Sport: Boat Fever

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Baked Magnetos. Chris did not wait for somebody else to try. Though he cared little for theory, he knew the basic law of displacement (a body in water displaces an amount of water equal to its own weight), had read newspaper accounts describing the theory on which the hydroplane is based. To get the bulky, rounded hull out of the water, and thus reduce drag, Chris Smith devised a step in the underside of his hulls, experimented by moving the position of the step in one-inch progressions until he got it placed where it would raise the hull and plane the water.

In the next few years Chris's step-boats outran European boats twice their lengths and with up to nine times their horsepower. Son Jay was the "mechanician" during races, stopped leaks at full speed, at race's end took the magnetos home and dried them in the oven. In a 1916 race Jay and his brother Bernard smashed the world's speedboat barrier—a mile a minute—with 63.77 m.p.h. Despite these successes, Chris was never much of a businessman. As soon as he could, he turned over administrative jobs to eldest son Jay, who ran the shop while Chris sat in the boiler room with his cigars and his decoys, thinking of ways to make boats go faster.

Swimming Lesson. The eldest of Jay's three children, Harsen was born in 1908, grew up among a cluster of relatives and the sights and smells of the Algonac shop. By the time he was nine, he was hanging around the launching slips so much that father Jay, a firm, nonsmoking teetotaler, ordered him to learn to swim before showing up again in the factory. "This really upset me," says Harsen, "so I practiced for two straight weeks, then told my fa ther I could swim. He threw me off the dock and I made it back."

Harsen left Algonac long enough to attend the University of Michigan and play Big Ten football, returned after three years to work in the shop. One day a flutter of 40 sorority girls showed up in Algonac for a boat ride. Harsen took them out and, says he, "picked the best of the 40." He and May Doherty of Detroit were married in 1929.

The Smiths' business was good. By this time, they had adapted their hydroplane racers to produce a fast and popular runabout. They were also turning out luxury yachts. They sold $1,200,000 worth during the big boat show of 1929 in New York (including 58 plush 36-footers at $15,000 apiece, equipped with fine linen, silverware, even original paintings). Enthralled with visions of a future America putting to sea all at once, two partners from the House of Morgan laid out $350,000 as an option to buy one-third of Chris-Craft. It never happened. That was the year of the Wall Street crash, but fortunately, because of a clause in their contract, the Smiths got to keep the $350,000 when the deal fell through. "It saved us," says Jay.