greatly stabilized the boats.

The Apels then built these stabilizers right onto the outside of the hulls. This was the original basis for modern sponsons! The fact that Ventnor specialized not only in boats but also in water skis has to be one of the oddest quirks of the industry. It was these two elements coming together that created the three-point design that still dominates more than sixty years later.

Adolph Apel had experimented with the concept of two forward planing surfaces before. Tech, Jr., a 1915 Ventnor hull, owned by Coleman DuPont, had been so equipped. But the boat had such difficulty in cornering that the idea was abandoned.

As for the suicide boats, thirteen or fourteen of them were sent over to China, and no one seems to know what ever happened to them. As far as is known, they were never used in a war situation for the purpose that they were intended.

With one suicide boat still remaining to be shipped overseas, the money from the Chinese government inexplicably stopped. So, this last boat wasn't sent but rather was placed in storage at the Ventnor plant. It was this craft that was acquired by Rutherfurd and became the trend-setting Juno. And it was the overnight success of this "suicide-boat-turned-racing-craft" that made believers out of a lot of people. Indeed many felt that only refinement of the Ventnor three-point concept was all that stood between the time-honored step hydroplane and obsolescence.

 

Glad to help... My dad got me into boats. He bought a 1952 Shepherd 22' Mahogany Speedboat that used to be the excursion boat for "Clementon Lake Amusement Park" in Clementon,NJ back in the 50's. He rode on it when he was a kid. It needs a total restoration but is still cool.

 

http://vintagehydroplanes.com/agitatorhistory.html

Mike is a good friend that builds all my motors. His dad Charlie built and raced boats since the 50's. Mike raced hydroplanes once and decided if he was going to die racing it would be in a Sprint car.....where he could win money instead of a trophy. He convinced Charlie to start building race cars in the early 70's. Mike, Charlie and later with Smokey Snellbaker driving had a long and successful career racing Sprint cars on the east coast. Their fastest cars are at the Eastern Racing Museum at Latimore, the "Pocket Rocket" being Mike's most successful design.

Last year at the Lloyd reunion there were 15 or 16 cars and a few of their boats.

Mike made the cowlings out of fiber glass using a Mustang drop tank as a mold. He still has the tank in one of the barns, I hope to build a belly tanker out of it someday. When I was a little kid my dad would take me to their shop to check out the latest boats being built.

 

Man, this vintage hydro plane site is amazing. I have to read you link later... I'm out the door to Keyport.
Going to try and trace some stories, check out a couple old boat guys I know, stop at the Air/Marine and see what I come up with.

I've gotta a bellytank project as well. I just sent it to my Pal's up in Albany, he is supposed to be breaking a bead so we can split the tank and we can start the chassis. He own's a nice break. I still use a 2x4, I beam, and vice grips...hahahaa.

Belly may take a back seat...

 

We used to go 'wheelin' and biking in the pine barrens.. had some interesting (to say the least) encounters with the Pineys.. good times. One day we took a '68 Skylark out there and jumped it until it broke in half (it was kinda rusty!)

Thanks for bringing back some memories to an old Jersey boy.

 

Well, thanks to the Antique Hydro site, I may have found the terror of the Raritan Bay, Keyport.

I just called my father to ask if he knew a family with the last name of Boggs, he replied with a yes, Harrison Boggs. A boat builder from the early days in Keyport, unfortunately now ...dead.

He then had to get of the phone because he was driving and had a cop tailing him, maybe more info later.


For the record...
I am still not sure if there is even a connection between the stories of a Jersey Devil on the bay in my home town, and the finding of this hydro. But it sure is fun!



I also found out from a man that lives on his boat in a Keyport Marina yesterday, that there was an unmarked boat, and boats that would slip into the bay from time to time for fun. With no markings... Could it be the Devil? It too, also has no numbers or lettering like most other hydro's???



"Pokey" Doesn't seem to be the Devil, but a step in the right direction.

266 CU. IN. HYDRO
(Prefix letter F)
. Uses automobile engines. Superchargers are prohibited but fuel injection is allowed.
Minimum length for hulls registered before 1962 is 16 feet. The minimum length 18 feet.
F-4 GORDIE REED-Kenmore, New York-"Iroquois Chief"
F-29 MIKE WEINER-Cincinnati, Ohia-"Ballyhoo"
F-30 BURNETT G. BARTLEY, JR.-Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-"Wildcatter"
F-S3 FRANK KOSSOW-Ottawa, Iliinais-"Miss Ottawa"
F-78 BILL BUNTIN-Metairie, Louisiana-"Pepe Le Pew"
F-88 JOE STRYHAL-Miami, Florida-"Miss Dukane"
F-97 LOU NUTA, JR.-Miami, Florida-"Roman Candle"
F-98 HARRISON R. BOGGS, JR.-Keyport, New Jersey-"Pokey"
F-191 LEW KOEHLER-Miami, Florida-"Tootsie"
F-444 ANSON C. HOLLEY-Baton Rouge, Louisiana-"Cajun Queen"
F-888 GENE BRAMBLETT-Miami, Florida-"Jade Dragon"
F-13 AL HUBER, JR.-Miami, Florida-"My Bad Penny"
F-247 C.C. "SKEETER" JOHNSON-Cambridge, Maryland-"Wa-Wa Too"

 

This is definatly one of the coolest stories I've heard in a long time. It seems like piece by piece, it's slowly coming together.... Very cool...

 

Great story! Reminds me of when I was a kid and we would watch the local races down on the shore. My dad used to race hydros and skiffs in the 40s. He was just telling me some stories not to long ago. Good luck on your search for info.

 

My engine builder and good friend is an old Hydro guy that raced 266 class. He ran a 265 chevy in his boat "Busted". His name is Bill Wright and he still has Busted, but the motor is out being rebuilt. I think he has it up for sale though.

I need to take a real good look at it one day. His boat is a 17' traditional in wood. It was old when he picked it up in the 70's to replace his previous racing boat.