1916 - The Dinky Donkey Engine

This boy wanted more speed than he was getting with his Evinrude, so he also mounted an Aerothrust!

THE DINKY DONKEY ENGINE

Talk about rowing being good exercise, and a pleasure—
why, you might just as well talk of working your passage on a buggy-ride. 
Besides, if  you have a "kicker" you can still have your rowing, when you want it.

By EDWARD CAVE

Back in the early nineties (1890s), when the pneumatic-tired  safety bicycle was just beginning to get up speed and you and I knew no more about the internal combustion motors than an Eskimo knows about a battle-plane, an old man showed up on the levee of the Mississippi River town where I was running loose and proceeded to demonstrate an idea for flying machines.   He had a couple skiffs lashed together, side by side, and these he propelled through the water in a manner quite wonderful to behold. 

 In place of oars, he had a pair of wings, one rigged to the rowlock on the port side of his skiffamaran, the other to that on the starboard side.  Power was produced by pumping these wings up and down, just like a bird, the old man at one wing and his grown-up son at the other.  And they actually could make fair progress across the current as long as their muscle and wind held out—say for five minutes at a stretch.  The wings had a handle like an oar and outside the gunwale were fashioned like a lacrosse stick, with the filling made of muslin instead of rawhide netting.  The open side of the bow was to the rear, leaving a "feather edge" of muslin, and the latter, not being stretched taut and the bow having resiliency, naturally, wig-wagging the business up and down produced some driving effect. 

Only trouble was, he didn't have enough freeboard and the son, not being as adept as his dad, or having more muscle, kept "catching a crab", as the longshore saying goes.  Being only a boy, I hesitated about advising anything; but I was for mounting those wings amply high above the water so they wouldn't hit it, and having some kind of "machinery" to flap them.

I learned to row bucking that same Mississippi River current, which is to say I learned a lot of things besides how to handle a pair of oars, chief among which was how to take advantage of the shore-eddy.  After I found that out, I never could get close enough to the shore, going upstream—the confounded inshore oar was always hitting the bank.  So what with this experience and my preconceived belief in machinery, I was, logically, already won over to the outboard rowboat motor long before it was invented.

The first one of these motors I ever saw was one of the original Watermans.  Notwithstanding I had grown gasoline motor-wise, after looking the outfit over very carefully I decided it would never go—that is, be a manufacturing success. 

It was too dinky, too suggestive of the misfit, air-cooled motorcycle engines the castings for which a dozen or more fly-by-night manufacturers had turned out in the early days of motorcycling, which the purchasers were informed they could easily put together and attach to a bicycle. 

As you know, I was wrong. I was so far wrong, in fact, that I never see an outboard motor kicking some form of craft along without thinking of the man who turned down Alexander Graham Bell when he tried to sell him some stock in his budding telephone company. For that dinky Waterman engine turned out to be a veritable little donkey engine for work. 

In a few short seasons it and others that quickly followed drove the hundred dollar motorboat off the market and. not satisfied at that, kept on going, right round the world, driving rowboats to lay aside their oars, from  Alaska to China.  If it had not been the good for that early-day hunch in favor of "machinery" there would have been nothing left for me but to acknowledge stick-in-the-mudism or peddle sophistry about rowing being such a fine exercise.

Luckily, I never told anybody on that first Waterman, so have never been confronted with "I thought you said ..." 

But now suppose I had said to my wife, "I saw a freak arrangement to-day, made to fasten onto the stern of a row boat to try to make a motorboat out of it - about as practical as the outfit for a farmer to turn his buggy into an automobile."

Suppose I had said that, and she had remembered, what would she think of me now, with a dozen of those "freak arrangements" in use on "our" lake, and the magazines full of advertisements of them and of people using them everywhere.   What, for example, would be the appropriate reply to her if she were to say to me,  "The Smiths have a new twin-cylinder, four-cycle 'freak arrangement' and today they brought it out and hooked it onto that old tub of theirs that you call the 'battle ship' because it is so heavy and awkward, and they went by here so fast that when I heard them, before looking out I thought it was Tommy Tucker with his speed boat."

There were last year, I believe, some forty different makes of outboard motors, all of which were entirely practical and efficient. I think the number have been sifted out somewhat, but still there is an ample assortment from which to pick and choose.  And they have demonstrated their ability to do the donkey work for any old kind of a craft, from a houseboat to a canoe.  Why, the motor canoe was nothing but an experiment before these portable motors got into the game; now you see them zipping around everywhere, and they make great speedsters, too.  Take a good sponson canoe, fit it up with one of the best of these motor outfits set in toward the stern, and you've got some boat.  Use one of those rigs with an air propeller and you can go anywhere it is wet, and take your canoe over portages as easy as ever by detaching the motor outfit.

Most any kind of a boat can be converted into a powerboat by simply clamping one of these gasoline outfits onto it, but there are now a variety of inexpensive models made especially for such use.  They give the best satisfaction, in pleasure boats of their cost, being designed to give more room than the average rowboat and to prevent squatting at the stern. Still, one is impressed by the seemingly endless variety of boats which seem admirably adapted for use with a "kicker."  There is a surprising number of the cheapest and simplest of skiffs now being built by amateur boat carpenters to carry outboard motor units, and some of these make very good little motorboats indeed.  Then there are the hundred and one unexpected uses to which the "kickers" arc put, from being carried on single rater sailboats to be clamped on and set to work in a calm, to pushing scows—they don't stop with one engine, hook on two or maybe three if needed.

The man with a motorboat big enough to carry a "dink" yet too small to have the said dinghy a powerboat, is no longer outclassed by the millionaire in this respect—he keeps an "outboard" down below and when he wants power in his tender he just naturally puts it in, in about two shakes.

There is an extremely large class of people who like to go boat-riding in the good old-fashioned, simple way but don't like the labor attendant to it.  Who does?  Especially on a hot day.  Talk about rowing being good exercise, and a pleasure—why, you might just as well talk of working your passage on a buggy-ride.  Besides, if you have a "kicker" you can still have your rowing, when you want it. For my part, I confess I do  like to row - a good boat with a pair of good spoon oars.  But I don't have to strain my memory to recall times without number when a gas-engine in the stern of my boat would have been mighty welcome.  

For instance, when there was a trunk and a couple of suitcases to take to the station across the lake from our camp, and the wind was wrong; or when I happened to be on some lake or river where the good fishing was three or four miles away from the hotel and the boats were the usual "battleship" variety, built on lines suggestive of their being put to use for carrying crushed rock or cordwood, rather than gentle anglers.  If a man browses around much he is bound to be up against this situation pretty often, and he may not want to carry a portable motor outfit with him; but it is certainly the long-headed thing to do if he spends a couple of weeks at one place, or goes there for week-ends.  Then he is independent of the hotel gas-boat which may or may not condescend to tow him to the fishing grounds, according to the number of boats that are going, and which comes to tow him back when it gets good and ready.  Also, he is independent of the "guide" who never does compensate in labor at the oars and the pleasure of his company for the pay he exacts and the space he occupies in the boat.

A good friend of mine remarked to me that in his opinion the .30-30 rifle is "the Ford of the big game rifles."   It is; but the simile does not apply anywhere near so aptly as it does to say that this dinky donkey engine occupies the same position in the motorboat field.  Besides, these little engine outfits are sold in practically every country in the world, not only sold but sold in bunches, which is not true of the .30-30 and no doubt more true of the outboards than of the flivver.  For one, I'm proud of every American invention which makes a hit the world over, and proudest of that which does the most for the greatest number of people of limited means. I like to think of the respect which is inspired in the alien peoples by such beneficences, and I like to think of the good foreign money which American capital and labor derive in exchange.

First of all, of course, in establishing the success of the detachable rowboat motor, was its practicality; next, its adaptability to boats of all sorts and kinds.  Originally, it was made in 2 horsepower, single-cylinder, two-cycle models, weighing complete with propeller and tank between fifty and sixty pounds and selling for around eighty dollars, but now 3, 3 1/2 and even 4-horsepower models are to be had, the latter having a twin-cylinder, four-cycle engine with automatic reverse, weighing ninety pounds and selling for one hundred dollars. 

Also, now all makers supply magneto equipment (optional in some makes), whereas battery ignition was standard equipment on the earlier models. With the latter, by the way, some 2-horsepower units are now sold for as low as fifty dollars—although, it must be admitted, a magneto is well worth the additional expense of about ten dollars.  A few makers supply a special model for canoes, and in most of these there is a saving of some ten pounds in weight: also, they are specially adapted for installation in the canoe.  In passing, it should be said that the best makes now regularly supply even their cheapest models equipped with a reverse mechanism, and all have efficient silencers.

To go back to the beginning, when I was a boy there were two boat liveries on the levee of the Mississippi River city where I lived, each with about forty or fifty good skiffs and round-bottomed clinker-built boats.  Bicycling hit the boat liveries hard.  Then along came the motorboats, replacing the old good-for-little naphtha launches, and what with the number of privately owned boats of this class, of various sizes, all carrying from three to a dozen or more people, and a couple of large excursion launches doing business, the boat liveries found little use for more than a half dozen boats each.   And the privately owned rowboats to be seen on the river were few and far between—quite natural, too, considering the powerful current; no fun pulling your head off against old Father Mississippi, or Father Hudson or Father anything else, with gay motorboating parties scooting by you all the time.   

But now! You should see the dinky-donkey fleet!  Every old tub that will float, seemingly, has been dragged out and caulked up.  New skiffs have been built by the dozens, on all sorts of original, near-speedster lines.  I believe there are no less than twenty different makes of outboard engines represented.  And they go miles and miles up and down the river, fishing, camping, picnicking and just boating.  The same thing applies to every other boating place I have been and a great many I have heard of.

Sure, the dinky donkey engine is a whopping big boon to the recreationists. And I have said not a word about its practical service doing the donkey work on work boats, or what a canny scheme it is that you uncouple it at the end of the day and carry it indoors and lock it up, where you'll find it safe and sound when you want it.

This ad was also in the March 1916 issue of Recreation.