Garfield Wood was an American sportsman, motorboat builder, industrialist and racer, who held the world water speed record on several occasions. He was known as the first person to travel over 100 miles per hour on water. Besides, Wood was a successful businessman, founder of Gar Wood Industries, who at one point held more patents, than any man in America.
Background
Garfield Wood was born on December 4, 1880, in Mapleton, Iowa, United States, one of 13 children. He was a son of Walt Wood, a lake captain, who worked as a ferryboat operator on Lake Osakis, Minnesota. Garfield's mother was commonly referred to as "Mother Wood".
Garfield's siblings included Harvey D. Wood, Bessie B. (Wood) Boston, Winfield C. Wood, Logan Thomas Wood, George Benton Wood, Edward Leon Wood, Philip Sheridan Wood, Louis Sidney Wood, Esther Belle (Wood) Work, Clinton Webster Wood and Dorothy Merlin (Wood) McAllister.
Education
Garfield spent his early years in Osakis, Duluth and Saint Paul, Minnesota, the places, which inspired his later interest in speedboat racing. In his later years, he graduated from the Armour Institute of Technology (present-day Illinois Institute of Technology) in Chicago.
After graduation from the Armour Institute of Technology (present-day Illinois Institute of Technology) in Chicago, Wood sailed on Great Lakes freighters out of Duluth. For a time, he worked in the automobile industry, but eventually obtained a job as a marine motor mechanic.
In 1912, after watching two men using a hand winch to unload coal from a truck, Wood purchased a piece of wrought-iron pipe from a junkyard for fifty cents, as well as a pump, salvaged from an abandoned Buick, and developed the hydraulic hoist to create the dump truck. The lift raised the front end of the truck so that the load could slide out the rear.
To finance his new business, Garfield sold half of his patent for $5,000. A custom-built product, the early hydraulic lifts were not suited for the mass-production lines of the day, so Wood moved his operation to Detroit to be closer to truck manufacturers. He later added steel dump truck bodies to his line of products.
World War I led to an enormous demand for Wood's product. Anticipating a slack demand, following the war, he bought a competitor, Horizontal Hydraulic Hoist Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to obtain its markets and a number of useful patents. In 1922, Wood incorporated his company as the Wood Hydraulic Hoist and Body Company, which became the world's largest manufacturer of truck equipment. Four years later, he purchased mechanical hoist patents from Highway Trailer Company of Eggerton, Wisconsin, to expand his business. In 1931, Wood repurchased his hydraulic hoist patent. Sold for $5,000, it cost him $750,000 to buy back.
During the 1930's, Wood continued to expand his business, branching out into oil burners for home heating, automobile truck winches, cranes, derricks and road-building machinery. In 1933, his corporation was renamed Gar Wood Industries, Inc. In those years, he patented a device to prevent airplane accidents, caused by clogged gasoline lines or fuel-pump failures. He also invented a pilotless speedboat, that was used as a moving target by Navy gunners. Besides, during those years, Wood also served as chairman of the board of Gar Wood Industries in Detroit, the post he held until 1941, and also provided financial backing for the Chris-Craft Corporation of Pompano Beach, Florida, a builder of pleasure motorboats.
After having designed a powerful high-speed launch for the Navy, Wood spoke with President Franklin D. Roosevelt about its possible combat use. The president liked the vessel, although Navy brass scoffed at what would evolve into the hit-and-run patrol torpedo boat of World War II. The patrol torpedo boat design was based on a number of Wood's innovations, including the placement of an airplane motor in a boat. He developed a hull strong enough to withstand the installation of these motors and the high speeds. Following the war, General Douglas MacArthur praised the small boats and said, that two hundred of them in the West Pacific might have turned the scales at the outset of the war. Following the war, Wood built small boats for the Navy and manufactured hydraulic hoists and heating equipment.
In the early 1940's, Garfield sold his stake in Gar Wood Industries and retired to Miami's Fisher Island, purchasing an estate once owned by William K. Vanderbilt. From that base, he traveled about the continent in a twin-engine seaplane, working on countless mechanical projects.
Thanks to his fortune, Wood was able to devote much of his life to his passion for speedboats, spending enormous sums of money on sleek, powerful crafts. He estimated, that by 1936, he had spent more than $1 million on his "hobby". As for Wood's career as a speedboat racer, it began in 1911 in the Mississippi Power Boat regatta in Duluth. Driving a craft he had reconditioned for its owner, he drove at thirty-two miles an hour - a record at the time. In 1920, he set a world record speed mark of seventy miles per hour and continued to hold the record at ever-increasing speeds until 1946.
During Wood's years as a racer, his "Miss America" series of hydroplanes captured the William Harmsworth British International Trophy, the principal prize in powerboat racing, eight times (1920-1921, 1926, 1928-1930 and 1932-1933). Wood drove in each of those years except 1931, when he was disqualified from the race for passing the starting line too soon. However, that race was won by one of his powerboats, which was driven by his brother George. Wood also won the Gold Cup, the chief United States award for hydroplane racing, four times (1917 and 1919-1921).
Garfield retired from competitive racing in 1933, though he never gave up his love of powerboating. Always eager to prove the speed and worth of his boats, Wood would arrange singular challenges. He once beat a Twentieth Century Railroad train from Albany to New York City by several minutes in one of his speedboats and again raced and won against a train from Miami to New York City. He held the international motorboat racing record from 1932 to 1937.
In 1949, Wood unveiled the Venturi, which, he said, was the product of twenty-eight years of planning. It was a flat-bottom, twin-hulled ship, that used the principle of the catamaran for stability. After being successfully tested in all types of weather, the ship ended up in a storm off the Florida coast in 1954. Wood and eight other persons were rescued from a life raft by a Coast Guard helicopter. The Venturi was said to have cost $600,000 to develop.
Gar Wood died on June 19, 1971, about a week before a planned civic celebration in Detroit to honor the 50th anniversary of his first defense of the Harmsworth Trophy.
Garfield Wood was a millionaire industrialist, inventor and powerboat racing enthusiast, credited with inventing the lift for dump trucks. Besides, he was also credited with devising the small, swift PT (patrol torpedo) boats of the United States Navy.
Being a notable speedboat racer, Wood set a world speed record for a boat of 74.87 miles per hour in 1920 on the Detroit River in a boat, named Miss America. He would later break the record five times, raising it to 124.860 miles per hour in 1932 on the St. Clair River. Besides, he once beat a Twentieth Century Railroad train from Albany to New York City by several minutes in one of his speedboats, and again raced and won against a train from Miami to New York.
Wood's awards included the William Harmsworth British International Trophy, which he got eight times, and the Gold Cup, the award he received four times. A charter member in 1953 of the American Power Boating Association's "Hall of Fame", Wood was named one of ten members of its first "honor squadron".
It's worth noting, that, in 1974, a commemorative speedboat race, the Gar Wood Trophy Race, was inaugurated on the Detroit River in his honor. Later, in 1990, Wood was inducted in the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America.
Views
Quotations:
"Speed boat racing is a mechanics game. Guess that's why I like it."
Personality
Wood was known as the "Gray Fox of Algonac", earning the nickname from his appearance and from the town in Michigan, where his power boats were built.
Physical Characteristics:
Wood was a tall, gaunt and wiry man with white hair.
Quotes from others about the person
"To the public, he was Tom Swift, Jules Verne, Frank Merriwell with a little bit of Horatio Alger thrown in." - George Van of The Detroit News
Connections
Wood was married to Murlen (Fellows) Wood. She passed away in 1948. The couple had a son, Gar Wood Jr., who raced boats like his father.
Father:
Walt Wood
Walt Wood was a lake captain.
child:
Gar Wood Jr.
Although Wood Jr. raced boats like his father, he preferred fishing the clear tropical waters, that surrounded Miami. Like his father, he also had a knack for invention and at an early age started designing reels in his father's machine shop. As a young man, Wood Jr. designed the "Silver Regal", "Golden Regal", "Viscount", and "Light" lines of reels for Fin-Nor, also located in Miami, Florida. Besides the trolling reels previously mentioned, Wood Jr. also designed the "Gar Wood Jr. Spinning Reel" and the "Wedding Cake" fly reels for Fin-Nor.
sibling:
Harvey D. Wood
sibling:
Bessie B. (Wood) Boston
sibling:
Winfield C. Wood
sibling:
Logan Thomas Wood
sibling:
George Benton Wood
sibling:
Edward Leon Wood
sibling:
Philip Sheridan Wood
sibling:
Louis Sidney Wood
sibling:
Esther Belle (Wood) Work
sibling:
Clinton Webster Wood
sibling:
Dorothy Merlin (Wood) McAllister
late wife:
Murlen (Fellows) Wood
References
Gar Wood Boats: Classics of a Golden Era
This is more than the story of the person and the company he founded in the 1930's - it is a photo-history of the magnificent boats themselves and the extraordinary design, craftsmanship and materials, that made them legendary. Special attention is given to the Baby Gar, as well as runabouts, speedsters, utilities and express cruisers - all built in Wood's Michigan boatworks.
