The Story of Horace Dodge Jr.
and the Making of Waves

By Bob Pearson

This article first appeared in the Spring, 2000 edition of Forward: The American Heritage of DaimlerCrysler Magazine. We are very grateful for their permission to reprint it here, and to Jim Domm (Toronto Chapter) for bringing it to our attention.
 

This is about Dodge speedboats. Yes, Virginia, there was a Dodge company producing mahogany speedboats called Watercars and it competed with the likes of Chris-Craft, Hacker, Gar Wood and others in the 1920s and 30’s.

The story of Dodge Watercars also becomes a story partly about the Dodge family, the early years of the auto industry, national economics and the struggle of one man – Horace Elgin Dodge Jr. – to overcome the curse of a famous, successful father. All this is involved because the human experience is not a series of isolated incidents but a fabric woven of relationships, events, endeavor and timing.

When entrance to a life role as an automotive mover and shaker was shut as surely in his face as the solid thunk of a slammed door on a sturdy Dodge sedan, Horace E. Dodge Jr. turned from land to water to make his mark.

He spent 12 years, from 1923 to 1935, trying to establish his Dodge Watercar speedboats as rivals to Chris-Craft, just as his uncle and father had established their cars and trucks as rivals to Ford.

A number of factors combined to doom his venture, including Horace Junior’s erratic management style, his parallel preoccupation with hydroplane racing, the Great Depression’s onset in October 1929 and his diversions with women and alcohol.

Horace Junior had a great concept – to market his boats just like cars, and in some cases, sell them in tandem with cars as a package. His firm built fast, rugged and handsome boats. He brought in a great boat designer and good management so these could have overcome his personal shortcomings. However, timing, as they say, is everything and he couldn’t overcome the Depression.

Disaster had struck in 1920 when Horace Junior was just 20 years old. Both his father, Horace Senior and his uncle, John, took ill with what was described at the time as the “flu” upon returning to Detroit from a January auto show in New York. Horace recovered but John, 55, died within a few days. Horace, 52, fought against the illness for nearly a year, succumbing in December 1920.

They rode slightly “proud,” with their bows
jutting at a healthy up angle.

After John’s death there appeared to be no role for either Horace Junior or John’s son, John Duval, as both young men were rightly judged to be unable to take over a booming multi-million dollar automotive juggernaut.
 

The next big event which helped launch Horace Jr. firmly into the boat business came on April 30, 1925, when a New York City banking consortium headed by Dillon, Read & Co., bought Dodge and the Dodge brothers’ properties from the Dodge family, headed by Horace’s widow, Anna, and John’s widow, Matilda, for $146 million. This was the largest transaction of its kind, up to that time, in the history of business.

With Horace Junior now permanently a bystander, the ‘20s were roaring away. Junior needed something to do and he had the funds to do it with, although his access to the Dodge fortune was controlled by his mother, who used the purse strings as reins.
Ever fascinated with boats, Horace Junior formed the Dodge Boat Works in Detroit in 1923. He showed up at the New York Boat Show with brochures that promised boats for “every man” but no product. One of his concepts was to sell his Dodge Watercars through the Dodge vehicle dealer network. This had some success for a while as larger auto agencies with big showrooms were happy to add Dodge boats as showroom attractions and, perhaps, another source of profits.

Securing a plant in Detroit, a work force, and a designer, kept Dodge busy through 1924. At the end of that year, he brought one of the best powerboat designers of the time, George F. Crouch, into the company. Unlike other members of the Dodge Boat Works management team, Crouch seemed able to stand up to Horace Jr.’s erratic leadership style.

A trained mathematician as well as a naval architect, Crouch’s job was to design Dodge’s production boats and his racing boats. Crouch was already a successful performance boat designer as several of his boats had won major power boat races.
In the first three years of Dodge Boat Works’ existence, Horace Jr. poured in nearly a million dollars of his own money and didn’t break even. His most popular boat was a 22-foot, 20-mile-an-hour speedboat powered by a marinized Dodge vehicle engine, which sold for $2,475 through Dodge dealers.

The vehicle engine was usually a truck engine because its heavy-duty components provided the necessary durability for marine engines operating under constant loads of as high as 70 percent or more. An optional 90-horsepower aircraft engine added $500 to the Dodge Watercar price and 15 miles an hour to the top speed.
Famous for their reliability and durability, marinized Dodge vehicle engines were a logical choice to power many of the Dodge Watercars. Despite being out of the Dodge vehicle mainstream, Horace Jr. had contacts and proximity. Marinized automotive truck engines were very popular for powering pleasure craft and this early partnership of the auto industry and the pleasure boat industry may have helped formalize Chrysler’s later involvement in the marine industry. Chrysler, and Dodge, had been supplying engines to many boat builders in the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s. Chrysler marine engines were options in the popular Chris-Craft line of runabouts and cruisers.

This natural partnership no doubt led to the formalization of the Chrysler Marine Division, which was active in the 5O’s, 60’s and 70’s. The Division produced marine engines and even bought out a boat company and an outboard engine manufacturer, thus producing Chrysler boats and outboard engines.

Back to Dodge and his Watercars. While the Dodge marine engines were popular for their low price and rugged reliability, the lighter and more powertul Lycoming aircraft engines became the power of choice for the faster Dodge Watercars.

Dodge was finding it difficult to deliver on the promise of boats for every man. His least expensive boat was priced at twice the annual income for the average American. And by the way, that boat price was to be in cash as there was no financing available. However, he announced that in 1925, the Dodge Boat Works was building five boats a day with more to come.
The early Dodge Watercars had rear cockpits with the engine forward of the windshield. This was a typical pre-1930s design. Crouch brought contemporary styling to the line in 1929 with a midships engine placement, streamlined windshields and hardware and full forward or fore-and-aft cockpits.
Dodge came closer to his target of boats for every man in 1930 with a 16-foot speedboat powered by a 40-horsepower four-cylinder Lycoming engine pushing it to a top speed of 25 miles per hour.

Runabouts also were offered in 21-, 25- and 28-foot lengths. The 28-footer was the fastest at 38 miles an hour with a 300-horsepower Lycoming V12 engine.

Crouch’s aesthetics were flawless for the Dodge speedboats. The lines for gunwales and chines were finely drawn. Most of the hulls were finished in stained mahogany with glistening varnish finish. A white boot top capped the green bottom paint. The boot top kicked up slightly at the bow to give the Watercars a unique appearance. In some cases, a diagonal bow stripe proclaimed the boat a “Dodge Watercar.” A Dodge pennant flew from a staff protruding straight up from the forward combination navigation light.

More subtle than those of Chris-Crafts or Gar Woods, the Dodge Watercars were closer in style to the boats of the legendary John L. Hacker. The Dodges had a sound, seaworthy and fast bottom design. They rode slightly “proud,” with their bows jutting at a healthy up angle. Their Lycoming engines, the power of choice for the faster, more expensive Dodge boats, spit and barked rather than gurgled and roared like tractor engine-powered Chris-Crafts.

Dodge Watercars were built to be like Dodge cars – sturdy and reliable. The hulls were double-planked mahogany with white oak (later, as good white oak was hard to come by, this was changed to straight-grain fir) for keels, framing, and engine beds.
Unique Dodge Watercar touches included white oval step pads with Dodge embossed into them, white rubber walkways over engine hatches and, most significantly, a nickel-steel mermaid bow ornament much like the hood ornament on a car. Created by famed-at-the-time sculptor Russell G. Crook, the ornament was something that never caught on as it was most often caught on, and snapped off by, anchor and mooring lines.
 

More distinctive Dodge touches included storage shelves, the combination bow/navigational lights and mooring cleat, wave-like engine hatch ventilators, Duesenberg-like steering wheels and, of course, cigar lighters.

In 1930, the now Dodge Boat and Plane Works (many boat companies also built seaplane floats and even entire seaplanes) moved to Newport News, Virginia, into what was billed at the time as the “world’s largest motor boat plant.” Mindful of the benefits and efficiencies of mass production as experienced by the auto industry, Horace engaged a team of experts to determine the best location for a new plant to build and market boats on a huge scale. The experts picked Newport News because the location offered a great combination of good weather, transportation and water access.

Upon opening, the new plant produced 40 boats a day. It employed 700, most working in three shifts 24 hours a day, five days a week. New models were added with more passenger room. Hardtop models also were introduced. Dodge even introduced a gentleman’s racing runabout and sponsored some races. However, production and sales began to drop off quickly as the Great Depression kicked in.
While all this was going on, Horace (although the Junior label all but disappeared, he was never able to get out of his father’s shadow) was hampered by three distractions which, individually, could bring any business to a halt: alcohol, women and hydroplane racing. He had George Crouch design a series of race boats, a number of them named Delphine after his sister. His boats won the famed Gold Cup twice, in 1932, off Long Island, N.Y at Montauk, and again in 1936, on Lake George in upstate New York.
He had also begun a series of relationships that through the end of his life would involve five marriages, a number of children and countless affairs. Horace’s father and uncle were robust drinkers. Junior carried their banner forward.

Crouch’s aesthetics were flawless for the
Dodge speedboats.

Perhaps these distractions were accelerated by the economy, as the Great Depression spawned suicides, bread lines, begging, homelessness and extreme poverty. Buying and operating pleasure boats were very low priorities.
After producing several thousand boats, the Dodge Boat and Plane Works was shut down in 1936. It reopened during World War II to produce military watercraft, but was shut down at the end of the War. Another one of irony’s bites was that Gar Wood Industries, founded by speedboat king Gar Wood, took over the Dodge plant to manufacture garbage truck dump equipment and bodies.
Today, very few Dodge speedboats exist. Restored versions rarely appear at classic boat shows and auctions. This is somewhat puzzling considering their sound construction, performance and the thousands built.

Seemingly unfazed by the shutting down of his boat works, Horace didn’t miss a beat with his race boats, women or alcohol.

Right after the War, unlimited hydroplane racing changed forever A huge supply of performance fighter aircraft engines like V12 Allisons, Packards and Rolls Royce Merlins were available for almost nothing. These engines put out as much as 2,250 horsepower. And hydroplane design went fast forward from single and double-stepped monohulls to three-point hydroplanes which rode on the minuscule surfaces of the two front sponsons and the propeller at the rear.

The fastest boats were from the design boards of the now-legendary Ted Jones of Seattle. Long dominated by East Coast and Detroit boats, hydroplane racing headquarters was about to move west.

But first, Detroit had a last hurrah in what was to become a hard-fought, bitter struggle between the Motor City and the West Coast. In 1949, everyone was talking about the perceived dominance of the West Coast three-pointers. But John L. Hacker had something left in a traditional hull design for a lovely race boat appropriately named My Sweetie.
 

Hacker gave My Sweetie’s two-step hull design several unique wrinkles. The forward step was moved way forward to create a “bump step” - almost a small sponson that only came into play in turns or rough water. It provided increased stability and control. He also placed the prop shaft in a nacelle almost at the center of the hull. This kept it churning constantly in the water while the three-point hydros danced around and lost bite, and speed, every time the propeller came out of the water. The hydrodynamics of the nacelle provided cleaner, less disturbed water to the propeller.

These unique features made My Sweetie a sweet ride indeed and ideal for the rough Detroit River Gold Cup course in 1949. Against all odds, the seemingly outdated My Sweetie set 15 speed records and won the Cup. However, with the exception of a race win by the twin-engined multistepped hull Miss Pepsi in 1956, hydroplane winners from then on were three-point hydroplanes, called “thunderboats” for the roar they made. The thunder was later replaced with a swoosh when hydroplanes began getting gas turbine power from surplus Vietnam War helicopters.

While not actually racing, Horace was involved in much of this. He bought My Sweetie after its 1949 Gold Cup win but the boat wasn’t competitive as three-point technology surpassed it. Later, he was to use the race boat as a runabout to go for solitary rides of nostalgia on the Detroit River and Lake St. Clair in the mornings before water traffic became too heavy.

In 1956 in the Harmsworth Trophy race on the Detroit River, won by Miss Pepsi, Horace sued to declare the race no contest as his My Sweetie Dora had been bumped illegally from qualifying. While his boat really wasn’t competitive, Horace sued to prove a point. The rules had been violated and boat racing was supposed to be a gentlemanly sport in which the rules were adhered to religiously. The suit brought the animosities between Detroit and the West Coast to a head. The governing body clarified the offending qualifying rules and Dodge dropped his suit.

It’s ironic that a quiet courtroom was Horace Jr.’s last scene in the noisy, wet, heady arena of powerboat racing. Suffering through an acrimonious fifth divorce from showgirl Gregg Sherwood seemed to wear Dodge out. He languished in his smallish estate backed by a garage full of classic fast cars.

And he remained in yet another shadow. That of his mother, Anna Dodge. She was in control of the Horace Dodge Sr. family purse strings. Thus she controlled Horace Jr.’s money, and to a large extent, his life. Horace also lived in her actual shadow as his home was next to his mother’s impressive estate, Rose Terrace, on Grosse Pointe’s Lake St. Clair waterfront. Mrs. Dodge employed spies in Horace’s household to keep track of him, all for good reason, because even though slowed by age and years of fast living, Horace could still be frisky and revert to his earlier ways.

Horace died quietly of a heart attack at 63 on December 23, 1963. He had chased his waterborne dreams and gave them a good run.