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New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIX, Issue 21, 23 November 1907, Page 32

Mr. Peter Hewitt, a fairly well-known American inventor, claims to have designed and built a boat, or gliding craft, which will solve the problem of going sixty miles an hour at sea, and bring New York, when the model is perfected, within thirty hours of .Liverpool. In appearance Mr. Hewitt’s rough model, which is capable of holding two men, hardly- looks like a boat, but it is a water-borne structure nevertheless, and is propelled by a gasolene motor, working a screw. It is really a development of the well-known catamaran type of boat of the Fiji Islanders, but instead of parallel logs of smooth timber, cigarshaped arrangements are attached to the hull of the vessel, by means of which the catamaran glides over the water. They are well-constructed steel planes, taking the place of the logs of timber in the catamaran, and these planes are attached to the craft by steel arms. Many people may refuse to take his idea seriously, but he claims to have gone 38 miles an hour at sea with one man aboard, and with a two hundred feet model he guarantees a mile a minute. Some American experts in marine propulsion say that Mr. Hewitt has hit the bull's-eye this time, and should be encouraged to continue his experiments. If he cannot apply the idea to big liners, he may. it is said, construct a craft of lightning speed which would be snapped up by the Nary for war purposes. •Tustin McCarthy tells a reminiscent story of the late Henry Ward Beecher. Mr Beecher entered Plymouth Church one Sunday and found several letters awaiting him. He opened one and found it contained the single word “Fool.” Quietly and with becoming seriousness be announced to the congregation the fact in these words. “I have known many an instance of a man writing a letter and forgetting to sign bis name, but this is the only instance I have ever known of a man signing his name <uud forgetting to write the letter.”