SWIFTSURE (HMCo. #243) was the last of the high speed HMCo. steam launches. Steam was on the way out in favor of internal combustion engines by this time the was built in 1904, and SWIFTSURE lost a few very close races (literally, by seconds!) to prove it. L. Francis later wrote of SWIFTSURE in "The Wizard of Bristol": "I remember one run I had in her between Newport and Bristol in a fresh northerly breeze. She may have been going twenty-four or twenty-five miles an hour and running almost noiselessly; it certainly was a run to be remembered. I believe if 'Swiftsure' had had an oil-fired boiler so she could hold her steam better, had carried slightly higher boiler pressure, and had not had a rather clumsy tube condenser under her bottom she would have been several miles per hour faster. At any rate she ran remarkably well for her horsepower and weight, and went very smoothly in a choppy sea, and I cannot help thinking a model like 'Swiftsure' would carry her weight at twenty-five miles per hour with less power than any launch afloat today, for most launches of her weight and speed today have nearly double her horsepower." SWIFTSURE was launched on July 26, 1904 - 118 years ago this week.
📸 Agnes Herreshoff; HMM archive
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