ALBATROSS SPEEDBOAT
Hair-raising ’60s craft on the water in Monaco
Apparently, there were dolphins racing us as we screamed across the Bay of Monaco, shredding water and air at 45mph in an Albatross A-Series – not that I ever saw them. I was too busy watching my life flashing before my eyes as Albatross nut John Fildes sent us flying off wave tops and into steeply banked turns to show what these vintage flat-bottomed racing boats are capable of. Beside us was Archie Peace, grandson of the boat’s designer, keeping pace in an identical boat.
The Albatross’s soundtrack is a frightening arrhythmia of riveted aluminium hull smacking the water hard, while, rather than the usual songs that motors sing at sea – a burbling V8, a whining outboard rising and dropping as the prop rides out of the water, the relentless hammer of a low-revving oil burner – we are accompanied by the gruff, water-cooled four-cylinder bark of a classic racebred Coventry Climax.
It’s a 1220cc FWE unit, rather than the later 2.5-litre engines that ruled the F1 circuits, and is producing around 95bhp in its current high state of tune. The tiny Albatross, together with two passengers and engine, weighs less than 400kg; combined with the virtually flat bottom of the hull, it offers supercar acceleration of 0-50mph in about three seconds.
The top end of an A-Series at just shy of 50mph is seriously quick, even by today’s standards, but it’s the acceleration and balance that really set the Albatross apart. A modern rigid inflatable boat (RIB) with two hefty 250hp outboards mounted on the stern will give a bit more speed and infinitely more comfort, as the buoyancy in its modern deep-vee hull resists the water gradually when landing, giving the equivalent of suspension. But the balance will be skewed and the acceleration, as the boat labours onto the plane, sluggish.
The Albatross, with its hydroplane bottom, just explodes from a standing start, allowing the Climax to rev fast and free, and its mid-engined layout gives it perfect balance; so perfect, in fact, that the empty boat can be lifted by a single rope attached to its strong, mid-mounted waterski anchor point. This means it floats level on its frequent departures from the water – and it means the landings threaten to shake you to pieces on a rough day such as we had.
In the 1950s and early ’60s, Albatrosses were the biggest-selling powerboats built in Britain, a record that remains unbeaten, although most (85%) were destined for export. They rose to fame on the back of a surge in interest in waterskiing, and for the Jet Set to use as tenders for their large yachts. The firm was founded by Archibald Peace, a nautical stress engineer in World War Two, and Peter Hives, son of the ex-MD of Rolls-Royce. After a brief consultation with some marketing types (‘It’ll never work’), they set up shop in St Olaves, near Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, and started building racing hydroplanes and ‘consumer’ speedboats that grew out of that experience.
Their first boat – the Mark One or ‘Standard Sport’ – was the benchmark for a production line of similar boats that the
company produced until its demise in 1966, and the formula – light weight, simplicity and thrills – catapulted Albatross Marine to a serious business, finishing boats at the rate of three a week. In all, they built around 1300, two-thirds or so of which still exist today.
The sales success was thanks largely to Bruce Campbell, ex-De Havilland test pilot, who joined the firm in 1952 and used his yacht to cruise the Med, showing off the little ‘Alby’ to wealthy potential clients. At the height of production in the 1950s, British Rail even built a spur to take the finished boats from the factory to the main line for transportation to market.
Albies were sold in a total of 27 countries. Brigitte Bardot (who also owned a Riva Junior), Gianni Agnelli and Aristotle Onassis owned them, as did seven heads of state, including Prince Philip (who kept his on HMS Britannia for waterskiing) and Prince Rainier of Monaco, who was so enamoured of them he owned six. When Alberto Ascari crashed into the Bay of Monaco during the 1955 Monaco Grand Prix, it was an Alby that was first on the scene. He escaped with a broken nose, only to die in another crash four days later.
The biennial Monaco Classic Yacht Regatta was in full swing as we made our way back to the harbour. Pete Townshend of The Who was out racing on his little sailing yacht
Eva; fashion heiress Allegra Gucci was on the big schooner Creole, bought and restored by her father; men on superyachts as big as the Ritz waved to us as our doughty little British fighter growled back into the harbour.
‘If that blew your mind, think about how you’d have felt in 1960,’ said John as we stepped off the boat and I kissed the ground, referring to the year that Archie Peace designed the A-Series. You have to remember that the very early ’60s – before the jet age, the moon landing, Bond or the Beatles – were a monochrome land of cod-liver oil and church services. A ride in an Albatross must have seemed surreally fast. By the start of that decade, the other two members of the company – Peter Hives and Bruce Campbell
– had left acrimoniously, and Archie drew what he knew was the perfect refinement of the little boats they had built their fortune on. The A-Series was similar to the earlier models, but given some design flair in the form of a convex stern, a little more length and some tumblehome – the name given to a hull that starts to curve back in a little at deck level. It was built to be perfectly balanced with the Coventry Climax – cheaper boats came with the Ford 100E and were about 10mph slower. The riveted aluminium construction, in NS5-spec metal only 2-3mm thick, has proved remarkably durable and explains how so many boats still exist. They were assembled by masters of the trade, men who only a decade previously had been building military aircraft for the war.
There is no gearbox on an Alby – the engine drives the propeller directly and reverse gear is a canoe paddle. There are no creature comforts. All deckware is very low profile, to avoid snagging waterskiing lines. The closed-circuit, freshwater cooling system is a masterstroke of functional design, consisting of two shallow trays built into the boat’s bottom that are cooled by its motion through the water, to make use of the heat conductivity of aluminium.
By the late ’60s, the Ray Hunt-designed deep-vee hull had arrived, and hydroplane hulls like this with their seat-of-the-pants ride and ferocious acceleration were – at consumer level at least – largely consigned to history. Peace died in 1968 but the Alby light shines on: John Fildes, my pilot in the Bay of Monaco, has reinstated Alby racing on the Norfolk Broads and a good restoration scene is afoot around the world. These days, Albies change hands quickly when they come up for sale – particularly the Coventry Climaxpowered A-Series boats, which will always be the defining models of the marque.
The Alby is a savage little terrier when compared with the luxurious comfort of, say, a mahogany Riva, but it is also a fraction of the price and has a purity of design that appeals to the sort of ascetic motorist who prefers a simple little Lotus to an opulent grand tourer. It’s quite apt that the Climax FWE also powered the Lotus Elite – Archibald Peace would have approved of Chapman’s mantra, ‘Add lightness’.