Nov 26, 2025
Nov 19, 2025
The Fastest Boats in the World Pt. V - Reaching The Peak
- Richard Crowder
- 19 minutes ago
- 8 min read
In Part 4 of this series, we explored the outboard-powered world water speed records for both inshore and offshore racing. In Part 3, we left the overall water speed record as being set in 1952 by Slo-Mo-Shun IV at 178-mph (287 km/h).
Following the end of World War II, jet turbine engine power was exceeding piston engines, especially in terms of horsepower per pound. Following in the footsteps of his father Malcolm Campbell, his son Donald Campbell tried to match the speeds of the American Slo-Mo-Shun IV using his father’s twelve-year-old Blue Bird K4 with a twenty-year-old Rolls Royce piston engine. But in 1951, it suffered a structural failure at 170 mph (270 km/h) and raced no more.
Around the same time, Englishman land speed driver John Cobb became interested in the water speed record pursuits of the Campbells. He had English boat builder Vospers build a unique three-point trimaran with the sponsons at the rear of the hull. The 31-foot (9.4 m) aluminum skinned Crusader was powered by a single de Havilland Ghost turbojet pushing approximately 5,000 pounds of thrust and 3,000 horsepower. While trying to beat the Slo-Mo-Shun IV world record in late 1952, Crusader disintegrated on Loch Ness at around 210 mph (338 km/h) on its first pass and Cobb was killed instantly.
Meanwhile, the Italian Motorboat Federation was offering a prize of five million lire to any Italian who set a new world overall water speed record. In late 1954, Mario Verga’s very fast but apparently unstable piston-powered Laura III flipped upside down at 190 mph (306 km/h) and Verga was killed.
The quest to set a new overall water speed record was becoming very noticeably dangerous. The power of the water at ever-increasing speeds was causing increasing concerns among engineers and drivers alike.
During the same time, Donald Campbell was having a new jet turbine powered Bluebird K7 designed and built in England. The 26-foot (8 m) 3-point hydroplane “pickle fork” design used a pair of sponsons up front mounted on outriggers. It also featured an aluminum skin over a welded steel spaceframe and was initially powered by a Metropolitan-Vickers turbojet which developed an estimated 4,000 pounds of thrust and roughly the same horsepower. As with all jet or rocket-powered boats, there was no propeller in the air or in the water. In 1955, Campbell set the new overall water speed record at 202 mph (326 km/h).
Meanwhile, in 1951, Gold Cup spectators from Sarnia, Ontario, Canada, businessman Gordon Thompson and his son Jim - an engineer and graduate of Royal Roads Naval College - had purchased Gold Cup contender Miss Canada IV from Harold and Lorna Wilson and begun experimenting with it. Thompson changed the boat’s name to Miss Supertest to reflect the business he owned - the Canadian Supertest Petroleum Company.
Then in 1952, the Thompsons helped design and commissioned the building in Sarnia of a 31-foot (9.4 m) three-point racing hydroplane they named Miss Supertest II. It was built from plywood with an aluminum bottom and powered by a 2,000 horsepower Rolls Royce Griffon water-cooled V-12 engine turning a surface-piercing propeller.
Miss Supertest II challenged for the Gold Cup but was never successful. Designed for top speed, though, Miss Supertest II did set a world speed record in 1957 on Long Reach off Picton, Ontario at 184.5 mph (297 km/h) with veteran racer Art Asbury of Dwight, Ontario at the helm. That same year, Bob Hayward, a racecar driver from London, Ontario joined the Thompson team as a mechanic and boat tester.
By 1958, Jim Thompson set about designing a new three-point hydroplane with the specific objective to win the Harmsworth Cup for Canada. Built in London, Ontario, Miss Supertest III was 30'8" long (9.3 m), 12'6" wide (3.8 m), and powered by the same 2,000 horsepower Rolls Royce Griffon piston engine that could run up to 11,000 RPM. With Bob Hayward at the helm, Miss Supertest III only entered four races, winning all four, before it was retired. It won the 1959 Detroit Memorial Regatta Gold Cup, plus the 1959, 1960, and 1961 Harmsworth Cup races. This was shocking as American boats had won the previous 39 Harmsworth Cup events. A month after his last Harmsworth Cup win, Hayward was racing Miss Supertest II in the Silver Cup Regatta on the Detroit River when the boat went out of control, flipped over, and Hayward was killed. He was 33 years old. The Thompsons retired immediately from racing and put Miss Supertest III in storage. It is presently on display at the Canadian Raceboat Hall of Fame in Muskoka, Ontario.
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Now, back to Donald Campbell. He set six more world water speed records in Bluebird K7 over the next nine years in England, Australia, and the United States by making consistent tweaks to the boat’s aerodynamics and hydrodynamics. In Western Australia in 1964, he increased the overall water speed record to 276 mph (445 km/h), almost 100 mph higher than the record established by Slo-Mo-Shun IV only twelve years earlier.
Surprisingly, during the same period, Donald Campbell was also continuing to chase new land speed records. In the same year he set the new water speed record, he also set a new land speed record of 403 mph (649 km/h) in his jet-powered Bluebird CN7 on a dry lake bed in Australia. To this day, Donald Campbell remains the only person to set and to hold both the world water speed and land speed records in the same year. He has also broken more water speed records than anyone in history.
As Campbell and his designs continued to evolve and reach new heights, In 1966 he installed a lighter and more powerful Bristol Siddeley Orpheus jet turbine engine in Bluebird K7 along with a canopy enclosure and a larger aft vertical stabilizer. In January 1967, on his favourite long and narrow Coniston Lake in west-central England, Campbell completed one pass at 298 mph (479 km/h). With the new record in sight, decided to turn around and go even faster before waiting for his wake from the first run to settle down.
On this next pass at over 320 mph (510 km/h), Bluebird K7 started kiting, with the front end floating loose, causing the boat to rise vertically, somersault, and slam nose-first into the water. Campbell was killed instantly. He was 45 years old. The wreckage of the boat was found the next day, but Campbell’s body was not found and recovered until some 35 years later. The boat was rebuilt and rests in a museum.
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Now, time for a little catch-up.
As we have seen above, in 1955 Donald Campbell set the then overall world speed record of 202 mph (326 km/h) in a jet-powered hydroplane. But, the piston-powered record had been set in 1952 by Slo-Mo-Shun IV at 178 mph (287 km/h).
In 1962, a piston-powered propeller-driven 30-foot (9 m) Unlimited Class racing hydroplane named Miss U.S. 1, powered by a 2,800 hp Rolls Royce Merlin V-12 piston aircraft engine of 1,650 CID (27 litres displacement), set a new piston-powered speed record of just over 200 mph (323 km/h).
That record stood for 38 years. Miss U.S. 1 also won the APBA Gold Cup, President’s Cup, Sahara Cup, Governor’s Cup, and was the fastest Gold Cup qualifier in 1959, ’60, and ’61 even beating Miss Supertest III in qualifying. It was the first boat to average over 100 mph (161 km/h) in a competitive race. There were 10 more Miss U.S. 1 boats built over the next 24 years, right up to Miss U.S. 11, but none set an official speed record.
Now, back to the overall world water speed record. In 1967, after three years of recuperating and rebuilding both his body and boat following a crash in 1964 into the shore of Lake Havasu at over 100 mph (161 km/h), Lee Taylor tried again for a new record. He used his Hallet designed and built 31-foot (9 m) 3-point hydroplane Hustler, powered by a Westinghouse J-46 jet turbine with afterburner producing some 10,000-horsepower. On Lake Guntersville in Alabama, Taylor set a new overall world water speed record of 285 mph (459 km/h) thus surpassing Donald Campbell’s 1964 record of 276 mph (445 km/h). Taylor's record held for 13 years.
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Ken Warby was perhaps the last person you would imagine to set a world water speed record. He grew up in Australia, with Donald Campbell as his boyhood hero, and longed to supercede Campbell’s water speed exploits. Warby, a hand tool salesman by profession, designed and built his own 27-foot (8 m) three-point hydroplane race boat in his own backyard from plywood and fiberglass. He purchased three military surplus Westinghouse J34 jet turbine engines at auction; one to use, two for parts.
In November 1977, Warby piloted his Spirit of Australia to a new world water speed record of 289 mph (465 km/h) at Blowering Dam in New South Wales. Less than a year later in October of 1978, on the same body of water, he set another new overall water speed record of 318 mph (511 km/h). That record that still stands today.
In setting this record, Warby became the only person to this day to exceed 300 mph (483 km/h) on the water and survive. Ken Warby died in 2023 in Cincinnati, Ohio at age 83 while he was still helping his son David Warby with building and testing a new jet-powered boat designed to break his own record. David is still continuing with this project into 2026.
As you might expect, several have tried to beat Warby’s record. Encouraged by new land speed records aided by solid or liquid-fueled rocket engines, Lee Taylor (who had set the overall water speed record in 1967 at 285 mph (459 km/h) in Hustler), built the 40-foot long (12 m) rocket-powered hydroplane Discovery II with the sponsons toward the rear of the fuselage. On a late 1980 test run on Lake Tahoe, at 270 mph (432 km/h), the boat became unstable, plunged below the surface, and broke apart. The cockpit section containing Taylor was recovered three days later.
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You have likely heard the name Art Arfons, who set and held the world land speed record three times from 1964 through 1966 in the Green Monster, and you may even know his brother Walt Arfons, who built the world’s first jet-powered car. Walt’s son, and Art’s nephew, Craig Arfons, a former car drag racing champion, built the first all-composite high speed record-seeking boat from fiberglass, carbon fibre, and Kevlar, and filled it with high density structural foam.
The 25-foot long (7.6 m) ultra-light Rain-X Record Challenger 3-point hydroplane was powered by a single General Electric J85 turbine developing 4,000 pounds of thrust and 5,500 horsepower with the afterburner engaged. The power-to-weight ratio far exceeded Ken Warby's current record holding boat Spirit Of Australia. In July of 1989, on Jackson Lake near Sebring, Florida, the boat started kiting seconds into its run at what some say was around 350 mph (563 km/h). The boat then somersaulted and cartwheeled before breaking apart, but remained floating mainly because of the flotation foam, albeit upside down. Arfons was extracted from the cockpit but died within a couple of hours. He was 39.
Ken Warby’s overall water speed record of 318 mph (511 km/h), set in 1978, still stands today. As you'd expect, it will certainly be challenged and certainly exceeded over time. We can only hope that there are no more casualties as the record is pursued. #culture
