Against The Flow - the Hamilton Jet tale

[Music] the boss had this dream he used to say I'd like to build a boat to go up Rivers Bill Hamilton never claimed he invented the water jet but clearly the boss demonstrated that shallow water should not stop anyone from boating it in doing so he effectively created a market for water jet propulsion many people had tried none of them had reached uh any commercial success but Bill Hamilton's natural tenaciousness and passion single-mindedly drove the early development of the water jet the story goes camping by the whitei my father said to my mother lovely place but there's nothing much to do here we need a boat a boat to run Upstream for all I know it could have been right here at arish Creek Bill Hamilton thoughts of an alternative way to boat Upstream stem back to the early 1950s and possibly even earlier his heavy engineering business was pretty much looking after itself CWF Hamilton and Co had opened up a Christ Church Factory where the bulk of their Machinery manufacturer was being handled now was his time to settle back and enjoy life at Irishman Creek Where it All Began but Charles williamfield and Hamilton was not an idol man in fact at a time when others were contemplating retirement Bill simply entered the next phase of his life letting his inventive mind take him off in a new direction or perhaps not so knew he was up in Christ Church for a short time he told me he's going back to Irishman Creek and uh triy to get himself a boat which would run up through the rivers the young Hamilton grew up at ashwick station in South Canterbury remoteness of the High Country sheep station was quite possibly the Catalyst for his Sharp resourceful mind just so much on his own that he was became very very self-reliant if anything had to be done he would look around and see how he could do it and he became um so confident at building up machines or gadgets some worked some didn't but he'd always do it at 21 he bought Irishman Creek Station not far away it was the early 20s there were none of the mighty power schemes of today and the Waters of the Oro teapo and wagi ran unchallenged from the mountains to the Sea he built little bits of Machinery uh built a dam put in a water wheel he had the water wheel driving a lathe for himself um and the lots of things he did before getting a sheep station up in the McKenzie country but he actually s things out very well he did build the overhead loaders and the ashless wonder and lots of things but building machinery to meet the demands of the people who look to his Ingenuity for help Hamilton needed power so like many challenges in his life this became his primary focus by diverting part of Irishman Creek and building a hydro generator from specially imported Parts it wasn't long before Bill had his own electricity flowing through the Farm Homestead and Factory over the next 40 years CWF Hamilton and Co designed and built countless machines including excavators and hydraulic pumps he even designed and built his own ice scraper for the dam at Irishman Creek he was contracted to build countless large industrial projects including New Zealand's first sko and Pen stocks for the teore B power scheme by the early 50s the boss as he became known was spending more and more time back at Irishman pottering round with the things he enjoyed most in the evenings he'd sit in his old leather chair think about it perhaps sketch out what he was going to do the next day on the back of an envelope then he would go out and build just such a range of gadgets so I was quite used to it and when he said he wanted to run up through the rivers you know I thought that was well I didn't think very much at all it's just another thing which father is doing set in the foothills of the Southern Alps of the South Island I Irishman Creek lies in the shadow of New Zealand's highest peak Mount Cook the Alpine landscape of the Mackenzie country make it a natural Basin for the millions of liters of water pouring off the snowcap mountain peaks my father used to tell me how he would float down rivers in a canoe as a boy and then have to carry the canoe all the way Upstream to do it again in later life with an inventive mind and living in the McKenzie country with the rivers of shallow he decided he must build himself a boat to do exactly that run Upstream early attempts weren't focused on jet propulsion rather anything that would allow a boat to make its way across shallow water and most importantly Upstream my father's had heard of tunnel boats and that was his first experiment Arnold France built a boat based on the Hickman sea slate a reverse V and in this he put a little but when it got planing air would come in and destroy the thrust he then put on an air screw that was the beginning but my father could see that although it was a way of getting up Rivers it was a bit of nonsense really far from satisfactory bill was contemplating the next step when fate would have his boat builder offer a possible solution was Arnold France who showed him a Popular Mechanics article and the Popular Mechanics showed the handly jet he didn't need a copy of it but he gave the layout so he then asked me to actually do the design of jet unit for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction throw the water backwards and the boat itself will react or move in the other direction exactly the same as a jet aircraft except they use air and water jet boats use water 19 53 saw Bill Hamilton's first attempt at jet propulsion based on the Hanley Hydro jet it was a centrifugal bevel gear driven pump fitted into a secondhand 3 and 1/2 M plywood Hull with a Ford 10 engine that first jet unit and was built at Irishman Creek just fabricated out of mild steel uh but it had bevel gears in it the bevel gears were spare parts which we bought from International Harvester and the little legit unit worked worked well a Tradesman originally employed by the boss as a farm hand was intrigued by his employer eccentricities at Irishman he watched the early tests that showed so much promise all these had the nozzle under the boat and they all turned 360° and I think went at a walking pace or the ones that we had did but a protrusion under the hull didn't fit with the thinking of traversing shallow water and with a nozzle in front of the intake hardly better than walking speed could be accomplished to be successful the answer was eject the jet stream through the transom in any case the Handley hydrog jet as it was originally was the layout was changed to a nozzle straight out the back with a pair of steering deflectors to direct the Jetstream left or right for steering and that was a a major breakthrough it doubled the speed exactly doubl the speed the boss said 9 M hour but I think it was a fast walking space which is roughly and by putting it through the transom it went to 18 M hour the Improvement was quite a bit which allowed the boat to get up and plane and suddenly there's a useful little boat however nobody at that stage saw commercial use the Christ Church operation occupied all the company's resources But Bill's a jet project needed help so in 1954 a young Canterbury University Engineering Graduate was employed to help the boss down at Irishman Creek little did George Davidson know how much influence this decision would have on his life I didn't know what a jet unit was had no idea I had to learn so I did and my first job was to draw up a production version of what we called the quinet but it had its shortcomings it uh wasn't over efficient it worked but it was very noisy the gears and the casing were not the best and I think it was only six of them made and they were awfully noisy awfully noisy yes it certainly was noisy it was nice to think of a try how to get rid of that noise this led George to design the rainbow another centrifugal pump but this time with a direct drive making the noisy gearbox redundant it was another step forward and about 100 rainbow jets were built that was the unit which really got it going in New Zealand got people into River boating without spending too much money I was very thrilled because it had the same performance really as the quinet and it was completely free of noise the Prototype rainbow unit is still in the original Hull elf dick fitted it to in 1956 these days it gathers dust in the farm shed of former World river racing champion John Hislop who bought it from a fisherman just down the road it wasn't until after that I found out the history of it they thck had designed the boat and put it together and done quite a bit of boting and i' probably read about it in the paper as well but I thought after that which we should hang on to it I actually built the the boat I sort of lengthened it a bit and made it a wee bit wider and pared it with a 100e prefet that's the first rainbow it was designed by George Davis it was the first of the batch the boat did actually 22 M hour it was a big success it went very well back at Irishman Creek George wanted to improve on the centrifugal pump his next design later in 1956 an axial flow water jet a more efficient type of pump it provided the performance breakthrough that would see Hamilton jet Take On The World I thought about it a fair bit and decided an axial flow pump was a way to go it handled more water the water didn't have to go through so many bins went more or less up and straight through the the unit out the back less water losses frictional losses and bigger flow for more propulsive efficiency so that was called the Chinook and was a two impellers exal flow pump and it was at that stage it was good enough to uh attract licenses overseas I was sitting in my little office at Irishman Creek writing letters to everywhere in the world answering inquiries what was this jetbat and then uh things started to happened beer Corporation they were building jetboats at that stage and from deand Australia at about the same time they were coming on stream in England and by the Dy group in Canada boats out of Ajax on area so the world was becoming aware that there was something around not unexpectedly another kiwi Arnold France began working on a similar concept around the same time Bill Hamilton had had numerous conversations with France and his son-in-law Frank Henderson about the idea and interest was sparked Henderson a lecturer in Hydraulics at the University of Canterbury helped France design an axial flow jet and install it in a 4 M boat with a Ford 10 engine performance was good but business pressure has forced France to eventually drop the development without the sort of intimate knowledge and the enthusiasm for the sport itself uh it really didn't go very far it's all very well um developing an Innovative product but uh if you want to commercialize it you've got to have a market ironically George Davidson had taken lectures under Frank Henderson as a student of engineering at the University of Canterbury there was no mention of water jet units at that time but we did pump design and all sorts of things involve with hydraulics Frank Henderson uh wife was a daughter of Arnold France and Arnold France was the man who showed Bill Hamilton this Hanley hydrog jet drawing out of a Popular Mechanics magazine that got him going on water jets with Bill Hamilton's drive and the resources we could do something which was probably what a lot of other people were unable to do and that's of course the genius of an inventor who uh doesn't look at the half empty glass looks at the half full glass and says for example as Edison one time is quoted as having said well I didn't fail I just learned another way not to build it by his enthusiasm running into rivers he slowly got around him a whole team of jet boting people keen on getting out into the Outbacks and voting the shallow rivers it was 1954 when young photographer guy maning was approached by Bill Hamilton to photograph his jet boat in action on the W makeri River just outside Christ Church guy was asked by Hamilton to go and photograph his boat which was rather precious to bill at that stage it was a cold day it was wet it was miserable and he wasn't fairly enthusiastic mannering was later commissioned to photograph a new boat with a better jet this time like the weather things were looking brighter the second time he went was with Bill and Al dick and there were the two boats it was exciting exhilarating and he came home on cloud n that was his first experience of a really happy day in the boats his story and pictures were published in the Weekly News in January 1957 and created a surge of interest in the new craft where I saw this wonderful spread in the middle of the magazine which guy maning had photographed I could see boats in the context of a beautiful River Gorge it just something we' never seen so that more than anything got me hooked on the concept of going up a river and in a ped boat the wave was gathering momentum and on it was guy man ing himself the photographer was so impressed he bought the second rainbow unit off the production line because guy is an impulsive man he had to have a boat of course so that's what he did he went and bought a boat the possibility that this afforded of getting into new and back country places in particular which we had never seen so the early days of jet boting was very much one of exploration there' be nothing to see 25 to 50 deer and a th000 Canada geese as I go through the gorge there was a wonderful group of core jet boers there was Al dick there was George Davidson guy's brother John Duke Dixon who was a great friend of guys and of course Bill always went along they were joining they were joining everybody was wanting to be on on the fun too it was great fun to B to get paid for having fun in boats is pretty hard to beat so really I just enjoyed life guy really really admired and worshiped Bill Hamilton I think we all did he was the boss and so it was a great father figure for guy it really was because guy lost his father years before for the next couple of years this merry band of enthusiasts followed Bill Hamilton up and down as many New Zealand Rivers as they could find spawning the of jet boating as we know it today the picture of guy Manning's contribution is not limited to his photography the plywood hulls of the era were taking a terrible beating on the shallo rivers I remember one occasion when guy very much wanted to go out on the Sunday and the boat had to be mended on that Saturday night and he bought the boat into our living room and mended the bottom so that he had some light cuz our garage didn't have any any light guy grasps a new product fiberglass as the perfect solution to patching the Myriad of holes appearing in the bottom of his boat Bill Hamilton was so impressed he adopted the medium immediately not just as a quick fix for the fragile plywood but for the construction of the hulls themselves guy maning with this broke he was a Czechoslovakian chemist and he actually brought along samples of fiberglass and we tried to destroy these with a hammer and we were amazed at the strength of them and was really guy who introduced us to uh Charles Cox and Charles knew all about fiberglass and Guy experimented with Charles on fiberglass house and it was magic it really did work was so new that he didn't go as far as the deck or the sides but it had a fiberglass bottom I would think that amongst the jet rating fraternity at least bill hamilt would be considered rather similar to uh Henry Ford and what he did with the motorc car if Bill Hamilton is to the jet boat what Henry Ford is to the Motorcar then this is Hamilton's Model T the jet 30 Mark I established itself as Hamilton's first true production assembled jet boat building commenced in 1960 and by the by the time production ceased in 1969 almost 200 boats had been sold throughout the country we had the chinuk Chet which was the first really serious production EXO flow unit uh it was up and running but it was expensive it cost 250 from memory and that was quite a lot of money in those days and we felt the market was being restricted because of cost by 1964 the boats were fitted with a new Colorado series water jets I went down to Irishman Creek from Christ Church and spent some weeks designing a cheaper simpler jet unit and that turned out to be called the colorado Junior it was half the price of a chinook it had a single impeller the simple ones later models had two and three impellers so the Colorado series came into being in the early 60s and really we took a step up and STS and to Colorado sold freely at 4 m in length with an 8° V bottom it was ideal for slow shallow water boating the jet 30 had an enviable reputation as being one of the best river boats ever Bill's Visionary mind again played a big part in the next stage of the jetboat in his eyes this popular movement needed organization Bill's interest in it was not So Much from the sort of uh the club outing um racing sort of Dimension which is abounds today but purely in the ability to get up new Rivers he was also very keen to see it properly organized guy lived for jet boats absolutely lived for jet boats any news any new development any new stories and the phones would go at night with more lovely stories coming across and they would join up every weekend and try again to do another run we had a 15 boat party up the wire we had a chat under the willow trees at lunchtime and I think a number of us were appointed from that group to have a informal committee meeting to decide on where we went next it was greeted with enthusiasm with by my father thought what a good idea and after that there were much more formal meetings and IES the first meeting we had following that was right here in this room just virtually where this piano is here uh this was not the association as yet but it's the precursor to it the actual formal formation of the association was held in the Pioneer sports club club rooms in Christ Church on the 11th of December 1962 so that was the actual start of the jetb association the New Zealand jetb Association the patron of the association was Bill Hamilton John Hamilton was the Vice President George Davidson Richard Johnson Don mom guy mening John mening his brother jock Montgomery alen Watson and myself because I had poked my head above the gunnel uh I became the the the chairman or the first president the jetbat association has had a very good effect in two ways first of all uh to do with River boting they were able to negotiate with the government agencies which control the rivers guy was the leader of the voters to in effect try to reach some kind of compromise with The Regulators about how the voting activity was going to be guided and governed he was a good spokesman for the jetboat association he was most particulate and I think he did a great deal of good as people have taken up jet boting overseas they've got a New Zealand example not to guide them to at least encourage them in the late ' 50s word was reaching overseas especially North America about boats capable of navigating Rivers previously thought unbootable my friend Bill Austin and I were in Christ Church on our way to Antarctica to spend the Antarctic summer on the Ross ice shelf many Americans used to come either to his Studio or to our house and ask questions of Photography down in the anarctica bill as a photographer was in search of some information and happened into um guy's place on Cashel Street where um they immediately hit it off and um then bill came back and said I met this fantastic gentleman and uh he thinks we should make a river trip this weekend so 3 or 4 days later we found ourselves on the yac that was the beginning of our association with the jetbat and these two gentlemen became our firm friends bill of course finally invited us to go to the Colorado and so he was the opening pin for the Colorado Expedition he made this proposal of running the Colorado Upstream my father went over there and with Bill they explored the bottom end of the canyon Bill Hamilton was convinced it was possible in conjunction with Hamilton Jets USA lensey John beer the plan was laid for a return the following year to conquer a river never before boated Upstream what better way to demonstrate the capability of this new propulsion system today more than 16,000 people float the Colorado every year between Lee's Ferry and Lake Meade but in 1960 a total of less than 400 people had ever been down through the canyon and none had successfully voted against the flow for bill this was his ultimate challenge but an accident on the mukii river over summer put PID to his assault on the Colorado the boss previous had broken his elbow in a boating accident and it was a very bad break and I'm so sorry he wasn't with us guy maning his wife myself and Joyce we went over and experien this really wonderful Adventure the plan was to first boat Downstream laying in fuel dumps for the return attempt we didn't have any handholds we just had ropes across that we had to hold on to as we went through the r was was no support at all so we just tumbled and crashed as we went through progressively the Rapids got larger and larger till I peaked at Vulcan guy had given me the camera we were all very apprehensive of that roaring monster and the first boat that took off was Bill Austin driving I was filming it and I saw the boat just soore through the air and then with this great crash lay down into the hole underneath and I saw Bill lying on the deck and was obviously his leg was broken cuz he was having to hold it together and that was a terrible terrible time and that night that followed until a helicopter came down to pick him up Joyce Hamilton's account of the trip in her book White Water leaves little doubt about the difficulty and danger of this trip especially at Vulcan licky and I sat here for 2 days watching the boats fighting their way up to Rapid and we were sitting on the edge and there was some River 3,000 ft below waiting and waiting and they tried and they [Music] tried last the boat gets up over the top tremendous excitement but not knowing who was driving it who was in the boat we had many other hurdles many other Rapids were difficult hen Creek further up was in bad condition and very difficult but we didn't really have too much difficulty in the navigation of the Rapids until we got up to Grapevine a big rapid in which we sunk one of the bites but it was quite a trip it um was a success three boats made it all the way up to Le's Ferry and arrived in early July so it was about 1 month all together I'm sure guys most precious moment would have been the Colorado to be in the Colorado with John and Joyce and Bill and Phil was very special I don't think people would appreciate how difficult it was unless they were voters who had tried boting white water made Ron to be back here and see the country again yeah but that that's you that's me 1960 would you autograph my River guide I'll do that great it's was really good to meet you see you we will eventually it comes up on almost every trip has anybody run a boat up this River and I can say yeah a guy named John Hamilton did back in 1960 he's the only one that's ever done it what an honor 44 years later at Lake Powell just outside paage in Arizona one of Glen Canyon Recreation area's greatest Mysteries is finally put to rest for archaeologist Chris Kade so that will be we read none of us have a memory of how the ba managed to get here how we got it well that's the jet in is all right do you actually produce the hull of the boat or just the engine we gave the license to manufacture the jet units to the Beer Corporation and so as words spread about these tiny boats from New Zealand Conquering the mighty Colorado life at Hamilton's would never be the same the whole Colorado Expedition I'm sure gave jetboats impetus I'm sure it lifted it up out of just a toy to a great invention I really think that lifted it all completely changed it completely really for the next 20 years a group of enthusiasts would find themselves involved in some of the most exciting boating adventures in some of the most unusual places in the world places like papun guini where the Australian government funded a geological Expedition on the seic river the Congo helping the British military commemorate Stanley's 1875 Journey Down the Zer River and the Mong in Thailand back home another famous New Zealander Edmund Hillary still high from conquering during Mount Everest was looking to new challenges and Adventures I'd become quite interested in jet boting myself then I did some trips with John Hamilton then the idea struck me that it would be very nice to bring a couple of Jet Boats over to India the first expedition was into Nepal that was in 1968 the first uun up the sun cozy River we did some trial runs up big rivers that ran into this from coosi we drove up the iron which was a pretty difficult River it was very uh steep uh lots of Rapids Aon was very bad I thought that was a very bad place all together and the water got worse and worse and we just felt at some stage it must get better it must get better yeah but it never did the thing was look it had got better it until that moment when I turned around and I saw the jet boat with its tail in the air and you C out it's sinking it's sink I can remember that very clearly Jim actually managed to sink his boat and then we had to reorganize and do the upbring run with only a single boat we headed up the wild waters on the sun Coy uh we had to overcome a lot of Rapids finally we uh reached the uh uh our ultimate destination uh which was the track uh leading into C Mandu we started out with two boats but we ended up with one but we did succeed in uh overcoming uh the problems on the river with the one boat then Ed Hillary was so delighted with that trip that he decided that he would do the what became the ocean to Sky trip the full length of the Ganges [Applause] [Music] [Applause] trip up mother Ganges ganga as we called it um appealed to me as being a a very interesting and energetic challenge it was about 1,500 miles from the ocean where we commenced up the river to as far as we could go in the Himalayas itself it was one of the most fantastic trips I have personally ever done a typical day we'd run for 3 four or five hours up the huge River with great great sailboats playing Up and Down the River absolutely amazing we didn't see motorized craft at all then about the middle of the day we'd get into fuel dump and there we' met with thousands of people coming to see they um really felt that we were making a religious pilgrimage because many Indians believe that in their lifetime they should try and travel all the way up to CES from the ocean up into the Himalayas and that was obviously what we were doing Ed was busy signing Little Bits of Paper for people having his pictures taken for the newspaper then we'd set up again and we'd have another 3 four five hours run up the river [Music] [Music] as we got up further the river got more and more confined and [Music] faster it could be driven up without too much problem until hardwire and then after that we got some real real tough Rapids H you know great big waves much narrower [Music] River and uh that was wonderful we had spent a week up the alander and then to my I perhaps should say relief we came to a waterfall we went as far as we could go it was a big waterfall there and above that there were vast rocks that were impossible for us so we had to uh leave our Jet Boats there and we walked the last uh 100 miles up into the [Music] mountain the challenges that the uh jet boat put before you if you wish to do a difficult trip I think are very similar to the challenges you have in a mountain uh we certainly found this uh in all our challenges in the [Music] himalay the effect of these Expeditions on CWF Hamilton and The Business of water jet manufacturer is hard to quantify but one thing is certain the Hamilton jet was not hard to Market I think in those days certainly from my perspective and the publicity Arena it was seen as just the easiest publicity job in the world because um it C it attracted so much attention the commercial potential of the jetboat as a tourist Adventure tool was a direct spin-off today hundreds of jetboat operations around the world have treated millions of people to the Thrills of skimming over ankle deep water or perilously close to rock walls boating up Rivers was a hugely exciting uh state for all of us uh so much so that I uh turned to commercial boating and doing a trip through the waym gorge but changed the direction of my life uh hugely barely 5 years after the release of a viable production model Harold and Ellen melhop from inago began taking Queenstown holiday makers on jetboat rides on the cowo river they started doing it on Frankton Beach here uh five Shillings a ride and then the council encouraged the mut Brothers to go into Queenstown Bay and operate from the main Pier which is where we operate from now the shotover operation was split off and purchased by herb Palmer the local Harbor Master in 1966 and later by Trevor gamble when we first started it was down straight down through the center stop turn around and it was a very quiet Scenic trip uh I sometimes say designed for the the AG and infirm but after I'd been uh driving for about 3 years I used to go right against the Rocks if they were older I you know respected their age we had a 73-year-old I took off down the river missed everything by at least 3 ft and before I started talking she did last year she had been down and last year was much more throwing and this year she' bought her husband down and she was basically she wasn't getting her money's worth so I had to upgrade the trip just to stop the old girl from complaining and that night we at home we sat down and we decided right we sell it as a thr trip and from now on we'll just go as close as possible to the rocks and make it as throwing as we possibly can that was the turning point of the truck that was probably the birth of the adventure tourism in Queenstown well we started off of course with a single stage uh this is Back in 1970 then we went to a two stage then we went to a three stage and then when we got the big boat which uh we then they had designed and built the 10 1 the company had been developing heavier jet units the 1031 bigger diameter bigger flow and these were going so we adapted these new units the 1031 to work in the shot over boats they were quite different to your conventional boat there was a couple of tis in the river that you needed a short boat to get round but it was uh under 16 ft but 8'4 wide so it was quite unconventional at that time Hamilton did the fit out and supplied the unit Etc and they made a sign a disclaimer uh that they weren't responsible cuz they really didn't think the boat would float or work we didn't really know what to do with them and we're a little bit frightened about them they were about as wide as they were long and the designs were very unconventional the normal ratio of length to beam was gone this thing you weren't sure which side was the front they were almost Square uh and they were boat designs that really were too unusual for us today the original operation cowo jet has taken the tourist attraction to even greater Heights in specially designed large capacity twin engine Jet Boats using Hamilton's high volume 212 water jets twin engine tourist boats are nothing new ranging Marie jet on the wongi first hit the water in the early 60s and Duke Dixon plied The yakiri Gorge around the same time also with a t engine version of his original boat but this operation almost defies belief 4 tons of boat and passengers skimming across just 100 mm of water at 30 knots in 1995 um we we produced the T engine 23 seater jet boat the safety was one one of the main reasons we went for it with single engine craft if the the engine fails and you've got no steerage Twi engine um it's very very unlikely that both engines would stop at the same time so for safety with the 20 engines uh 23 passengers and up the very very shallow braided narrow channels of the shot over that set new standards for for the industry the jet boat has really um started off Adventure tourism in Queenstown in 1960 with the melhop brothers that was really the first Adventure activity for people to do it's produced huge results for the town um it's marketed worldwide the jet boating being unique to Queen down into New Zealand being a New Zealand invention good afternoon everybody how we doing by the 1970s Hamilton jet was producing a wide range of river and inshore seagoing Jet Boats from the 4 m jet 20s to the luxury 7 m Cabin boat all used the Colorado and later the better designed 750 and 770 series units it was mounted over a single hole in the hull of the boat and eased the mounting for manufacturers was simpler to mount and had much more outboard of the boat more sticking out the back if you like to counter inefficiency myths about jet propulsion in the ocean a television campaign was launched using the famous slogan born in the rivers to play in the sea the born in the rivers to play in the sea Campaign which was pretty much shamed at the Deep Water Market out of ockland uh threw the Hamilton company into a whole new new light really as far as the New Zealand Market was concerned it was important in the marketplace to show that the jet boat worked adequately and efficiently in seag going conditions and we had a thriving boat building business here until building boats in Christ Church for the New Zealand Market while the fuel crisis and the luxury tax of the late '70s seriously reduced demand for jet boats Hamilton's Core Business was still heavy engineering but all that came to a crashing halt in the ' 80s after a change of the government's think big policies of the era and the lifting of import protection you know we we had we as a company had thrived on the back of the think big projects of the day really quite rapidly work fell off all the big work was imported from overseas instead of being built in New Zealand and we had some very difficult decisions to make suddenly that work was just evaporating and the company was actually faced with um survival issues which it never been faced with in its history to date we had a one stage over 500 people operating on heavy engineering but we realized we had to reduce the size of the company it was a heavy load on his shoulders to keep this company going uh so there was definitely misgivings the proposition that was put in front of the company was focus on the water Jed one product rather than the multiple products that we had the company had to think about its future and decided to go for the product that they had a market for the water jet units and try and develop it into something more part of the marketing effort was to set up a distribution Network around the world a network of IND dependent Distributors anyway the decision was made one product sell it around the world water jets so we went for it and I'm pleased to say it worked Hamilton Jet's own Regional Offices in Europe and USA Supply directly to larger clients with specific tailored application is required typically this might involve setting up multiple water jets in one boat with sophisticated electronic control systems so if you start um putting three four and as we have done five water jets along the transom of the vessel the control aspects get get awfully complicated until you're able to control them with electronics so that has been one of the more recent developments within the company is to bring in electrical or electronic Engineers was was a big um Innovation and uh and necessary for us to go forward today Hamilton produce a wide range of water jets the smallest model the 212 considered by Hamilton as their freshw jet is most likely found in the large rivers of the Pacific Northwest region of America servicing the pleasure Market the remaining range up to 800 mm in diameter is used in applications as diverse as crew boats working in the Gulf of Mexico to fast passenger Furies in New York the typical Crew Boat will carry perhaps uh 200 two 300 tons of Machinery but when it's not doing that it spends the rest of its time taking cruise but for these boats you have to handle a lot of water which means a very large diameter nozzle uh they overcome this by putting in four and sometimes five of our jet units dozens of water jet boats service the massive population moving to and from Manhattan Island land every day combinations of single and multiple jet powered boats ply the Hudson River with ease of maneuverability and without the worry of large quantities of floating debris damaging props and Rudders all the way C more than 10 times the size of Bill Hamilton's first jet boat the circle line zepha represents one of the biggest passenger jet applications from the Hamilton stable four half M water jets Propel a 44 M tourist catamaran around New York Harbor carrying 600 people at speeds up to 30 knots history will show Hamilton's deliberate path into commercial water jets proved to stute for the ongoing viability of the company but nonetheless many frustrated jet boers looking for Speed watched on as the Americans came up with their answer to the Hamilton jet it's a mixed flow it's halfway between a centrifugal pump and an axal flow pump that we at Hamilton's used so I think ly were able to capture a market particularly in the states and later in other parts of the world that wanted to go fast with big engines and it did that very efficiently still does Hamilton knew about this they were able to build High Press jet units of a similar elk but commercially they decided to head more for the heavyduty commercial propulsion units of big flow medium pressure despite this decision Hamilton Jets had already competed with distinction in early Power booat Racing well this one here is jet ma um this was built 1970 um it was I think 21t long um it was actually I designed it but it was actually a copy of Don shed Don shed actually made the cigarette holes in England and he used to make 40 60 foot long ones but this one here was 21 ft I think she was um she actually did 72 M an hour which was very fast in those days as pleasure turned to competition jetboat Marathon racing on Rivers was born it was 1970 when the first 3-day Marathon was held in the north isand and so began a kiwi phenomenon by 1972 exat Mike sanderman living in Canada had won the Rio Bales River Race in Mexico for the first time in a Hamilton powered jetbat Bill Hamilton's interest in racing Jet Boats was hardly surprising racing was in his blood I think we the first man to do 109 mes an hour in a car in a racing car in New Zealand now he was he was always a keen racer and he supported the racing very well he brought out from England a 1914 Sunbeam racing car uh some five or maybe seven had been built and that was it it had never quite done 100 Mil an hour but brought it up here to Irishman Creek and stripped it down overhaul the engine put a new body on it and went Motor Racing Bill Hamilton also traveled to England bought a Bentley hotted up the engine at the Bentley Factory and went racing at Brooklyn's the Easter race in 1930 against some quite severe competition he was able to win all three races no one had ever won all three races before Hamilton and no one has since so for John the Hamilton jet assault on the 1973 Rio Bolis and Mexico was Uncharted Territory but by now like his father he was becoming accustomed to unusual challenges Hamilton jet 1 a jet 52 with 454 Chevrolet and three-stage racing jet was the official Company entry driven by John the race was won by Hamilton jet 2 an identical boat driven by Neville Southerland in an ironic twist Jon's prize for third place was a brand new outboard Hamilton is a great pump uh uh I know that in 75 in Mexico Hamilton was still the number one but the berkeleys were closing in but the technology has changed and uh at the speeds they're running now it's a it's a lower it's a lower pressure pump doesn't have the Velocity to keep up Brian Clement working on the banks of the Red Deer River in Alberta Canada remembers hearing about the jet and built one without even trying it I never rode in a jet boat or seen one operate till I built my first jet boat in 1966 and uh Fred krunic uh was working for me and uh I had an idea about running the river because my shop happened to be sitting on the river and we kept looking at the river and I took a lot of people on their first jet boat ride they're very involved in jet booting today on this River to me that's the camaraderie with the new zealanders and uh the Americans and Mexicans all of them all of them together but we have a I think a special relationship with the Kiwi since uh since the beginning there we all seem to be on the same page this common interest in racing Jet Boats would be a bond for life well as far as the Hamilton was concerned I think it was a pretty good jet unit and whatnot and they had lots of power in front of it I don't know if they were a lot faster than us but they certainly had their race G came together better than we did John Hislop the quietly spoken farmer from Southbridge just outside Christ Church already had the 1977 New Zealand Marathon title in the bag when he shipped Union travel jet into North America to take on the high horsepower Canadians and they Berkeley his rival Fierce competitor Fred kronik couldn't match The Talented kiwi and Hislop picked up his second major title in two countries Freddy K and argue for airs over the pros and cons and finally in after a few years Freddy convinced me that Berkeley was better uh to get more speed anyway it's a lowf flow high pressure pump and it's efficient and it drives boats very fast the inaugural World Championship in Canada eluded both hlop and kronic in 1978 but the Kiwi snatched the 1979 World Crown in decisive style in Mexico to become the only competitor to ever achieve wins in each competing country a record that stood for 35 years on rotation New Zealand hosted the 1980 worlds a huge affair with a record field of fast competitive boates amongst them the reigning and Undisputed world champion John heslop and the first overseas competitor to challenge the kiwis on home Waters all away from Las Vegas Nevada we thought we were pretty good we were naive and we didn't know what we were up against we obviously uh as I said before we were completely outclassed on our abilities on our skills and I had only been on rivers with dirty water so I was used to reading the river based on color of water as well as texture and Etc uh when I went to New Zealand um obviously the rivers were braided which we aren't used to braided over here nothing on that scale at least and then being able to see the bottom while I was racing completely disoriented me I was I was like I had never been in a jet boat before on a river before when I got there so it was a it was quite an experience 1980 was never destined to be the American year nor that of the world champion hlop a young Protege from the same region was about to make his foray into the world of jetboat marathon racing 26-year-old mark cromy from Raya built his own alloy jet 73 powering the three-stage Hamilton race unit was the popular twin turbo 454 shavei prepared in his father's garage working in a country garage all my spare time that I had I spent on my race boat well we were certainly very very new in that game because it was the first real big Marathon we'd ever been in wasn't easy you know because we had no real experience in boating and we had to learn how to do this and how to read rivers and I think what we used to do is just follow people and it was easy just to sit back and follow them and watch how they worked and of course eventually there was no one to follow 25 years later chromy is one of the best known names in jetboat racing with three World crowns to his name but even he can't post a crown in each country John hlop was the the man of jet boating around the world he was a hero and I think he was well respected over in America and Canada and certainly in Mexico John heslop's memories of his racing days overseas are never far away his Flagship Union travel jet un ceremoniously dumped in the front yard a constant reminder of his competitive past the past that forged a few friendships most of them are forged but mostly have a bottle of Canadian rum um they met a lot of friends and M talking boats and just carried on from there sadly John succumbed to cancer before this story could be told but Fred Kronk's son Rob himself a two times world jetboat champion knows all too well the important contribution John Hislop has made to Jet boating the Bott he's actually cleaned it up for this Robbie here one of B original well basically now that we've got that we can easily reild the rest of it as a tribute to his father and his friend John kronic Jr has undertaken to restore Union travel jet to her former glory as one of the few remaining Champion marathon race boats of that era what the hell have you got here joh 73 well you should know what it is and what of that other important piece of History tucked away in John's Farm shed we haven't got time to talk about now we got something else to do in here what the hell John heslop and elf dick share a Tipple of an almost forgotten bottle of whiskey pledged more than 25 years ago to celebrate one of the oldest jet boats in existence safe in the knowledge elf's original old boat will now be preserved in its current state by the Canterbury Museum ensuring future Generations can stay in touch with this uniquely New Zealand concept I would have to say that we early voters in Canterbury were exceedingly privileged to have been born at this time because we were witness to the uh development of the whole boat we were fortunate enough to know personally the key people involved we were just lucky to have been there at the start when rivers had not been explored uh um we were just very fortunate individuals from the back blocks of New Zealand South Island with the objective to boat against the flow of the river was first spawned the Hamilton jet has made a remarkable journey across time and the globe it's never going to be 90% of marine propulsion but the world is a big place and the niche market for jets is really quite substantial one man's Vision has seen C WF Hamilton evolved from a once successful heavy engineering company into a progressive world leader in water jet propulsion manufacturer Bill Hamilton would have been delighted that one day the company would just survive on this one product that he had such an interest in and obviously was the forefather of so the zepha powers around the icon of the 21st century with those aboard oblivious to the humble beginnings of the propulsion system that removed the kn need for the propeller a propulsion system that opened up the waterways of the world and the minds of those who challenged them well when my father was running up small rivers in New Zealand I'm sure he would never dream that his sh propulsion would be used to visit the Statue of Liberty in New York go [Music] [Music] [Music] d [Music] he

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Length: 61min 9sec (3669 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 25 2024