powerboat

Jet Boat

Bill Hamilton had a problem. He lived in Canterbury, New Zealand, surrounded by shallow braided rivers that were impassable by conventional propeller boats. So he invented the jet boat in 1954. The concept is elegant: suck water in through an intake on the hull bottom, accelerate it through an impeller, and blast it out a steerable nozzle at the stern. No propeller hanging below the hull. No outdrive to hit rocks. Just a flat bottom and a water cannon. The jet boat changed what rivers were navigable. Hamilton's first successful run up the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in 1960 proved the concept to the world. Suddenly every shallow, rocky, fast-moving river was accessible. The New Zealand tourism industry built an empire on jet boat rides through gorges that conventional boats couldn't touch. The military noticed. Special operations forces use jet boats for covert riverine insertion because they can operate in water so shallow it barely qualifies as wet. Search and rescue teams use them in flood conditions where propeller boats would be destroyed by debris. Commercial operators run them on rivers from Queenstown to Idaho. The Shotover Jet in Queenstown, NZ, is the most famous jet boat operation on earth. They blast through narrow canyon walls at 50 mph with inches to spare, doing 360-degree spins with a boatload of screaming tourists. It's been running since 1965 and has carried millions of passengers. That's the jet boat's legacy: it turned impossible water into a playground.